Notes on the San Raphael Swell

All photos by a author. Authors note: This post is dedicated to a DJs during Moab Community Radio, KZMU, 90.1.

Tim Pattersons notes upon a single arena out of Boulder.

Boulder, Colorado. 6 pm.

All of a sudden Dave as well as you didnt have jobs anymore, so you went to Utah.

Driving south in a storm, past a University of Colorado, past people held in a rain, typing upon their smart-phones. In Golden you got lattes during a Starbucks drive-through.

On my lap: Utah Gazetteer, National Geographic map of a San Rafael Swell, iPhone, new Nikon camera, USAA MasterCard as well as a 3rd Edition of Hiking as well as Exploring a San Raphael Swell by Michael Kelsey.

Green River, Utah. 10 am.

We buy Crenshaw as well as Honeydew melons from a roadside melon stand. The melons cost $3.85 any as well as a melon woman tells me to treat them similar to babies.

Driving west you pass a Robbers Roost Motel, a Green River Bible Church, Rays Tavern as well as upon a edge of locale a scruffy billboard advertising COLONOSCOPY.

Trailhead, Johansens Corral. Noon.

Five minutes after parking a Emery County Sheriff pulls up how a heck did he find us out here?

Sheriff Jorgensen gives us a tourism leaflet with a hopeful title: San Raphael Country Were Closer Than You Think!

The leaflet is a tiny sun-faded from sitting in his car for so long. He asks where were going as well as when well be during a back of Virgin Spring Canyon, a couple of days. He tells us he knows that nation a tiny bit from a float outing final year. He seems to wish to chat, yet drives divided as well as leaves us alone.

Silence of a vast desert. Wind upon scoured mill faces. Juniper trees. Tamarisk as well as cottonwood along a river.

Turns out Dave forgot his sleeping bag.

I cruise about a chapter i! n Dharma Bums when Kerouac goes hiking with Gary Snyder in a Sierras as well as their friend forgets his sleeping bag.

Heres what Ed Abbey had to say about Kerouac:

Jack Kerouac was similar to a sick refrigerator, worked as well hard during gripping cold as well as died upon his mamas lap from ethanol as well as infantilism.

We leave a iPhones in a truck, as well as then, walking, fun about a satellite phone that would concede Facebook status updates from anywhere upon earth.

Social mediathats where a money is. Some of us have reputations to maintain.

Near Cane Wash. 2 pm.

Found a nice place to lay as well as write fire-pit, mill bench, perspective of ravine walls, shaded in a crevice, cool. How prolonged did someone stay here?

Light is coming in just right upon a white sandstone as well as Dave is using during a back of to a lorry to get his camera as well as tripod 5 miles round-trip so you have time to take off my Keens as well as explore.

Just laid out a yoga pad as well as review some of Michael Kelseys guidebook, that turns out to be excellent. Michael Kelsey has perspective as well as knows a San Raphael Swell really well from personal experience. He has trafficked to 214 countries, republics, islands or island groups as well as used iodine or whiten to freshen his water reduction than 10 times.

I puncture in to a beef jerky as well as open a single can of sardines, afterwards discover a single of my chopsticks is broken, so you use a cottonwood twig to eat a sardines.

The next day. Virgin Spring? Noon.

In a morning you walk upriver upon a cattle trail. you reason my thermos of coffee tall while you bushwhack by riverside brush.

There is no route during a mouth of what you cruise is Virgin Spring Canyon.

Scrambling up canyon. Uncertain. Water? San Rafael stream wa! ter tast ed salty final night dont wish to drink that again.

Nothing for a while just dry streambed. Then mud. Then oily seeps.

Then a open during a finish of a ravine a tiny pool, murky as well as filled with bugs. Water drips in skinny streams from moss upon a ravine wall. We delicately pick up this water in a Nalgenes as well as eat lunch sausages, sun-dried tomatoes, almonds. It takes about thirty minutes to fill a single Nalgene.

Now Ive scrambled on tip of a open as well as am aroused up here upon a ledges, clever to scratch silt from a bottom of my shoes.

Silence. Huge mill walls, not a clouded cover in a blue blue blue sky.

Wonder how Ill get down. Watch an eagle soar on tip of a ravine rim. Think about Ed Abbey.

The only sounds have been a scratch of my pencil as well as a trickle of water flowing in to a Nalgene 200 yards away.

Virgin Spring? Evening.

Dave helped me get down.

I take a passage of rum to settle my nerves, rest by a open as well as review dual reduced stories in The New Yorker. One story is about genocide by social anxiety; a other, by Jonathan Safran-Foer, is a story of a lifelong marriage in about 1,000 words.

When it gets as well cold during a open you stand up a side-wash to a sunshine, review an additional story about a midlife crisis in a suburbs of Houston, watch a large gray squirrel that looks similar to a marmot as well as separate a couple of Syrian coins for someone to find someday.

Dave goes tall up to a amphitheater wall, all a way to a white Navajo stone.

No a single up there in how long?

I leave a fleece, T-shirt as well as repository during a back of as well as walk true up a slickrock in shorts as well as sandals, camera in a! single pocket, notepad in a other.

Mounds of cryptobiotic soil, disfigured aged pines. Hot in a sun, cold in a shade.

I walk to a really tip of a overhang on tip of a open as well as cruise a cannonball; silt would pillow my fall.

From a overhang you can reach out as well as touch a shimmering leaves nearby a tip of a large cottonwood tree thats rooted by a spring.

Camp. Evening.

We set up a large fire as well as Dave digs a pit in a sand, buries a coals as well as sleeps upon top. The silt gets as well hot in a center of a night, though, as well as he doesnt get most sleep.

Morning.

We hike out in midday heat, dry lips cracking. Dave tells me a Razorbacks will have a run during a inhabitant championship this year. We swim in a cold river, as well as eat an entire Crenshaw melon, about 10 large slices any a most appropriate melon Ive ever had.