October 13 . . . If you can't do it right, do it twice.

After 8 days in Wahweap, we had given up on our dream of floating the lone surviving section of Glen Canyon . . . the 17 miles from the dam to Lee’s Ferry. The fine folks at Glen Canyon Dam don’t let nice people like us the transport our kayaks down their elevator and carry them out to the free flowing Colorado River. The only way to do this float is to get a river shuttle up from Lee’s Ferry to the dam, assuming you pass Homeland Security protocols with flying colors. With said agency nowhere to be found and regularly scheduled shuttle service shut down for the season, we made the journey to Lee’s Ferry via the pavement, and hoped to hire/beg/plead for a ride upstream. The friendly park ranger guy at Lee's Ferry said he would have taken us, if his boss’s boss wasn’t present. We’ve noted that the fringe areas of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area have a much more loosey goosey feel to them, less rules and more doing what makes sense.

After waiting for 90 minutes at the boat launch and getting shut down by every fishing group that was headed upstream to the promised land, we finally took the advice of one guy. This gentlemen informed us that his buddy kayaks Glen Canyon all the time and that it’s just as easy to paddle upstream as it downstream, we just had to follow the eddies. Got it, no problem, just find the eddies in a river that’s 200 feet wide with rock walls on both sides. What are eddies anyway? We learned all about eddies in Jackson, Wyoming, they are upstream currents that are quite visible with normal river whitewater, but tougher to find in the flat water of the Colorado. We ventured off in search of these magical eddies, and sure enough, we found them. The paddling wasn’t coasting, but we did manage to maintain the same speed we had on the placid waters of Lake Powell.After several miles of upstream paddling, we found trouble . . . a big bend in the river and an abrupt end to our upstream freeway. We crossed to the other side, and simply found a stronger current. We didn’t realize how powerful the eddies were until we tried paddling upstream without one. The regular current made forward progress a distant memory. We stopped for lunch and turned around and headed down stream. Our second trip through the last miles of Glen Canyon rewarded us with views we missed on the way up, and a very leisure and all too quick return to Lee’s Ferry. There was a group departing from the boat launch for a 21 day trip through the Grand Canyon, we lingered, hoping for an invite . . . but alas, none was forthcoming. We returned to Wahweap, content to pursue this dream another day, and studied maps for our next destination.