Unique river hazards
rdale
Just went out last week and did the deed, bought a new kevlar Wenonah Spirit 17' canoe. Dang, sure is pretty;
maybe that's a hazard, it's so nice I don't want to take it out. I'll just hang it up over the fireplace
and...
No, just kidding. I'm sure it'll have scratches before the summer is through, or even the month. Even the
week, if I can find where to put a boat in a Mirror Lake on Sunday.
Anyway, the thread on unique river hazards made me think of the time some friends and I tried to paddle the
Jordan River from its source in Utah Lake to the first major obstacle in the Jordan River Narrows in the south
end of the Salt Lake valley. I know the Jordan used to be a beautiful little stream, tree lined, home to
birds and fish and all sorts of nice clean critters. I know 'cause I'm an archivist and see photographs and
read accounts of what it used to be like. Well now its source, Utah Lake, is full of heavy metals from fifty
years of steel production and 100 years of agricultural chemicals and 150 years of sewage from Ovum, I mean
Orem, and Provo, Utah. The river as it goes through the Salt Lake valley has been a dumping ground for a
century and a half, and now instead of trees it has bridge abutments and old rebar, instead of nice fish it
has big greasy mutated carp that feed on offal from the meat packing plant, dead animals that people throw in
it, and the occasional poor transient who drinks too much thunderbird, falls in the river and dies. Ah, parts
of it are still pretty, but just when you think it's pretty nice you come around a corner and face a rapid
made entirely of shopping carts that hooligans have thrown in the river, or a bunch of kids giving you gang
signs and holding cans of spray paint. Just glad it wasn't guns.
So anyway, we thought the upper end down from Utah Lake might be nicer. We put in right at the outlet,
holding our noses from the agri-chemical smell, and proceeded downstream. It actually wasn't too bad the
first few miles, curving around Point of the Mountain for those of you that might recognize that, wandering
through farmland with geese and ducks. Then as we got close to the Nat.Guard base, Camp Williams, I started
hearing this "roooaaarrrr! rattle! SPLASH! roooaaarrrr! rattle! SPLASH. I came around the bend and there
was a big power shovel, dredging the channel. Fine but the channel is only about 20 feet wide, not big enough
for two canoes end to end. And the guy running the dredge is obviously on autopilot; he's eating a sandwich
and reading a paperback and not even watching the dredge bucket, and with the roar he couldn't hear me even if
I was screaming my death throes. I was in this kayak I'd just bought and knew was a mistake, it was too tight
and kind of tippy and I got rid of it as soon as possible (although I swear that post today about an old
fiberglass kayak, orange on top with a white hull, sounds just like it!). So I drifted up, timing the bucket
drop; I guess I could have gotten out and walked around him but it's National Guard land and they get sort of
sticky about civilians out there and the banks were steep and I was afraid I'd fall over and well, I just
didn't think of it. So I timed the bucket and when I thought I had it I drifted right up, just as he brought
up a big bucket of dripping ooze (gawd knows what's in that ooze, yecch!) and then paddled like holy hell
through the roiling water, mud and ooze dropping from the jaws of the bucket onto my head; I was about ten
feet past when I heard the "rooooaaaarrr! rattle! SPALSH!" and was almost pooped by a big brown wave.
Well that was exciting, but our hazards weren't all passed yet. I caught up with the guys in the canoe,
relieved to note they weren't under a load of river ooze, and we went on. We had just driven down a road and
left a car for the shuttle, noting but not thinking of the house there. Well in the fullness of time, as we
say in Utah, we got to the takeout. At this point, had we gone on, it was either go over or around an old
diversion dam and pipes and go on; take out on the right (east) and walk about a mile through fields, over
double railroad tracks, to a road behind the state prison; take out on the left and walk about 300 yards over
two fences and past the polygamists compound, or take out where we'd parked the truck. As William Manly said,
floating down the Green in 1849, "we almost wondered that everyone was so blind as not to see it as we
did...we commenced to move down the river with ease and comfort." So we get to the bank and get out, stretch
and congratulate ourselves on avoiding the dredge, and are getting the boats ready to load, when up walks a
guy with a big shotgun under his arm and an even bigger slavering, fiberglass and neoprene eating dog
straining at a leash, looking at each of us in turn as if wondering which was dejustif, which was the main
course, and which was the apretif. "You boys know this is private land?" No, sir, we didn't notice any
signs. "Well there are plenty of signs and I don't like trespassers!" As his voice rose so did the
shotgun barrel and the dogs hackles, and I was eying how far I'd have to jump to get back into the river and
whether I was faster than the other guys I was with; as they say you don't have to outrun the dog, you just
have to outrun your companions. We all adopted our best Homer Simpson "please don't hurt us" voices and all
but groveled, I'm not ashamed to say, and he finally let up and told us a tale of assholes shooting his stock
and his dogs and holes in all his signs and on and on, and then let us go with a warning not to come back.
And as inviting as that stretch looks now, I have to say I never have gone back.
And that's no shit,
Roy Webb
Mike Zulauf
In article <31DD7A...@library.utah.edu>, rdale <rw...@library.utah.edu>
wrote:
> And that's no shit,
>
> Roy Webb
Great story!! I've often thought paddling the Jordan would be fun; now I
know it is. I'll have to try it soon. . .
Mike
--
Mike Zulauf
mazu...@atmos.met.utah.edu