Looking Back on the First Days

As part of the continuing vagaries of this trip, it is 4 p.m. Arizona time.We are actually in the Utah stretch of Lake Powell but the whole lake just sticks to Arizona time to keep simpler.
We are  loving it here, despite the cranky generator on the house boat which keeps kicking out, most recently with what I considered an ominous amount of thumping.  This after Aramark, the concessionaire the National  Park Service has licensed to  operate house boats  on Lake Powell, sent an obliging guy named Chee (just like Officer Jim  Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police) who fixed it and the water supply; our drinking water shut down. Chee appears to be a solutiions guy and found air in a generator line, and also switched pumps for  the water. All worked, until he left.
Anyway, the generator won't start, the radio works only intermittently, although we did get Chee. Cell  phone service--forget it--they work intermettently  on the main channel (if you can see Navajo Mountain you might get a connection), but usually what you get are partial, tantalzingly cut off downloads  of emails you really don't  want to know about. Anyway, Chee knows the generator died again.
So,given the state of the generator, we  are drinking beer while it is cold.
        I had thought that a case of beer for three  adults for four nights was not enough, but Carrie felt that since it was supplemented by six bottles of white  wine and one bottle of red, it would be enough.
      She is probably right,  but fan as I am of "The Monkey Wrench Gang," I keep thinking of how George  Hayduke,  alias Rudolf the Red, ex Vietnam POW and quartermaster extraordinaire who once roamed this area (in fiction) would probably not  have agreed. Although he  would have bought Pabst Blue Ribbon,  not Pacifico,  and considered us all  a bunch of Sierra Club pansies. Although no one could consider Carrie a  pansy  and I suspect  Rudolf the Red would  not have either. And I belong to the Natural Resouce  Defense Center, not the Sierra Club.
    Enough  of Four Corners and Lake Powell literary ramblings.
    This is a pretty cool place even though I still  believe that the Sierra Club should have stuck to  its guns and called  in the votes it had in Congress (acccording to my  conversations via email with the Glen  Canyon Institute) and stopped the dam. Be that as it may, they  did not; the lake  is now nearly 50 years old (at least that is when the dam was finished, not sure when  the  lake filled but we heard it took  17 years).
Although it is lower now, 60 feet lower than last year, according to Chee. The output never  changes, but the input does and last winter  it was very dry. But cold, Chee said.
      But there is  still plenty of water and it gives you amazing perspective of one of the  most geologically incredible places on earth.

Scariest Moments of Canyoneering!

So, what was the scariest moment of canyoneering for this acrophobe?The drive to our canyoneering spot,Yankee Doodle Dandy, in the Dixie National Forest. 
           Our guide casually palms the wheel while drinking coffee as he drives our van up a gravel road  that's nothing but a series of hairpin curves up a mountain.. The back  of the van fishtails gently; he keeps talking about the crazy real  estate boom and bust in nearby St. George. Carrie, my surfer-queen buddy who is also a member of the women's soccer team that has won seven national championships in the over 40-division and  is no 'fraidy cat, looks over at me; she feels the same way. My husband, who is in the front seat and has an even  better view of the rooad, leans back and chuckles. "Jack grew up on this road," he says.  Jack is at least 40,  so that's a good  sign.
    And, when we reach our trail head and watch him meticulously unwind his rope  and hear his mild criticisms of  the hurry-up techniques of a nearby guides with clients ("Lazy" he says when  one guy decides to belay kids down rather than rappel. We rappel down one-by-one; they come down so close to us that they practically  land  on  top  of us. One little girl cries because a big hunk of her hair got caught in the rope; above us, her mother querorously inquires, "Is everything all right?" ) It is clear to me that Jack is the guy to have for your guide.
    We do  two, rappels,  one  with a little free flight involved; one much longer one. I am not a fan of rappeling at all; I like earth solidly beneath my feet but  once I manage to swing out,  it's fine! Jack brings my 10-year-old down with him both times, coaching her with admirable patience.
      Then it's winding our way through narrow slot canyons, a lot of them filled  with muddy  water, all accessed by sliding down rocks or practicing scissoring, stemming and bridging through the narrow canyon walls. (See video below!)

  We  slog through  waist deep water in some slot canyons,  our ten-year-old on my husband's shoulders. Carrie is trying to  keep her feet dry by doing some major fancy footwork bridging and stemming. Jack does it all--in flip flops. Church comes up and he looks at the walls rising above us, framing a narrow view of a deep-blue sky. "This  is my church," he says. Actually, the canyon walls soar so magnificently that it's more like a cathedral.
We get to the bottom and then climb out, walking up a wall that's probably a little more than a 70-degree pitch. Jack tells us to keep our heels on the ground and it works great! I walk right up that slanty wall as though there were glue on my boots.
    Our ten-year-old  heads up that 70-degree wall wall like a little mountain goat! Jack points out shallow holes that we can use at toe-holds. They're so weathered he says locals believe that native Americans carved them out centuries ago. Pretty cool!
         As we head out, Jack and I share  our relief that we left the other  group  behind us. Jack says  if we'd stayed much  longer, he would've had to take the responsibility of helping them.
      On the ride back, we figure at least Jack won't be drinking coffee. Wrong!! He's still driving with one hand, drinking coffee with the other and pulling off to stop and make sure we can appreciate the panorama spreading before us. Once we're below stunning vistas, my husband, in the front seat,  naps.
         I definitely recommend Jack as a guide.
         Back at the mountaineering shop, we hose off,  trade in their now muddy  shoes for our own,  watch Jack  help a truck driver who has pulled over in front of the mountaineering shop straighten out the metal footstep that has been bent and is cutting into the side of one  of the truck's 18 wheels.  The truck driver and another guy have been battering the  metal piece  with  sledgehammers in vain; Jack pulls out a ladder from  somewhere to use  as a lever  and manage to straighten the mangled metal enough to get it out of the tire.  Jack  is clearly a solutions guy.  We head off for lunch and the pool at our hotel, the Desert Pearl Inn. We spend the afternoon poolside.
     After dinner, we realize that I have inadvertently made  off with climbing helmets, so after dinner we run  by the mountaineering shop to drop  them  off. Jack is seated outside,  with his dog, a black  lab with really short  legs.  His name  is Cassius Clay.

      We had arrived a day earlier, giving us two afternoons in Springdale, staying at our fave hotel  in  Springdale, the Desert Pearl Inn, which has a great pool,  fab location  on the Virgin River, rooms that overlook  the lawn and river,, we have a little patio,  and  laundry facilities.  I could live here forever!
      Our ten-year-old generously sharese the inner tubes we got at the Mandalay Bay with everyone in the pool  (one woman  compliments me profusely on her thoughtfullness and generosity). She has a great time with two  little French girls, who speak  no  English.  Pool fun  transcends language.
     

  Sunday a.m..  we  head out early,  a two-car caravan on our way to Page and Lake Powell. As we head up another road with hairpin  turns,  I tell Carrie to drink  her coffee and palm the wheel, a la  Jack.

Canyoneering in Zion!

We're moseying on down toward Lake Powell and stopping in Zion for some canyoneering and sunset rim hikes. We spent this morning canyoneering Yankee Doodle, a series of slot canyons in the Dixie National Forest near Zion National Park. A little rappelling, a little scrambling, a little slogging through mud and a lot of fun!

Walls are a little higher, water's a little deeper and mud's a little thicker when you're a ten-year-old canyoneer, but she stays game throughout, with a little lift from Daddy!

Uh, how high up am I?

First stop: Vegas?

Las Vegas is our gateway to Lake Powell, so we spend a day-and-a-half there. If you're 10, or traveling with a 10-year-old, Vegas is irresistable.

In 36 hours we: did the Rim-Runner, bumper cars and arcade games at Circus-Circus. Then we lounged by the Four Seasons garden pool, moved next door to the Mandalay Bay to play in its wave pool and float in its lazy river. Then it was dinner under a beautiful--but fake--Italian sky at the Venetian, serenaded by gondoliers and street musicians. We wound up the day watching the Blue Man Group poking fun at convention. The next morning, we swung through the Shark Reef to admire all the underwater predators there. Then, on to Zion! Here's a 10-year-old's view of Vegas--which she loves!

What Lies Beneath

What's under Lake Powell's waters? Here's a photo of a world that was. Gregory Butte, before Lake Powell ...

And in Lake Powell today ...

Gregory Butte's elevation is 4600 feet; Lake Powell right now is at 3631 and dropping. As the lake's levels drop, more of what used to be emerges. By next spring, we should be able to see many of Glen Canyon's cultural and natural wonders that are at higher elevations emerge from the the lake, according to the Glen Canyon Institute, which provided these photos.

The Back Story

Lake Powell is the lake rising up out of the desert. It is also a lake that drowned a canyon of rare beauty.

I asked the Glen Canyon Institute for a little background on the dam. Here's what they told me:

In 1956 the Congress was debating the Colorado River Storage Project act (CRSP) to authorize the contractions of 13 or so large dams in the upper  basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.  It also allowed
for the development of water projects that are on going even today.  Two of the dams proposed were to have been built in Dinosaur National Monument.  The biggest dam in the project was Glen Canyon Dam. Remembering how they built a dam in Hetch  Hetchy Canyon in Yosemite National Park 35 years before, the Sierra Club, led by David Brower, made a stand that they would oppose any dam to be built in a national park or
 monument. So they fought this bill.

 David Brower was in DC lobbying and had the votes to defeat CRSP. However, back in San Francisco, the Sierra Club board of directors felt that the club was getting to be to radical and voted to remove opposition to CRSP as a whole project if they would remove the two dams that were to be built in Dinosaur National Monument.  Brower heard about the vote, didn't like it, but did nothing to get it changed.  So congress removed
 the two dams (they build Flaming Gorge instead outside the monument) and the rest of the dams were built, including Glen Canyon Dam.

The people fighting against Glen Canyon were dismayed.  They took Brower down Glen Canyon and Brower felt horrible that he had allowed such a  compromise to occur.  He fought Glen Canyon dam until it was completed
 and then fought with us until he died to get it removed.  He said that he would wear 'sack cloth and ashes' for the rest of his life because he  allowed Glen Canyon to go under water.