(Non-skiing) Kayaking Canyonlands, Oct. 1-8, 2011

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So, why didn't I get to ski this week's Wasatch snow? Because I just got back from 8 days paddling a kayak down 101 miles of the Green River into the Colorado River through Labyrinth Canyon and Stillwater Canyon in Canyonlands National Park. There's lots more to come but in the meantime here's a teaser photo:

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Nice stuff. So which cameras died and which one lived? What kind of solar charger were you taking along? You gotta satisfy us gear heads :-D

I once did 9 days of canoe and portaging in Algonquin back east. But never more than a day on a river. Sounds like the curent -mostly - helped.
 
Dead are a new Sony Bloggie HD video camera and my old Canon S3 IS. The Canon was aging rapidly and due for replacement anyway. At the moment the Bloggie still won't turn on and the Canon shows signs of power when batteries are inserted but remains unresponsive.

The solar charger that is still crippled is a Brunton Restore. There's still moisture beneath the solar panels so I remain guardedly optimistic that it may snap to life once dried completely. On the other hand, I had a Brunton Solaris 4 USB laid out on the aft deck connected to a Brunton Inspire battery pack in the dry hold (I was product testing both) and that setup appears to have suffered no ill effects. The Solaris is largely sealed except for a USB port on the back but I had pre-emptively duct-taped that tightly before leaving on the trip.

The current was indeed a life saver. I've done multi-day paddling trips of 12-14 miles per day on a lake and despite the headwinds on this trip my scrawny upper body wasn't tired or sore at all on this trip while I was dead beat tired on those lake trips. Now, the sciatic hip pain from sitting in a kayak for days on end, that's another story...I'm getting old... :?
 
jamesdeluxe":3a8iubtr said:
Gotta say that I had never heard of the poop tube, but it makes sense. Big buzzkill though.
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Big wall rock climbers in Yosemite and elsewhere have been using them for decades when it became no longer acceptable to toss you paper bag into the abyss. Because of the grossness of cleaning them out, modern wall climbers have moved on to WAG bags or, on the steeper routes where the haul bag is hanging free much of the time, a small pail or bucket hung under the haul bag with some kitty litter in it.

http://www.davidlnelson.md/ElCapitan/DefinitionPoopTube.htm

http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=65324

http://www.mtntools.com/cat/bigwall/haulbags/mt_bigwallcan.htm

Here's a large big wall encampment:

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You've got to be $hiting me. If I have to poop in a tube, count me out.

Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using Tapatalk
 
The way it's done on a wall is to spread some newspaper on a ledge, do your business, carefully fold/wrap/whatever, place in tube. Poop directly into a tube??? NO ONE has aim that good! Remember, it is a team-shared device. Maybe, if you're using 6" I.D. pvc pipe. Now a kitty litter bucket otoh....

Really, WAG bags are the way to go.
 
You are required to carry WAG bags (paper target, kitty litter, 2 paper bags and a plastic bag to enclose) on Mt. Shasta. Thankfully I did not need to use it on a short trip. 2 of our group were not so lucky. One had to use it at 12,500 feet on the climb and another in the middle of Saturday night in 30MPH wind.
 
Casualty update:

The Brunton Restore lives. The Canon S3 IS and Sony Bloggie remain on life support.
 
At any rate, an impressive trip and perhaps even more impressive detailed write-up in such a short time afterwards. =D> Tough luck with the gear. I'm prone to such screwups and thus was paranoid during the slot canyon hike, putting phones and cameras in a dry bag each time I had to set foot in a water pothole. If you're on the water in a kayak and want any pictures you have to have a camera at hand, so it's understandable how it was vulnerable. On the whitewater trips they provide big dry bags but they are extremely well secured so you can forget about getting into them except at overnight campsites.
 
Tony Crocker":2tk8fybv said:
At any rate, an impressive trip and perhaps even more impressive detailed write-up in such a short time afterwards. =D>
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I wanted to keep a journal while on the river but didn't. So if I wanted to create one when I got home I had to do it immediately before memories fade even a little.

Marc_C":2tk8fybv said:
There are reasonably priced cameras that can handle submersion to 10 meters.
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I actually had three cameras with me, the aforementioned two casualties and a point-and-shoot dive camera that's actually designed to be used underwater. The latter was in a pocket on my PFD for quick and easy access on the water, and that's what allowed me to keep shooting photos even after the mishap on the morning of Day Four.

The other two were in a supposedly dry bag called a deck bag that fits on my fore deck attached via the boat's deck rigging for easy access to stuff that you need while on the water:

RAFBL.jpg


Either I didn't have the zipper completely closed and folded over properly (it uses a dry zip for closure rather than a roll-top), or it failed. I haven't yet determined which. In any event the proximate cause was my stupidity in mis-reading the current.

Speaking of river muck, here's a classic shot of Telejon that didn't make the article:

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Looking at the photo of Jon mired up to his knees, a house guest last night asked:
What about using something like a small snowshoe?
 
Did the White Rim by mountain bike two weeks ago and witnessed all the boating that was going on down on the green river. Looks like a great trip by water. Picked out a bunch of people crossing the plateau below Turks Head on the way to the graineries. Photos and description bring back great memories (although we had temps in the 80's not a cloud in the sky with light breeze and no rain the entire time).
 
ricks":36s2ozyi said:
Did the White Rim by mountain bike two weeks ago...
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How's the condition of the road? In particular the usual problematic areas: Murphy's Hogback and the section that was washed out between Taylor Canyon and Fort Bottom?
 
Murphy's was in pretty good shape. There was a good bit of water that appeared to be a lake instead of the Green River on the bottoms. The bugs weren't as bad as we had anticipated. The sand in the road through some of that area was pretty bad though. There were a few sections of longer than 1/2 mile bottomless sand. There was only one place that was just a little wet and muddy and it was only about 20 yards long.
 
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