San Rafael River (Second Try)
With the San Rafael flodding all last week, we figured Saturday was going to be a good day to float the river. When we arrived at Fuller’s Bottom it was packed with a bunch of people. We had a 12 foot fishing boat instead of our crappy rafts from Wal-Mart. When we found a parking spot we unloaded our boat to the river and found some jerk parked in the middle of the road and he had already set off down the river. We walked around the van and set off down the river.
I thought it was going to be an easy trip but there were a lot of turns, which meant we had to do a lot of paddling. Our boat might have been too big because the turns would just suck us into the wall. After a while we figured it out and were paddling like the we knew what we were doing.
There were many obstacles to dodge in the river. Soon we arrived at our first stop. We got out and looked at some petroglyphs.
After looking at the petroglyphs, we looked down river and saw a mean looking obstacle. A log had caused a small pour off.
While attempting to get in the boat, the boat moved and I slipped. I fell into the river and completely submerged my camera. The only camera of the bunch no longer worked. I took the batteries out and left it alone.
After getting back into the boat we went for the log jam and went down backwards. In some spots the water was shallow and we hit bottom a couple of times. We got into Virgin Spring Wash and talked with another group for a while and they left. We set up camp and went into the canyon to look at the writings and the spring. I left my camera in the sun to dry out. After the sun went behind the rocks, I tried my camera and it wouldn’t turn on.
Day 2
In the morning there were snake tracks all over camp and we just slept on a tarp in our bags. It was scary seeing all the snake trails and hoped none climbed into a bag. I tried my camera one more time and nothing. We set off down stream. A lot of paddling later we stopped in Cane Wash. Cane Wash has some writings and petrified logs up canyon. It was an interesting canyon, I need to go and explore more of it. We set off again, we passed by the Johansen Coral. Bam, we hit a rock hard and cracked the boat. While two paddle the third man bailed water out. Finally we reached the end and made it to the truck. It was quite an adventure, some scares and a lot of fun.
June 24, 2008 at 7:14 am
Great write up, Sounds like quite the adventure. Sucks to hear about the camera. You have any ideas for your next one?
June 24, 2008 at 9:37 am
Nice report. Do you happen to have a map of the part of the river you explored? I’d like to do a trip like this someday. My in-laws have a nice commercial river raft and I think it would be fun.
June 24, 2008 at 6:00 pm
@Tyler, I used Kelsey’s San Rafael Book. I can send you a picture of the map and a google kmz.
@Summit, I am not to sure which camera to buy. I liked my S3, so maybe the S5 or a Canon SX100. Maybe I will buy a Nikon, I am not sure. I will use my economic stimulus check to buy my new camera.
June 26, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Now that there are two geocaches down along the river (yours and petchem’s), I’ve definitely got to try to get down there. This might sound like a bad idea, but I’m seriously considering hiking down from the Wedge overlook to get to both caches. I just don’t have the time and energy to devote to a rafting trip now, but I’m a major FTF-hound.
That’s too bad about cracking the boat and especially ruining your camera. Sounds like it was an expensive trip, but hopefully it was a lot of fun.
June 27, 2008 at 10:56 pm
I don’t know if you could climb down from the overlook without ropes. But then again I have seen bighorn on the side so there has to be a trail somewhere. Just be careful if you plan on climbing down.
I am going this Saturday to check out the Canon SX100 at Wal-Mart. I have read some reviews and it sounds a lot like my S3, just smaller and only 10x zoom instead of 12x. I don’t like that it has no viewfinder but it is $150 cheaper than the S5.
I am upset about losing my camera, I only had it for 1 year.