72 hours with no human contact

We woke to brilliant blue skies and no signs of rain, but were still a bit cautious of entering a large slot canyon after a recent rain storm. Thus, we spent our first full day exploring the area and preparing for our descent into the Muddy Chute. We spent the morning doing recon on the river, deciding how far we could ride bikes and choosing footware for the many river crossing that lay ahead. I might actually be getting better on my mountain bike, Curt bamboozled me into riding up and down a river draw, and then later around this huge butte. All and all, I succeeded and only used a few bad words, and was left with minimal bruising.
With beautiful weather, we able to take full advantage of all that car camping allows. We camped under a lone tree on the sun baked red clay.
The solar shower heated river water that we filtered, at the base of the tree is our latest invention, “Curt’s electrical system”, a marine battery lights our camp at night, powers our sound system, recharges the ipod and of course makes it possible for us to listen to baseball games on satellite radio. Now, if we could just find a plug in coffee pot that uses less than 400 watts.

Curt was pretty excited to find all the old mining gear and was quite sure that he and Paul could find a use for this old engine, if he could just figure out a way to get it back to Seattle.
Night two on the Muddy River taught us another important desert canyon weather lesson . . . the wind doesn’t die down after dusk, it picks up, then dies down about two hours later. We struggled to cook and eat during the wind, only to see it disappear once the dishes were clean.

Day 3 in the Swell was the time for us the tackle the Muddy Chute. The actual Chute started about 4 miles downstream from our camp. After a slow start, we managed to pick up a trail, crossed the river several times until the river itself became the trail as the canyon walls closed to the river’s edge. We were actually well prepared for river walking, but not so much for river swimming in the shaded canyon. Eventually, the pools got so deep we could no longer touch the bottom with our ski poles. Who needs those fancy trekking poles when you got a closet full of ski poles? We debated swimming across the first big pool, but then reminded ourselves of the water temp and the air temp in the canyon and utter isolation we felt. We hadn’t see a soul since leaving Goblin, and we took the safe route and chose not to put ourselves in danger in a situation where rescue was not even a remote possibility. All the Chute pics are on my camera, and of course, I left the cable to upload them in Seattle.

On our final night, we built a big fire, waited out the wind and cooked an enjoyable meal under clear calm skies.
The San Rafael Swell was great, but I’m ready for a warm-up. Lake Powell is only about 100 miles away. Let’s see here, drop down about 3000 feet, that should add about 15 degrees to the temps. I can’t imagine the weather being a problem down there. We re-supplied our water at Goblin Valley and food in Hanksville, and finally saw another human after 3 days in the bush.