Holiday Expeditions | River Life

Rain on the River

Tim Sattelmeir, Holiday Expeditions Trip Leader and Guide Summer 2000

I have memories of special moments and places in the canyons. Only a few times have I seen hard rain in the canyons and they are treasures. Once in Desolation Canyon in the afternoon, I saw Tabyago creek rise and spill a wide fan of dark milky water into the Green. On the Yampa a downpour caught us on the trail up to Wagon Wheel point and we stood still as the hillside around us saturated and then began to move and erode. We saw two red waterfalls pour off the top of the sandstone wall and then sluice down a swirling channel.

In Labyrinth, on a sandbar only a few miles above Mineral Basin, the rain came down a wide open side canyon across the river falling in sheets. We took turns guessing where the water would reach the river. A few wispy but tall waterfalls came over the canyon wall.

In the Grand Canyon, below Elves, I saw white clouds come in and obscure the 2000 foot outer rim across the river. We felt the mist turn into a drenching and I saw at first just the lower halves of eight or ten waterfalls coming out of the clouds. They grew stronger and when the clouds broke up I could see them falling off the outer rim. Then the water reached the inner rim and all the streams gathered into one. A little-used channel roared to life pounding the rocks. We could almost feel the spray from the blow back all the way across the river.

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