River Day 9 13 October 2014

The river gods granted my prayer (and I have been without chocolate bars for 26 days as of this writing, so the end is in sight!) The wind was nearly calm when we started down river, and blew us around only a little bit as we navigated the sharp bends on our way to our next destination, Dirk's Head. The canyon walls got higher and higher, the washes narrower and less accommodating ... clearly, down toward the Confluence, you need to know where you're going.

This was a long day – we'd left ourselves with two long days before the pickup on River Day 11 – but we paddled it quickly, and if we hadn't missed our landing, we would have had plenty of time to get out "on top" at Dirk's Head. 

But we did miss our landing, and managed to get ourselves stopped a quarter mile down river, and had to do some plain and fancy river engineering to get ourselves back where we wanted to moor. 

Again the scale of this place is stunning. I meant this photo (left) to show our camp, and it's there, our two little tents barely discernable as maybe a total of six pixels. (Sorry.) This photo was taken from about halfway up the ravine behind camp as we scrambled up to the top, just barely in time to catch the last rays of the setting sun.

This scramble was perhaps 600 vertical feet, accomplished in about a mile, with much of it across scree and up a trail fraught with gravel from the many earlier boots that had passed.

Sienna kept grumbling to herself about missing the landing, but I thought the engineering (since it was successful) had been worth the lost time. "If only," and I could easily see her point, because up top there were faint trails leading in several directions, any one of which would have made for a fun exploration and, most likely, an amazing overview of another reach on the river.

But the sun was rapidly setting, and I dreaded having to make the descent in the dark. As it was, we made it out onto the riverside plain just as the light was failing, and those rolling rocks going up were even more treacherous going down.

We were soaked with sweat and pretty pleased with ourselves all in all ... so we had solar showers over in the wash, and made ourselves a delicious dinner, watched the waning moon come up behind our camp, and thoroughly enjoyed our last night in Stillwater Canyon and on the Green River.