9 June 2011 Getting Ready for the Arctic, Part 2

Journal

The San Juan River is in my blood. If you've been following Paula Dell's journals from Antarctica, you already know about the ice fish that have no hemoglobin in their blood. Well, sometimes I think that if you were able to analyze my blood, you'd find one part San Juan! While I've floated down many rivers, the San Juan is the all-time best. It's got beautiful canyons, incredible archaeology, and is incredibly 'user-friendly', with only a few rapids--none of them death-defying. I'm here rafting for 3 days with a group of 8 friends. We met near the town of Bluff, Utah to launch our boats and set off down the river. We'll take out tomorrow at Mexican Hat, Utah, 28 miles downstream. This is day 2 of our trip. So far we've had incredible sunshine, hot temperatures, and plenty of water on which to float.

river view — The San Juan River flowing far below us

After our long and cold spring it is finally summer. The rivers are running high all over the west and the San Juan is no exception. While it has its start in the Colorado Mountains near Wolf Creek Pass, it has a few obstacles along its way before it reaches us. For those melting snowflakes to reach us, they have to get past Navajo Reservoir, around 100 miles upstream from us. Luckily, the Bureau of Reclamation has chosen this week to increase their daily release from 500 cfs (cubic feet per second) to a whopping 3500 cfs! The Animas River, with its origins in the mountains around Durango, Colorado, joins the San Juan below the reservoir, and is adding perhaps another 4000 to 5000 cfs to the flow. So we are floating on almost 9,000 cfs of water. Not only that, the San Juan is one of the fastest flowing rivers in the southwest--so we are moving along at 6 to 8 mph. Lucky us!

With all this water, we've had plenty of time for some hiking. We've visited some lovely ruins--remnants of the Anasazi (more properly called the Hisatsanim--those who came before) who lived here 1500 to 800 years ago.