Arrival in Salt Lake City
Most of us arrived in Utah, flying into SaltLake City. This Mormon city centred around its Temple and Tabernacle also has a surprisingly vibrant gay scene. By chance we arrived at the start of the Gay Pride celebrations. Two of us went to a gay night at a local night club where they were auctioning the underwear of the local water polo team for charity - with the owners still in them !!!
There were six of us on this trip: a small enough number for for us to hire a people-mover car. to get us the hundreds of miles between Salt Lake City, and the two rafting centres . These were Vernal near Dinosaur National Park from where we were to raft the Green River through the Gates of Ladore and Moab near Canyonlands National Park from where we were to raft the Colarado River through Cataract Canyon.
Getting to Vernal
Our trips abroad always seem to go badly at the start, and then run like clockwork. This was to be no exception. We went to collect the people-mover from the Downtown SLC address given on the internet booking site, but all we found was an empty parking lot. The attendant in a nearby petrol station was adamant that he had never heard of any car hire firm based locally. Nevertheless, anxious to help, looking in the telephone girectory, he discovered that the car hire company had an office listed in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel oposite. However, when we went into the hotel we found that the office had closed down some months before. We were at a loss what to do. Then, thanks to the kindness of the hoteel concierge, our luck was changed. He knew that the hire company had an office at the Airport and just by chance the hotel had a courtesy-bus going to the there to collect a guest at that very moment. We all piled in and we eventually got our hire car from the Airport, two hours later than we planned and without a word of apology. But, we did not care: at least we were on the road.
The weather in Salt Lake City, had been freakishly cold; we had seen snow falling on the mountains in the distance. Now, driving out of Salt Lake City we could see snow at the side of the road as we reached the tops of the higher passes. We were concerned about this, the evenings in the mountains were likely to be cold - and the extra snowmelt would make the rivers high and dangerous.
Because of the delayed start, we arrived only just in time for the evening briefing arranged at the Hatch Rafting base, sited in the back streets of Vernal. This was just a very laid-back meeting with our lead-guide, Lars. He gave us an idea of what we needed to bring and issued us with couple of large waterproof sacks each to put it in.
We drove on to our motel for the overnight stay- (Super 8, one of the no-frills chains of budget American Motels). This time mercifully, the internet booking had worked out OK. Here we met up with John who had flown in via Denver and made his own way to Vernal and our party was complete. We spent the early part of the evening, before going out to eat, packing. Deciding what clothes to bring was a a problem. Normally you could expect more danger from sunburn.. With this delayed cold Spring weather, were warm clothes were going to be important? We decided to bring all the clothes we had. None of them was wasted - even balaclavas one particulalry cold evening!
Next morning we were driven through the sage brush cowboy country to our start on the Green River. Our guides were waiting for us with rafts already inflated. We were surprised to have three rafts and three guides for just six people. It turned out that one of the guides, zzzz, was new to this stretch of the Green River and had come along for training. This was great for us; his raft was loaded with all our luggage, leaving plenty of space for us - three to each of the other rafts.
We were launching at the Gates of Ladore. This is a dramatic start where the where the Green River having crossed a plain suddenly cuts straight into the sheer side of a mountain and continues on through a narrow ravine.
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