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Category: Floating

San Juan Canyon

The San Juan River | Sand Island to Mexican Hat
Sunday – Wednesday, May 11-14, 2014

We didn’t have any luck in the San Juan River lottery again this year, but I managed to grab an open date on the calendar for a time my friends and I would be able to go during the month of May. Like last year, I was only able to secure a permit from Sand Island to Mexican Hat. It was probably a good thing because I really didn’t want to take too much more time off from work in May since I had already taken a few days for my backpacking trip in Salt Creek Canyon and I have a few other days scheduled off for later in the month.

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Independence Day in Glenwood Canyon II

Grizzly Creek to South Canyon
Independence Day | Thursday, July 4, 2013

A repeat of last year’s Fourth of July! We had such a good time last year that we decided to raft Glenwood Canyon again this year from Grizzly Creek to South Canyon. We got an early start, which meant there weren’t many people at the boat launch or on the river yet. The water was about 1000cfs higher this year over last, so there were a few fun rapids to go through. We had another nice half-day trip on the river.

Prepping the boats near Grizzly Creek.

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The San Juan River

Sand Island to Mexican Hat
Wednesday – Friday, May 8-10, 2013

I have wanted to get on the San Juan River for a while, but because of the permit system in place I have never really tried. This year I decided it was finally time to try and secure a permit for myself and a few friends from work. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to get any permits from the original lottery. However, I was able to grab an opening at a later date. We had originally wanted to try and do the whole stretch of the San Juan from Sand Island to the Clay Hills Crossing, but the permit we were able to get only let us go to Mexican Hat on this trip.

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Ruby – Horsethief Canyons

Friday – Sunday, August 24-26, 2012

After work on Friday I met Jackson at the Westwater exit on I-70, after the slower than usual drive through two construction zones, so that we could drop his car off at the Westwater takeout along the Colorado River. Our plan this weekend was to float through the Ruby – Horsethief Canyons section of the Colorado River from Loma to Westwater. This was going to be my very first overnight river trip and I had been looking forward to it for a while. Thanks to all my new backpacking gear bought earlier this year, packing the inflatable kayak was much easier, even though I decided to bring along a bigger tent this trip. This section of the Colorado is about 25 miles in length and is pretty mild, but it flows through some beautiful sandstone canyons. Once Jackson’s car was parked in the Westwater parking lot we took my Jeep back to the Loma boat ramp and got our inflatable kayaks ready for the trip. As I suspected, we had the launch site to ourselves on a Friday evening at about 5:30pm.

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Gray Canyon and the Island in the Sky

Saturday & Sunday, August 4-5, 2012

On Saturday I met up with Jackson and his family so that we could float a section of the Green River known as the Green River Daily. This section is a few miles long and located within Gray Canyon a few miles north of the town of Green River. There aren’t really any big rapids on this stretch of the river, especially at this year’s very low water flows, so we were just expecting a nice relaxing float with a lot of swimming to stay cool. I also hoped to find some new petroglyphs along the way.

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