Gunnison River: Escalante Bridge to Whitewater, Oct. 2010

[gnwatts]

I thought I would post a report about a trip I made as part of a extended bachelors party for a friend. It will be short on details, as it is still a bit of a blur. However, I will do my best. We left Carbondale, Co around 11 am and finished the shuttle parking by about 2. The river was a little low, but still plenty deep. I rarely hit any rocks in my 16' Wenonah Idirondack. Two other rafts finished out our party. The first part of the trip was pretty exciting for me, I would say there were 2 class 2 rapids, and a vicious encounter with a tree on an outside bend in the river. We had documentation for all of these hazards but we chose to ignore our maps. Throw caution to the wind!


ZC0D0665 by g n watts, on Flickr



ZC0D0671 by g n watts, on Flickr


We ended up camping just up river from Dominguez Canyon, about three hours from Escalante bridge.



ZC0D0677 by g n watts, on Flickr



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It was a hard fought night, a little hand to hand combat, burgers and tequila.
View down river from the camp site. Dominguez Canyon is just around the bend.




ZC0D0678 by g n watts, on Flickr



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We left around 10 for the short float to Dominguez, we hiked up to the big water fall and then back to the boat. See my trip reports for a hike up Big Dominguez.
A short float later, with a tricky little rapid at Dominguez I think, we arrived at our camp site, on the tip of the point where the train enters a tunnel. This was a much better spot than the last one, open, room to explore and a pretty good cliff jump too.


ZC0D0700 by g n watts, on Flickr



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The float to Whitewater was a long push due to the wind, and quite scenic. I had to paddle constantly so I have few pictures of this stretch, other that a good rock we found:



ZC0D0733 by g n watts, on Flickr

All in all a great 2 day float trip. You don't get the remote feeling like further down the Colorado, but it's easy to get to and quite spectacular.