Lake Powell- April 19- 26 2016
Sixteen hours of driving South and we were giddy when we turned onto the side road leading to Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell. We passed the entrance station- closed and free entry for National Park Week, already we were off to a lucky start. We found a campsite as the sun was setting and spread out our gear to pack for tomorrow. The hundreds of pounds of food was a little overkill so we drank beer and over ate to lighten out load. I had called two weeks ago to find a boat shuttle down to the middle of the lake for us and our gear, but the person who answered was so nonchalant about it that I was curious if anyone would be at the dock to meet us. Paddle boards pumped up, sunglasses set out and ready, we tried to fall asleep under bright stars and an almost full moon.
DAY 1 - 10 miles
Our captain was there promptly at 8am to take us down lake, and with the same easy going attitude he loaded our gear and we kicked off down lake to Dangling Rope Marina at mile 42. After two hours I had to pee so bad that my kidneys started to ache, and then in the middle of the channel, the engines on our tow boat died. With painful slowness we putted our way into the marina where I sprinted to the bathroom and Carla just laughed.
The first strokes away from the dock felt like the trip was an overachieving bad idea, but after a few minutes we found our rhythm and glided up lake to our first stop, Cathedral Canyon.
The scale of the canyon is hard to fathom. The walls are so high that our 10'6" boards were dwarfed by our surroundings. Our map showed the current water depth at over 300 feet. The high water mark (the white stripe on the rock walls) is 110' tall.
The farther we paddled into Cathedral, the more narrow it became until the sky was just a sliver above us and the canyon become impassable for boats. Just when we thought we were at the end, the canyon wall would open up again and shafts of sunlight would make the walls glow.
Once we hit the silty end of the water, we hiked up the canyon. The path kept twisting and opening up as we went along, making us say repeatedly, "Lets just go around one more bend..." Finally, we decided to turn around as we wanted to make it to Forbidding Canyon at mile 49 that evening.
The main channel is about one mile wide and there are red and green buoys that mark the mileage counting up from the Glen Canyon Dam at the Southern end of the Lake. We counted the number of boats that passed us on three fingers throughout the whole day and paddled hearing only the droplets of water dribble off our paddles. The turnoff for Forbidding Canyon and Rainbow Bridge National Monument came up faster than expected and we once again found ourselves pulling into the narrowing canyon as the sun started to set.
We pulled into the docks that mark the beginning of the 3/4m trail to Rainbow Bridge without a soul around. We tied our boards to the cleats and ran up the trail. We turned the corner and were met with dinosaur noises that stopped us in our tracks. We peered around the corner unsure of what to expect, and saw a beautiful pond filled with frogs!
The next corner gave us our first glimpse of the bridge. Sacred to neighboring American Indian tribes, the bridge stands 290 feet tall and 278 feet wide and is the second largest natural bridge in the world. There are daily tours to the bridge from Paige, 2 hours away by boat, but from the time we got there to when we left, we had it all to ourselves .
Due to the sacred nature of the site, there are signs asking people not to walk underneath the bridge, so after we spent the rest of the evening listening to the frogs and the desert.
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