Exploring Lower Glen Canyon: As Good As it Gets
Words and Photography By Nathan Hobbs
A note from the Glen Canyon Institute:
Over past few years, Glen Canyon Institute member Nathan Hobbs has embarked on multiple trips into the labyrinthine beauty of Glen Canyon. He shared the following account of these trips with GCI. As always, GCI encourages any and all members to share their photos and stories to help us document and spread awareness of the incredible landscape we are trying to protect. Stories like these provide hope for the recovery of our beloved canyons.
My river running career started in the fall of 2004 with a “diamond down” on the Colorado River. We put in at the typical takeout for the Grand Canyon and ran the much easier to acquire permitted section out to the reservoir. Over the course of several subsequent trips on “diamond down” (part of my education at Prescott College), I witnessed the emergence of Pearce Ferry rapid — a rapid resulting from the sedimentation caused by Lake Mead — which would become one of the most feared rapids in the Grand Canyon.
Returning to Pearce and seeing sediment walls seemingly rise out of the water honed my eye for our exploration upstream in Glen Canyon. Though I was prepared to look for signs of sediment movement, I wasn’t prepared for the magnitude. From our very first trip in Glen Canyon it was clear that sediment was moving by the literal ton.
After committing to a logistically complicated and slightly intimidating 120-mile motoring trip on Powell (with one motor! yikes!), we found ourselves poking into side canyons filled with signs of rapid and constant change. When rain falls near the headwaters of a canyon, the water picks up pieces of vegetation small enough to float and washes them out to the still waters of the reservoir resulting in large floating debris fields. More water means that larger pieces of debris are pushed out. So, if you find yourself picking your way through floating sticks you know there has been a significant flood event.
Once we made our way past the floating debris piles, we ran into water level silt beds. This intrigued me, as I had been expecting to find some kind of silt bed headwall where the silt had been stranded. While headwalls did occur in some cases — typically where the reservoir level met the canyon at a steep bend, pushing water to the bend’s outer edges — there were very few instances at reservoir level. To us this suggested that these small side drainages were seeing enough water from rain and flash floods to completely flush them out.
Our journey proceeded like this: after securely anchoring our boat we would head up-canyon, quickly finding ourselves in spaces so tight that even if they had still been flooded we wouldn’t have been able to fit our boats through. As we wandered through and came upon wider bends and alcoves in these side canyons, we were astonished at the size of the sediment headwalls. On our first trip we observed sediment walls stretching up to 10 feet tall and we were giddy to observe how much sediment had been flushed out. On subsequent trips to these same side canyons, the height of many of these headwalls had increased as flooding carved deeper into reservoir deposited sediment. In some cases, sediment walls vanished completely, carried away by floods.
The height of the sediment we were walking on also gave us an idea of how far down the native canyon bed was. Generally speaking, the larger the rocks we encountered, the closer the native rock bed. As these narrow canyons recover, smaller mud and sand particles wash away, followed by pebbles, then cobbles, then boulders each requiring more water and time to be moved. Typically, when we speak about geology, we are talking in terms of thousands of years. In the case of Glen Canyon, however, time seems to be in fast forward, with geographical characteristics evolving fast enough to be seen by the human eye. Over the course of three trips and approximately eighteen months we witnessed amazing changes to sediment levels and substantial restoration to native canyon bed.
The goal of our first trip was to get acquainted with the area, to get in as many side canyons as we could but not necessarily thoroughly explore each one. Setting out on the reservoir, we felt a bit exposed running into few people and sporting only a 14ft boat, one motor, and limited gas. Our explorations consisted of quick dashes up canyon — progressing only as far as a 20-foot strand of webbing used as a hand line or belay could take us. Luckily most of our exploration was relatively flat walking on marble sized pebbles and sand. When we got to cobbles or bedrock, however, we were often met with an obstacle that demanded more than a hand line. Reaching our end points, we would think, “Hey! That’s cool! We’re definitely coming back!”
And come back we did.
The observations and adventures from our first trip to Glen Canyon left us with the feeling that as far as exploration in North America goes, this was as good as it gets. I told, and continue to tell, friends and family that “it’s the coolest place I have ever been.” We came away from our first trip with a surprising lack of photos, mostly because we spent so much time using our eyes to take it all in and covering as much ground as possible with the limited daylight hours of fall. Clearly, more trips, and more gear, are needed. Most importantly, we had to show other people what we were finding in this wonderful maze of rock, sand, and water.
We settled on taking two boats for our next trip; the small 14ft boat to carry gas and a larger 26ft boat to carry the people and gear. In this way, we could carry supplies for more people and still have the small boat available to access the narrower side canyons. We also brought paddle boards in case the canyon walls became too tight for even the 14-foot boat or a large debris field prevented us from running a motor to reach the sediment bed.
Though it was much hotter and the monsoon season complicated the flash flood issue, going in summer extended our available hours of daylight. We did have to plan ahead to be out of the narrow slot canyons by early afternoon and keep track of weather patterns to avoid flash flood danger, however, the water-filled portions of the canyons no longer felt frigid and swimming through a pool of water refreshed, instead of chilled us. In addition to showing off these amazing side canyons to friends and family, we made an effort to take more pictures.
We were absolutely amazed to find so much had changed, and emerged, since the fall. A mere six months earlier we walked right by a Volkswagen-sized boulder laying in sediment that now sat atop a ledge 12ft above the sediment floor. We needed to swim 30ft across a pool of water and climb 12ft of sandstone to reach parts of the canyon we had previously been able to walk to. Our third trip the next fall brought even more change. The pool below the boulder was mostly gone, the sediment creating it having washed down to the lake. The 12-foot climb was now over 20 feet tall and no longer attainable with our gear.
Forbidding Canyon also saw significant change with the sediment bed extending much further into the lake and a very large debris pile (most likely from a recent thunderstorm-induced flash flood). This necessitated a much longer hike to reach Rainbow Bridge than on our previous trip, but was well-worth it. In addition to the well-known bridge, we saw a great increase in vegetation including native species like cottonwood. The sediment in the main channel had also eroded significantly, showing signs of the native bedrock in Bridge Creek.
Throughout our visits, we have been continually impressed at the sheer scale and rate of change we observe throughout Glen Canyon. It feels like we are exploring a whole new landscape each visit. Our first trip into Mountain Sheep Canyon, we floated our little 14-foot boat right between two rocks that, only a year later, were completely out of the water, closing the gap.
A trip to Reflection Canyon revealed an emerged fin that used to be underwater. In its early emergence it afforded a 10ft jump into the lake water below, but this past summer it was much too high to safely jump from (for us, anyhow). We opted to walk out onto it for a photo, then retreated back to the boat to swim and cool off.
In our many years of adventuring and exploration, we have never found a place that fills us with as much awe and amazement as the re-emerging Glen Canyon. Recently, we even began looking for historic photos of Glen Canyon from before the dam was built to see if we could rediscover the places in them, almost like a treasure hunt. We plan to continue our regular visits to go further, see more, and explore this magical place as much as possible. We love the possibility of being surprised by yet another uncovered treasure as the lake level continues to decline and sediment is washed away, revealing sections of canyon that haven’t been seen in 60 years and were thought to be gone forever. Never a dull moment, Glen Canyon is constantly changing and presenting us with a new experience each time we visit.
