Sea Kayaking Lake Powell

Note the snow covered peaks in the background

Three Colorado guys, Randy, Roger, and I, decided to go sea kayaking on Lake Powell.   Randy has vast experience sea kayaking in Alaska.  I am a beginner-intermediate sea kayaker.  Roger is a good boater, but new to sea kayaking.  For Roger and I, it was our first time camping out of a sea kayak.

Randy

Roger

Richard

We started out from Hall’s crossing on Sunday morning, April 14th.  The sun was out, but it was somewhat windy.  It was a five mile paddle in the main channel, open to wind and waves, until we turned into Moqui Canyon, where we paddled a couple more miles.   We did not find a campsite until we reached the end of the still water, where a trickle came in from a stream.  The lake level was about 3600 ft, about 100 feet below the full line, so we could not paddle to the end of the canyons.   We hiked up the canyon, looking for ruins.   We saw some rock walls under an overhang, but too far away to get a good photo.

Roger taking a break on the water

Monday we paddled to Forgotten Canyon, where we also paddled as far as we could, a total of about ten miles.  I stepped out of my boat and into boot-sucking muck.  My companions learned from my mistake and found a better place to get out.  We took a one mile hike to Defiance Ruin and petroglyphs.  The ruin has been restored, including the kiva, which you can see in the foreground.   

Petroglyphs at Defiance Ruin

A typical campsite

We were all tired at this point.  Our schedule usually had us up about 7 AM, paddling at about 9 AM, and then going to bed around 7 PM.  We rose with the sun, and hit the sack about sunset.    
We generally paddled as far as we could, to the end of the lake part of the canyon, and set up camp on a sand bar.   There were not a lot of good campsites.

As you can see from the photos, in many places there were unbroken walls, hundreds of feet high, with no place to get out of the water to rest or in case of problems.

Tuesday we found a sizable tailwind and following waves in the main channel.  You might think that a tailwind is a good thing, but the conditions forced most of us to paddle and steer hard to avoid getting sideways to the waves.  Roger, without a rudder, especially struggled to keep his boat aimed in the right direction.   We had originally intended to go further, to Cedar Canyon, but agreed that conditions were somewhat scary and dangerous.  We ducked out of the main channel at the first opportunity, Knowles canyon.  We paddled to the end of the canyon, and came back out to the main channel, where we found that conditions were worse, not better.   We camped near the mouth of Knowles canyon, going to the end of the first north side small canyon.

At this point, with the weather getting worse, our enthusiasm for getting further away from our car was very limited.  We had visions of being pinned down for a day of two of bad weather.   We agreed to start working our way back to the car, realizing that this might shorten the trip from the six to seven days that we had planned.

On Wednesday, at 6 AM, it was raining and 38 F.  We went back to bed.  We got on the water about 9:30, with the sky spitting rain and snow.   The sun came out, the conditions were blessedly moderate, and we took a break outside Forgotten Canyon.   We explored Hansen Canyon, where we camped conveniently near the mouth.  We had paddled about 7 miles.

Looking down on Hansen Canyon

The topography on this side of the canyon was not just sheer canyon walls, so we were able to take a hike.   This was our only real opportunity to get to where we could look down at the lake and cliffs.   We turned around when we encountered rain and sleet.

Thursday, we woke up to ice in our cooking pans, and a thermometer that read freezing.  We waited for the sun to reach our camp, and then packed up and headed out to Hall’s Crossing.   The sun was out most of the day, and we stopped for a couple of breaks.  We got a little confused about where the marina was located, and went out of our way, but found it in the end, paddling a total of about 9 miles.   We were happy to be back to our cars.  The photo below shows the gear that we got into our kayaks.

Randy headed south to Tucson, while Roger and I headed home to Colorado.  The wind in the afternoon was cold and biting, so Roger and I agreed on a motel in Moab rather than another night of cold camping.

Overall, it was a good trip, but perhaps April is too early to go paddling.  ;-)