Cataract CanyonMay 2022

Put on at Potash at 10 PM. This isn’t standard, but on a high-water Cataract trip you are budgeting time against one variable: getting to the Big Drops rested and in daylight. Motoring 40 miles of flatwater in the cool hours gets you to Cove Camp around 4 AM and puts Day 3 — the whitewater day — in the right position on the clock. Cove Camp sits in a shadow line that holds through mid-morning. That’s the feature. On a post-midnight arrival, it is also the only feature that matters. Flows: 23,960 cfs daily mean.

Camp across from Range Canyon Camp, river right, just downstream of the Range Canyon mouth. The scree hill behind the camp climbs to a perch that puts you directly above Mile Long Rapids with a clean line of sight on the Button Hole. Going up the day before whitewater is the whole point: at 28,000–30,000 cfs the Big Drops move. You want to know what the features look like from altitude before you’re rowing into them at water level. Note for the log: Button Hole did not activate during our viewing window. Open question — is the activation threshold above 30k, or does it need a different water profile (falling stage, specific ratio between the Colorado and Green contributions)? We didn’t have enough data points to say. Flows: 25,400 cfs.

Mile Long first. At this level it runs long and big but not technical — stay center, take the waves straight. Big Drop 1 is the warm-up. Big Drop 2 is the line we planned the day before from the perch: row back into the eddy behind Marker Rock, swing 180 degrees, drive left of the ledge wave, then left of Pyramid Wave, then cut right of the Claw and ride down to the Big Drop 3 beach on river right. That line worked clean. Big Drop 3 is where the trip got rewritten. We took the right run. The crasher at the bottom required a right high-side and we got it, but not stable — it knocked us. A more committed, earlier-set high-side position is what a cleaner run looks like here. We stayed in the boat. That’s the difference between a story and a rescue. Below Imperial, nothing terrible at this level. Hiked Dark Canyon past the first pool — the water is clear, the rock is cool, and after the Big Drops it’s the correct decompression. Camped on the bench across from the Dark Canyon mouth, river right.

Motor to Hite. Below Hite is the section most guidebooks describe as reservoir — and at 3,527 ft of elevation, that description is out of date. From Hite down toward Good Hope Bay the river is cutting a new gradient through the old Lake Powell sediments. The result at this level is Class 3 sand waves, floatable and novel. This is the paragraph that will age interestingly: as the reservoir continues to drop, this reach will keep changing. Today it was a bonus whitewater section the itinerary didn’t plan for. Camp choice mattered on Day 4. We tried Seven Mile Canyon first and left it — critters, trash, and the kind of bad-smelling mud that tells you the water table has been doing work in places you don’t want to sleep. Cedar Canyon was the fallback and the correct call: dry ground out of the main-channel wind, which was pushing large rolling waves down the reservoir. Some green water got in the boat on the crossing. That’s the reservoir on a windy afternoon.

Cedar Canyon to the marina take-out. Shuttle ran late, which turned the last hour into a logistics problem instead of a travel day — walking around, waiting, re-staging. The fix is shuttle protocol, not adrenaline. At 3,527 ft the main ramp is high and dry; NPS has cemented the service ramp as the working ramp. Plan for that condition, not the ramp shown in guidebooks. Expect this to keep evolving as Powell moves.