Day 6: July 11 Tuesday — Sand Dune Overlook to Keg Spring Canyon

Highlights: Walk on sand dune; Chaffin Ranch; erupting geyser; cattle trail to Bull Bottom; Entrada Gap make-your-own trail; tire punctured by stick; jasper rock collection; tire blown by chert; camp in trough overlooking Green River; burning bush; throw massive boulders off cliff; canoers don’t have beer.

Before breakfast, while the sand dune was still in the shade, Chris took a walk partially up the dune, directly on top of its center ridge. We could easily see his footprints from a half mile away. After breakfast, Morrie, Ed and Mark did the same. We dropped our shoes at the base and followed Chris’s tracks up the ridge. Even though the sun was now lighting the sand, it was comfortably cool to the feet. We had to walk exactly on the ridge because on either side was a precipitous hundred-foot slope. The sand displaced by our feet flowed down the sides of the slope in waves that looked like water, proving that a solid can behave as a liquid if it is broken up into little balls. I remarked that it would be fun sliding down the side of the ridge, but that I wanted to go to the top first before trying it because getting back up might be impossible.

The sand was not as lifeless as it looked from a distance. There were a handful of small plants and numerous tracks of lizards, insects, and small animals. There were also some tracks which looked like very large footprints, but were probably the path left by a jumping rabbit. Three quarters of the way up Ed stopped while Mark and Morrie continued on, to the very top where the dune ended at a rock against the side of the hill about a hundred feet below the summit, named Chaffin Azimuth on the topo. The walk up to here was not very tough, and Ed eventually followed us to the top of the dune.

The walk down the dune was, of course, much quicker. At the spot with the steepest and longest sides I decided to slide down on my feet, as if I was doing a glissade down a snowfield. I was concerned that I would lose control, tumbling head over heals and dashing myself against the rocks below. But as I stepped off the ridge, I just sank six inches and stood there. I took another step and the same thing happened. Then I tried running, but nothing. No matter how hard I tried, I was not going to get any glide, because I kept sinking into the sand instead. The only alternative would have been to slide on my ass, but I did not relish a sand enema, and even that might not have worked. I finally reached the bottom, only by walking and running down the hill, and from there I walked to the base of the ridge where I met Ed and Mark. Next time I will try it on some kind of sled, like a Hefty bag.

Returning from the morning’s play on the dunes, we packed the jeeps and drove due south, down the other side of the pass, three miles across nice open country, toward Chaffin Ranch. Unlike Ruby Ranch which was thriving, this one was abandoned and nearly deteriorated, with broken buildings, rusted farming equipment and vehicle parts strewn about. The ranch is located next to the San Rafael River about a mile before its confluence with the Green River, The San Rafael River is the only full-time river in the San Rafael Desert. (Besides the Colorado and Green rivers, the Dirty Devil River is the only other full-time river in Canyon Country, defining the southwest border of the San Rafael Desert.) In fact, the San Rafael River might not be full-time, since it is just a little stream, but it has been wet all the times I have seen it.

In the vicinity of the ranch near the San Rafael River we found another cold water geyser—a smaller, unnamed relative of the Crystal Geyser with the same beautiful multicolored mineralized pools, rimstone dams and flowstone. This area, too, was very wet, indicating frequent eruptions. The geyser itself was simply a three-inch wide drill hole in the ground, not a pipe, and it was bubbling mildly but not overflowing. As we stood around taking pictures the bubbling began to increase, and within seconds it rose into a little fountain. Slowly and continuously the force increased to height of about twenty feet, raining down cold water in every square inch of the mineralized area. None of us had seen anything like this before (the geysers in Yellowstone, for example, are boiling hot). The water had a terrible metallic taste and maybe was not even swimmable, but it felt cool and comfortable to the touch and Ed did the macho thing of running through its rain. Because the gusher was angled in one direction it was possible to get close and put your hand right over the opening without getting wet. We also tried to make it shoot Mark’s hat up in the air—it had enough pressure, but the hat kept falling out of the flow). In ten minutes, after it subsided enough so that we weren’t scared of it anymore, we tried to stop it with our hands and have it eject rocks that we dropped in the hole.

After the geyser spit out its last gasp and blew nothing but air, we drove back toward the Green River Road on the Chaffin Ranch road to continue our slow progress south. Within the next mile the guys in Great White and Harpoon well behind us radioed that they saw an antelope.

Our next destination was the Bull Bottom Trail, a spur off the Green River Road that leads to a spot along the river where the surrounding land slowly rises from the river to form the beginnings of Labyrinth Canyon. A side trail off the spur ends at an overlook of Bull Bottom, at the edge of a 120' cliff. The bottom is a level pasture of grass and shrubs between the cliff and the river. This cliff was unclimbable, except for an old cattle trail dug into the cliff that switchbacked its way down to the pasture. The trail was poorly reinforced and collapsing. It was partially lined on the downhill side with fence wire, and the gate at the top, as seems to be the practice out here, was made of a bedspring. The trail was so narrow, steep and rough that we had a hard time believing anyone could have gotten cows to walk it, but maybe it was once in much better condition. The purpose for the trail, apparently, was to drive cattle to good grazing and water at the river level, and then get them back up to higher ground where there was access to civilization.

Today was again as hot as the other days, so in the hopes of getting a swim we took the little walk down the decrepit trail to the bottom. We found many cattle paths leading to the river. The bank along the river had the usual cottonwoods and tamarisks, with foliage so dense that it was nearly impenetrable. The edge, where we could get to it, was a five foot mud cliff dropping into a dangerous current. We checked out a number of points along this bottom looking for more reasonable river access, but could not find any. We were on a straight stretch of river that didn’t look like it would get better nearby. So we abandoned our attempt to swim and returned back up toward the sun, which seemed to be particularly blazing after our evaporated swimming opportunity.

On returning to the jeeps, we had the option of driving down the remainder of the Bull Bottom Trail to its end where it meets the river for another swimming opportunity, but we might have been disappointed again. Instead, I decided to forego swimming and stay on high ground on the Entrada Gap Trail, which Bickers indicated would be fun and challenging. This trail traverses a section of slickrock several miles long between the Entrada Prominence and the river canyon. The alleged trail, it turned out, was effectively nonexistent. On rare occasions, we could make out faint signs in the vegetation that vehicles had once passed through: two parallel tracks of ground where shrubs weren’t growing, but such evidence was scattered. There were no tread marks at all in the sand and of course none on the slickrock over which most of the trail passed. Only by carefully studying the topo map was I able to tell whether we should drive on a higher, red layer of sandstone or one of several lower white layers. Generally, once you pick a layer you’re stuck on it for a while, because the transitions between layers tend to be overhung ledges, but here and there it was possible to go down a part of a wash or find some smooth sandstone that spanned several layers. When free navigating in such terrain it is also important to sense the lay of the drainages and washes, because a wash always gets deeper and more difficult to cross the further downstream you go. But if you stay too high, you risk ending up on exposed ledges that come to dead ends. The trick is to maximize your options by staying as low as practical but high enough to skirt the heads of little canyons.

A little after we started on this trail Terry noticed a stick poking into the sidewall of Pequod’s right front tire. Pulling the stick out may have been a mistake, as air started hissing. It was just a normal three-inch long stick, but extremely hard and sharp, probably from a shrub paying us back for the injuries we caused it on our way into this trail. This episode shatters my myth that a stick couldn’t puncture a tire. Granted, it was the sidewall of a radial that is not particularly thick, but these are beefy truck tires and not wimpy all seasons. While radial tires with their flexible sidewalls are good for hugging the rock and make great traction, I guess a bias-ply tire would have a sidewall more resistant to damage. We decided that, despite the leak, the tire would hold air for a long time, so we postponed fixing it here.

As we were about to drive off we noticed strange rocks littering the ground, distinctly different from the sand and slickrock. These were chunks of deep red jasper and quartz, with occasional striped agate, and they were lying on the surface over a large area, not embedded in the ground, as if they rained from the sky. I knew that the origin of such deposits is usually higher up on a hill where the rocks are embedded in a layer of sand, washed down during storms. The rocks were mostly cracked and very sharp and hard—easily able to slash a tire if we hit one at the right angle. Indians in this region used exactly these types of rocks for arrowheads. We spent about a half hour looking at the millions of rocks, everyone taking several favorites as souvenirs.

After a fun, slow drive around Entrada Gap, we came to what I thought was the Trin Alcove Trail, and I decided to have lunch at the lookout over the Green River’s Trin-Alcove Bend. We turned left, but the trail soon petered out. Since we were now so used to it, we again drove cross-country, navigating by instinct. Maybe this wasn’t the Trin Alcove Trail after all. Reasonably lost, I needed to go up a hill to get our bearings with respect to the canyons. I found a good hill a couple hundred feet high that would have been easy driving, except that the ground was covered with large chert boulders that looked very scary to our tires. I decided to pretend they weren’t there and drove Pequod to the top, and the others followed.

The view from the top did not tell me where we were precisely, but it was obvious that there would be an impressive view of Labyrinth Canyon if we went down the other side of the hill to the rim below. The way down, though it was on very smooth slickrock, was ridiculously steep, and I would not have tried it except that we saw in the sand at the bottom two tire tracks departing from the base of the hill going toward the rim. I was a little bewildered that another jeep had the guts to descend here, and I certainly didn’t. But I found a slightly less steep pitch nearby and managed to get Pequod down without slipping. I would not have wanted to try anything steeper than this. At the bottom, we realized that the two tire tracks were actually ATV tracks much closer together than jeep tracks, so we radioed to the others not to follow us yet until we ascertained that there was a decent view and that it would be possible to get out of here.

The lip was the impressive overhang, 400′ above the river, that I was looking for, with distant views of the multiple tight loops of Labyrinth Canyon. We might have been near the Trin Alcove Bend of the river after all, but I didn’t have time to check this on the map. As soon as we got there we heard on the radio that Harpoon had a blowout and that we should come back. Disappointed, somewhat because of the blowout but mostly because of the lost opportunity to eat lunch on the lip, we easily retraced our path back up, where the others were already changing the tire. Here we discovered that Harpoon’s lug wrench was too big for its lug nuts, and the nuts that held the spare tire on the rear carrier were yet another size. The jack was also rusted and very hard to turn. No matter, as my toolbox had all sizes of wrenches and sockets known to man. It was clear that the tire was wrecked beyond repair, caused by the hazardous chert, so I felt personally responsible for this mishap. It was slightly disappointing that the spare looked more like a street tire with small treads than the large-lugged jeeping tires we had on other wheels. However I expected that the spare would do just fine—perhaps even better on slickrock than the old tire, since friction depends on how much rubber is contacting the rock, not so much on the size of the treads. The only issue is the ability of this spare tire to take the abuse and to work in soft sand.

While Mark was changing his tire we measured Pequod’s punctured tire pressure at only 12 lbs, so it was time to pump it up or change it. My little Sears compressor, which runs off the cigarette lighter, would take over a half hour to pump up one of these big jeep tires, and the compressor requires a ten- minute rest every ten minutes of operation or it will overheat. However since we only needed to add about 10 lbs of pressure we were able to do the job in about fifteen minutes of continuous operation. While it was comforting to know that we could repeat this pumping whenever we needed, we had to burn precious gasoline keeping the engine running to avoid draining the battery. I wondered whether it would just have made more sense to bring a hand or foot pump, with six people sharing the work, but I have no idea whether it would be practical to pump up a jeep tire by hand.

With two flats among us, some people felt that one remaining spare was too low a safety margin, and that maybe we should go back to town and fix them. But I countered that it would take two more flats to stop us as a group, and ten more flats before we couldn’t get one Jeep back to town. If we went back now and then didn’t get two more flats, then it would be a wasted day of driving.

Reason prevailed, and we pressed on with our perpetual quest for a shady picnic area. At high noon it takes a very tall canyon wall to the south or an overhang to offer appreciable shade. We found a small butte a little off the trail with just enough shade to cover us sitting in our chairs against the wall. The heat was intense but the wind was strong. Even at 110°, dry wind is better than no wind, as bare skin continues to cool by evaporation.

Instead of fancy cold cuts we decided on trail snacks and sardine sandwiches. Chris never had a sardine sandwich before, and would probably have puked at the thought back home, but he ate it and might even have enjoyed it today. Jeep trips always provide opportunities for major new life experiences, most of them related to food.

After lunch we returned to the “main highway” as we began to call it, the Green River Road, for a few miles to our next turnoff. Along this stretch some of us saw two small deer scampering up the slope. It’s interesting how we saw most of our large wildlife on the major roads, not the small jeep trails. We skirted the rim of a mile-wide circular depression called Saucer Basin. It’s only about 25 feet deep with very gentle sloping sides, but is unusual because there is no way for water to flow out of it, and most people not studying the map would not notice anything strange about it. The slope of the land allowed us to see it all, and right across it was a major dirt road that departs the Green River Road from here to obscure parts of the San Rafael Desert. Further down the main road is a smaller version, Little Saucer Basin.

Not having camped on a lip for two nights, I was determined to find one tonight. I wasn’t getting enough lip. (Sorry.) I spotted a point on the map that would likely do it for us, above the confluence of Keg Spring Canyon and the Green River. We drove to an intersection with the graded Loop Road which makes a loop of several miles off the Green River Road and then returns. This was a fast ride on a perfectly straight road in a prairie densely packed with shrubs. From the Loop Road we went onto the Tenmile Overlook Road for a short distance, and from there onto the West Keg Point Trail. Bickers hinted that it was possible to drive to the end of the point above the confluence, even though the dotted line on my topo map ended a couple of miles before. I expected the driving beyond the dotted line to involve more invent-your-own-trail experiences. We were both right. The going was slow but steady, the most difficult being the last few hundred yards to the point.

At the end of the point we could see the Green River in two directions and the huge, Keg Spring Canyon in a third, all 450′ below. The creek in Keg Spring Canyon was full of water and the bottom had dense vegetation that looked almost like a jungle. The white sandstone rim we were on was reasonably level and overhung everywhere, but what made this point unique was the perfect campsite right at the apex of the point: a 10' deep trench, about 30' wide, with a flat slickrock bottom and cool shady overhang on one side. This trench opened directly out into the canyon, and winds were fairly strong blowing out to it, so it was going to be important not to let small objects and clothing get loose.

With temperatures still over 100° we didn’t feel like getting to work right away, but instead we sat in the shade drinking beer and wine. However, remembering the lengthy coal-forming process the previous nights, we did build a little fire in the kitchen. Mark tried to stay cool here by walking around with a water bottle upside down on his head, slowly dribbling out.

While relaxing a group of canoers paused on the shore of the Green River far below. Lou yelled to them, “Do you have any beer?” They responded, simply, “No.” I think this was the first acknowledgment we ever received yelling at people in the bottom of the canyon.

Because of the numerous swimming opportunities we didn’t have showers for two days, so today was definitely a shower day. The sun showers were already warm just lying in the jeeps so they did not need any additional sun heating. It is a challenge to take an efficient shower in these high winds. The cycle of wetting, soaping and rinsing yourself has to be completed quickly, a small part of your body at a time, because the water or soap dries on your skin as fast as you can get it wet. Furthermore, the high winds are particularly chilling to wet skin. The feeling is actually good, but hard to take due to the contrast in temperature between your wet and dry parts. It reminded me of a cartoon I saw as a kid where the main character (I think it was Popeye) was training to be an astronaut and was repeatedly transferred between an ice box and an inferno.

After my shower I heard someone yell “Help, brush fire!” We all ran over and saw a large shrub near the kitchen engulfed in flames. With lightning speed Chris extinguished it immediately using a five-gallon jug of water that was luckily next to him. The shrub was not very near our fire, so we guessed the cause was one of the wine cartons that we were burning, blown over to the bush by the wind. Standing in bare feet, as I filmed Chris snuffing out the ashes, I stepped on a hot coal, yelling “shit” into the camera. Dodging this I stepped onto a second hot coal. Ed, standing next to me, got a hot coal stuck between his foot and his sandal. It was now clear that the small fire was out of control, with the wind scattering its coals across the ground. The fire was against a wall, but we had not ringed it with enough rocks, so as soon as the coals got small enough they would float away, setting fire to the incredibly dry vegetation around us. The speed with which the live bush flamed up amazed everyone—we all grew up in places where green vegetation does not burn so well.

This incident brought back memories of the Greenshit ’94 trip into Canyonlands National Park, where the ranger threatened us with a fine of $10,000 per acre if we started a brush fire. Fortunately the brush in most of the areas we were, including this overlook, was not dense enough for a single bush to start the neighboring one aflame unless the fire was already huge. However, I learned my lesson and will be particularly careful in windy conditions or areas of dense vegetation. While the half-burnt bush left a lousy scar at the campsite and we lost five gallons of precious water, neither Ed nor I got blisters from the foot burns.

In Green River Lou could not buy hamburger meat in the size of package he desired, so we had enough meat to make six hamburgers over a half pound apiece. Despite their monstrous size, they were good and we ate them all, together with tasty home fries and grilled onions.

After dinner, looking into the canyon in the other direction from where we saw the canoers two hours ago, we saw them again. Lou again asked them if they had any beer. Their response: “You already asked us.”

This campsite was an ideal launch site for rocks. It was possible for Terry and Chris to hit the water at the bottom of Keg Spring Canyon as well as the Green River. The echoes of the rocks crashing on the bottom were extraordinarily clear, with ominous reverberations as they started ancillary avalanches. We got mightily carried away here, heaving bigger and bigger rocks. Chris and Mark collaborated on a 150 pound boulder, and three or four of us, with our feet, managed to send a six footer off the side. With the campsite finally cleared of rubble, we realized that there was little ammunition for the next party. But from the looks of the trail we invented to get here, I doubt anyone will soon show up to miss it.

There were no bugs during most of the evening but they showed up later as the winds subsided, so we reluctantly set up our tents for indoor sleeping. We played with the laser pointer for a long time, doing “burning bush” tricks and trying to light the opposite wall of the canyon, while waiting for the Swedish Bikini Team. As usual, they stood us up so we went to bed.