Labyrinth Canyon by Canoe
A July trip to the Utah's Green River
By Joshua Colvin
In this sometimes turbulent world, the river is a cosmic symbol of durability and destiny; awesome, but steadfast. In this period of deep national concern, I wish everyone could live for awhile beside a great river. — (Helen Hayes, Actress)
My son McCoy and I were looking for a boating adventure. We’ve done some short sailing trips together over the years, but it’s been my feeling he needed a little “type 2” fun—something challenging or even miserable in the moment, that he might look back on fondly years later. I mean what are fathers for? I’d taken his younger sister Winnie on just such a trip several years back when we’d paddled a 60-mile section of the Rio Grande, so it was definitely his turn.
We considered various adventures—from sailing mountain lakes to a coastal cruise in the Southeast, but it was the Green River in Utah that finally caught our attention. Specifically a 68-mile section called Labyrinth Canyon. Labyrinth isn’t bristling with dangerous rapids (it’s class 1 water), but it’s thoroughly remote (meaning my 16-year-old’s cell phone wouldn’t work) and from my reading, was supposed to be both extremely hot and swarming with insects. Perfect. When you’ve only got a couple of years left to prepare your teenager for the challenges of adulthood, you want to show them—or at least see for yourself—that they can suffer a little a bit, overcome obstacles and “embrace the suck” as necessary.
Labyrinth Canyon had another advantage, in that running this section of the river didn’t require winning a permit lottery for a chance to visit, we simply had to fill out some paperwork to let them know when we were coming. Why no wait list? The ranger I spoke with made it pretty clear: “You’re coming mid-July? It’ll be a furnace.” Well, that ought to cut down on the crowds.
Once we knew our destination we started thinking about the choice of vessel. We’d settled on two pack-rafts before we learned that the silty Green River meant we wouldn’t be able to filter drinking water and would instead need to carry all of our necessary water aboard. Although some of the pack-rafts we looked at had impressive weight capacities, it was hard to imagine paddling with 8-10 gallons of water between our legs—along with our tent, rations, and various bags of gear lashed to the rafts.
I’d read that the trip was best done by canoe. Neither of us have done any canoeing, but in some ways that was even better—another new experience to share. We found an Old Town 158 on craigslist and before long we were out in the barn test-loading our water and gear. The Old Town swallowed everything easily, so we loaded the boat on the roof rack of the Jeep and prepared for the two-day drive to Utah.
Although the Green River was the trip’s feature and focus, the 900-mile (each way) road trip was certainly a fun part of the adventure as well, as we blasted music, took turns picking podcasts, and talked about everything from Stoic philosophy to songwriting as we raced across two states.
Our drive from Boise to the launch site at Ruby Ranch was interesting in that as soon as the paved road ended and the cell service quit, we promptly got ourselves lost. The sketchy directions led us to a locked gate where we turned around, and the other trails we explored looked much less traveled. Naturally McCoy—who loves all things vehicle-related and has watched every episode of Top Gear—kept encouraging me to attempt all of the most ridiculous, steep, boulder-strewn routes. “I’m sure it’s that way,” he’d say. I’d try them for 100 feet or so before refusing and turning back. Eventually we discovered the original gate was chained but not locked, and after getting lost within Ruby Ranch proper, we eventually made it to the dusty riverside launch and primitive camp spot. The adventure had begun in earnest.
The plan was to leave the Jeep there and have a service called Coyote Shuttle pick up the Jeep and drive it 50 miles downriver to the take-out spot called Mineral Bottom. Seemed like a good idea when I emailed to request the service, but I was less certain when I read the details on the waiver I had to sign indemnifying them against any claims related to their driving my car on the treacherous road between the launch and pull-out. What could go wrong?
As the sun began to set we took the canoe down from the roof, unloaded gear from the truck and pitched our tent in the lingering heat. The bugs were plentiful and hungry as promised, but McCoy surprised me by whipping up an impressive fire with nothing but driftwood and matches, while I boiled water for our backpacker dinners. After watching the flames fade to embers we doused the coals and crawled into our tiny tent for that restless “night-before-we-depart” sleep.
We grow up hearing so often that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points that we end up thinking it is also the best way to get there. A river knows better—it has to do with how it dissipates the energy of its flow most efficiently; and how, in its bends, the sediment deposited soon turns into marshes and swampy islands, harboring all manner of interesting life, imparting charm and character to the whole waterway. I would defy you to find a river on this planet that prefers to run straight, unless it has been taught so by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. — (Tom Horton, Bay Country)
The water is moving faster than we’d anticipated—a good thing we think, because we’ll make easier progress. But although the water is pushing us along at a couple of knots per hour, as the punishing sun reaches its zenith and the temperatures rise, we find ourselves subconsciously paddling harder toward no particular destination.
The khaki-colored river wends through spectacularly tall canyons, and our whistling and the occasional banging of our paddles against the canoe, echo back to us. We won’t see another living soul during that first day, nor really any signs of civilization. We spot a few herons, several deer, and at least one beaver eyeballing us as he swims between river banks.
One of the “must-see” attractions on the Labyrinth Canyon trip is essentially historical graffiti—names and drawings carved into the rock walls in various spots along the route. What makes the names interesting is that a few were scratched into the rock almost 200 years ago. Using our guidebook (Guide to the Colorado & Green Rivers in the Canyonlands ) we were sometimes able to follow the cryptic directions “Look for where the tallus meets the shore just after the oak trees…” and find these sites.
In a few of spots we had to wade through a bunch of more recent inscriptions scrawled by modern visitors, but eventually we found the famous markings made by enigmatic French-American fur-trader Denis Julien, who tagged a number of rock walls in the year 1836.
What we found especially interesting about Julien is that in one of his drawings he includes a sketch of his boat with what appears to be a mast. Based on the dates below each inscription it appears he was travelling upstream, which would suggest that when he wasn’t pulling his boat upriver by its painter, the trapper may have sailed against the current on the often strong afternoon breezes.
Who can or should carve their name into these famous rock walls has been a subject of some debate. For example, while it’s now commonly accepted that nobody ought to leave any markings at all, Denis Julien himself, whose inscriptions we sought out like they were geocaches, was guilty of carving his own name into an ancient petroglyph panel in Arches National Park back in 1844. Nobody is quite sure what we he was doing there, so far from the nearest river, scribbling on the prehistoric cultural site.
Another Labyrinth Canyon visitor in the early 1940s was apparently so incensed by the more recent inscriptions and defacing of historical signatures that he carved his own note into the same wall telling these vandals they should be ashamed of themselves—then he signed his own name and dated it of course.
One of the coolest inscriptions we came across was one painted high on a ridge that read “Launch Marguerite…” The Marguerite was a wooden paddleboat captained by T.G. Wimmer that plied the Green River between the towns of Green River and Moab. The inscription is dated “9/1/ 1909.”
Between the occasional historic inscription sites we’d paddle for several hours under the relentless sun and stunning canyon walls. With no cell service and each canyon looking very much like the one before it, I found Labyrinth was an easy place to get lost. It was slightly unnerving to not know where we were, and the feeling was intensified when I discovered the GPS batteries were dead and the spare batteries missing. I nearly assured our complete disorientation when I knocked our guidebook into the water, but fortunately it stayed afloat just long enough for me to retrieve it.
Mother Nature is our wild world. A wild, winding river is her autograph. — (Duane Short, Wild Species Program Director
Twenty-one miles into the trip we finally settled on a campsite—a nondescript spot perched high on the riverbank that featured a few oak trees and flat spot for our tent. As evening apprached, the mosquitoes and some sort of biting flies descended and multiplied. We raced to eat our dinner before retreating to our tent to escape the onslaught. It was still well over 100 degrees and there was no breeze, so we both just lay perfectly still hoping we’d eventually fall asleep to the deafening chorus of bugs just outside the mesh windows.
It's usually as I’m trying to fall asleep in the middle of the night that I pointlessly decide to process a bunch of “what if?” scenarios. What if the canoe—which I’d tied to a bush down on the river—somehow floats away? We can’t walk out of here. Could I fashion a makeshift raft from our dry bags and found wood? Why did I leave all of our extra water aboard?
Of course everything was fine once the sun came up, but I was reminded how these sorts of off-grid adventures test your balance between not overloading and having what you need. Essentially each drybag we had aboard was vital and mostly without any practical backup. If our Jetboil stove was damaged or lost we’d hope to make fires, but were the matches with the stove bag? What would we eat if the duffle of food was lost? How rough would it be if the tent and sleeping gear went to the bottom of the river? We’d survive any of these eventualities, but loss or failure of any of these food/water/shelter/transport systems would have been challenging.
Setting off that morning at around 7am we’d decided that after doing 21 miles the first day we were in striking distance of completing the trip on this second day. We had mixed emotions about spending fewer days on the water, but neither were we especially content to sit around or drift endlessly in the hot sun. We paddled on and figured we’d see how it went.
At some point it got so hot we paddled over to slip beneath some giant rock ledges protruding and casting shadows at the river’s edge. McCoy maneuvered us under the ledge, tied us to shore, and flopped down into the bottom of the canoe to nap. I scampered up between the outcroppings and fell asleep on the silt-covered rock ledge.
An hour later—cooler and well-rested—we set off again and, besides stopping for lunch, continued to paddle along at a modest pace. Eventually we could tell we were making such fast time that we’d reach the pullout at Mineral Bottom that afternoon. Keeping an eye for the remote takeout we saw what looked like a beach ramp in the distance and, like horses to the barn, paddled even harder negotiating the suddenly stronger currents of the last quarter mile to arrive at our destination.
As we dragged the Old Town up the steep bank there was no sign of our vehicle in the parking area, but fortunately we found it some distance away—the only one around—sitting in an empty dirt field. The Coyotes had done their job. We unloaded the boat and carried the gear to the Jeep before rinsing off in some of our remaining freshwater and strapping the canoe to the roof rack. The we headed off on arguably the most dangerous part of the whole trip—the drive out of the canyon on a narrow dirt road carved into the side of the cliff. It was a little bit nerve-wracking and a little bit fun. Perfect, really. Just another 14 hours on the road and we’d be sleeping in our own beds. •SCA•
Here’s a quick video:
Josh...great article/ adventure !....I have a few similar memories with my son (49), and my daughter (46)....I can tell you...”too few/ too long ago!!”....But we occasionally look back...and both kids will still laugh with “Dad, what were you thinking??!!”
Excellent article. Love that southern Utah area. I must get out there for some canoeing!