Back from Lake Powell

Here are some observations about Lake Powell.

Water slides and views

When Aramark, the Lake Powell concessionaire we rented our houseboat from, surveyed users about amenities they wanted on boats, guess what came up first? Not air conditioning (which despite temperatures in the 90s we never had to use). Water slide. Here are some photos to show you why, plus a few more scenics.

Quick shots of Lake Powell

We're back on land and missing Lake Powell. Here are a few quick photos, more to come about the place, the people and, whoa, the weather! Gorgeous most of the time, and wild at other times!

The Tempest

Here's more about the storm!


Yesterday, day's end. We're back from Rainbow Bridge, a stop at Dangling Rope Marina,  fishing (in vain), tubing (much  more successful) and water skiing (I finally got up,  not on the mono ski but on the kid's skis, a little short, but hard to balance but illustrating dramatically that I am a  two-ski water skier.  I tried about 20 times to get up on that damn mono ski and my arms still hurt).
I'm learning the art of floating in an inner tube while sipping a cold Pacifico  and it's great, but  this sprightly breeze has sprung up and keeps pushing me into the warm shallow water. My husband and Carrie are trying to catch this fish that I keep seeing jump all over the place.  It's about a  foot big. I come  out of the water, Carrie and Gary fold their poles and my ten-year-old whips us all at the card game Memory, but we get better,  so I'm hoping that continued practice will stave off dementia.
    Then, back in the water to cool off. We're hoping that Chee comes to reassess our generator problem and are admiring the increasingly darker skies on the cliffs and buttes beyond us. The occasional  fork of lighting cuts through and I wish I had a tripod and one of the cords you just push when you want the shutter to open. But Carrie,  who, like me, has a fancy new camera,and I try to catch  a few bolts. I fail.
    The wind picks up and it's exhilerating. Then, it picks up even more  and I realize that this storm is steaming straight up the canyon straight at us! We are parked where the canyon ends, which is why  it was the last place available on this canyon when we parked here. We had briefly considered but promptly rejected moving over one cove over when its  previous occupant had steamed away.  And we are not parked very  well, having parked for optimum depth for the water slide rather than security.
    Our power boat is parked next to the houseboat,  rather than  behind it, again to  optimize use of the water slide and innertubes.
    Ooops.
The wind slams into the house boat and starts pushing it sideways up onto the beach, which would be inconvenient but not that bad except that the powerboat is tied to it and as the water gets shallower and drops beneath it, the power boat  starts tipping over because one side is tied to the houseboat. My husband swiftly unties it so that it rights itself but it still lies between the houseboat and shore and has a deeper draft than the houseboat,, which the wind continues to shove. Driven by the houseboat,the power boat is wedged into the sand and the houseboat continues to squeeze it.. The heavy sleeping mattresses on the houseboat's top dec  blow onto the beach. The bell  on the back of the boat clangs away,  the wind is ringing it. The wind howls and the lightning flashes get nearer. My husband and Carrie have raised the two houseboat motors and the powerboat motor so at least they're not digging in to the sand, but we want the power boat out. We all push the powerboat.  but it's clear that the keel is dug into the sand, and the wind keeps shoving the houseboat against it.
My ten-year-old, meanwhile, has been busy  bringing in everything she can so it won't blow away. Finally, I tell her to get inside.
      Lightning is flashing closer and we reason that this is the time to be really glad we bought liability insurance for the boats from the marina.
   My husband is glad  that we didn't get caught out on a the power boat and we see  one power boat a couple coves up venture out and promptly turn around. And then we see another power boat chugging up canyon towards us. From its  high profile, we know it's Chee. Helluva time  to pick to fix the generator, but as he circles in the cove around us and we get on the right radio  channel, he's just come to make sure we're okay.
    "Holy smokes!" he says as the wind buffets his boat.  He says we look  secure and not to worry about the power boat and steams off to help some other people who are in more immediate trouble. What a job! From fixing generators  and water pumps to rescuing boaters in a major windstorm.
We watch the wind, taking photos,  and it gets a little stronger. There's really not much we can do, so Carrie, being my kind of girl, cracks open a bottle of wine.  
     The storm eases; not much rain, just enough to make me close up my camera as I try a few more photos because the drama  of wind, water, butte and cloud  is irresistible. And for once, my trusty Canon G12 is  not up to it on auto and I haven't progressed enough  on remembering how to do F stops and the timer  to be effective on manual.
      "Wow!" says my daughter, "I am really going to have a story to tell  in September!" She's thinking land-based vacations may be more her cup of tea, but she is loving the excitement.

The wind starts to abate but we hold off on dinner a bit more because it's too rainy to grill yet, so we play Hangman.  The words tell the story: houseboat, tempest,  buffeted,  aground! That little girl of ours! We're  a little chagrined that we're probably going to have to have ol' Chee help us get out in the morning, although the good news is that the power boat has kept the houseboat in water that is deep enough for us to lower the houseboat's motors. But, it  is starting to get dark so we take the Scarlett O'Hara route and will think about it tomorrow..
      We start dinner and then see this beauty of a motorboat, the Sundancer, approach us. We'd seen zipping around us earlier in the day when we had been farther down canyon, fishing, water skiing and exploring cool little grottoes. It's a Good Samaritan, who's been coming here for 40 years.  He, his younger cousin  and the younger cousin's three-year-old, dressed just in a lifejacket and his little "big boy" underpants, survey the situation. The little three-year-old doesn't talk,  just holds up three fingers when i ask how old he is, but does not miss a thing. He is in high heaven.
    Our main good samaritan looks  at our site. "It's not a very good spot," he says. He tells us that next  time a storm comes up, fire up the engines, beauuse you can use them to outmaneuver the wind. Also  do a better job with the anchors.  Although frankly, even it they had been tighter, the boat still  would've swung the same way.
            I pull up the anchor ropes. My husband lowers the motors,  our Good Samaritan ties his beauty  of a  boat to the rear of our massive houseboat and pulls it away. I video taped it but it doesn't do justice to the power of that little boat! Some stuff,  you just gotta see. While Good Samaritan  No. 1 pulls our house boat away  from the beach, his cousin holds on to the powerboat so it doesn't drift away. Once the houseboat isn't squeezing it, the powerboat unwedges easily.





  Good Samaritan No. 1 drives up to the houseboat to untie the Sundancer and accepts a cold Pacifico from Carrie, dancing up to the bow of  his little boat so nimbly that it is clear that he has done this particular operation many times.
    He directs Gary on how to maneuver the house boat so  we have the pontoons more evenly lodged on the beach,  Carrie is repositioning the powerboat, which drifts a little faster than she expects into shallow ground,, so she leaps out to push the boat away from land and then, as she pushes it away from shore (motor still idling),  has no footing to use to boost herself back up onto the power boat, but powered by adrenaline somehow manages to pull herself up the side of the boat. Holy moly! This is when being a trainer and member of the  San Francisco Vikings,  an over-40 soccer team  that has won eight national championships, pays off.
Gavriela,  meanwhile, is tallying up what Carrie and I owe her for every  time we say a word we shouldn't say in front of her.  All I can say  is, we managed to hold off hte the worst. It's only a quarter a pop, but between the two of us,  it's starting to add up.
    I resolve to visit the Good  Samaritan in order to get his address so we can send him a thank you note, to see their houseboat (which we  had also noticed earlier, it is spectacular! Even has a pirate flag on it) and to find out when they sail  Lake Powell so that next year,  we can just follow them.
    We wind up the night with push ups (me, with Carrie spotting me, because I hope it will help work out all the knots in my  arms from my vain efforts to get on that single ski) and Gary doing planks, also spotted by Carrie.
Why? Heck if I know!
  Morning dawning sunny and serene here on Rock Creek..

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.