Happy New Year!
First of all, thanks Wayne for setting this site up, and sharing your experiences--what a resource! Thank you! It’s really interesting to read how all the people on this site experience Lake Powell so differently—the truth is, you all are experts in different ways, and it’s a real education for me! Now I’m not a fisherman, which might seem strange for someone who has spent three decades on that lake, which means a lot of what I read in the fishing forums is a real mystery to me, but still very interesting of course. For me it’s all about the hikes into the side canyons…
So I often wonder how people stumbled across Lake Powell in the first place. That would be an interesting thing to know. It seems some of you were born into it, or grew up with it, or discovered it on a planned trip, but not me. I came upon it by lucky accident in my 20s. It was 1986.
Of course I knew about it growing up (born in 1963), and my dad was always interested in going there, talked about it a lot. But it never happened—he was in the Air Force and we just moved around too much. Eventually we settled in southern California. Every now and then, we’d pass through Utah, a couple of short camping trips to Zion, but that was about it.
Fast forward to when I was 23 (in August 1986), living in the LA area, and a friend of mine asks if I want to go with his older brother and a couple of others on some backroads expedition in the mountains in NW Arizona near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and I jumped at that. Sounded like going to the moon! It was a great truck too—a 1964 International Travelall, no luxury, but up to the task… These were the pre-GPS days when a good topo map and a lot of good guesses were all you had to find your way, and in spite of the fact these guys were experienced in general, they didn’t know that area too well, and soon enough we were lost on some dead end cattle trail, halfway down a mountain when the switchbacks ended in nothing but a long way down… and no way to turn around… stuck… No way forward, and no way back. Nothing but a steep shadeless mountainside and a lot of sagebrush ahead…
Concern, but no panic…
Stay and wait for help to come? Nobody would ever be coming that way, we were sure. Forget that. Abandon the truck? It was about 30 miles as the crow flies to St. George. A long walk, possible, but not ideal… So we did what we had to do—I walked ahead scouting the best bushwhack “path” down, and the Travelall would follow in granny low, sliding down the hill, a few yards at a time, skidding along, tearing up whatever vegetation was in the way. Tedious and scary at the same time. At a couple of points, we even got out the shovels along a narrow ledge along a steep slope and “built up” that ledge so the truck could pass—road building on the fly.
It took 12 hours to go 3 miles down that mountain, but we finally got it down there! Likely axle damage and who knows what else, but we made it down! Of course, the guy who owned the truck felt lucky just to be driving it at all, but decided (sensibly) that we’d have to avoid the more serious 4WD road for most of the rest of the trip. Which meant improvising a new trip, away from the Grand Canyon. Now I didn’t know southern Utah much at all, but these guys did, and now we were headed in a new direction—north. And so they wanted to see the places on or near Highway 12 near Boulder and beyond, places I’d never imagined existed! Highway 12 had been paved over Boulder Mountain just the year before, but we took the Burr Trail instead—wild and unpaved then, but a good road, then down the switchbacks into Capitol Reef, no one within miles in any direction. Camped a couple of nights sleeping under the truck to avoid a monsoon thunderstorm, sharing the space with a lot of red ants.
Eventually we found out way back up to Highway 24 and then on to 95 past Hanksville, working our way down the canyon of North Wash toward Hite. I had no idea what to expect ahead, but then there it was, like a mirage—Lake Powell! I’d never seen it before, and here was my introduction… What an unexpectedly great thing to see out there after harrowing days of sweat and desert in the middle of August! The lake was full that year, and it extended far up North Wash along the empty highway. It was too good to pass up. So we pulled off on a little road cut, not even a real parking area, then scrambled down to the banks of North Wash, still far from the main channel. Not a boat in sight, no cars either on Highway 95. We just set up camp right there, down near the lake shore, and jumped right in, surrounded by the walls of North Wash. Cool, deep, clear, and refreshing beyond belief. Wow. Impossible to describe what a great thing to do after a week or so of accumulated dust and grime!
Anyway, we eventually got home without any trouble, but now I had a story to tell—what a huge impression Lake Powell had left on me. I knew I’d have to come back after that, and explore everything i could. The next year, I made another camping trip to the north end, eventually came back again; in 1991, I rented a 16-foot skiff out of Halls Crossing, and worked my way into the nearby canyons… at which point my Dad was finally convinced by my stories to rent a houseboat for a serious exploratory trip in 1992, also out of Halls. Great trip. No fishing really, but a lot of ground covered…
And so almost every year since then, I’ve been back, driving from the central coast of CA. With a couple of buddies, we have rented a lot of houseboats, from every marina (including Hite), always with a changing crew, spending a lot of time in pretty much every side canyon, many by foot…and every year, I write a long photo journal or story about the trip--hundreds of pages at this point, and interesting to read back and follow the changes. It never gets boring or old. Still seems there’s a lot to see. Last year I went on my first graffiti clean-up trip--another great way to experience the place.
So that’s my story...still unfolding...
...and I suppose I have my friend’s brother’s inability to read a topo map for all this…
. My biggest was 10 pounds and, my boss Dale, caught them even bigger. But his dad caught the biggest one seen in that picture - closer to 20 pounds!