Images

Pat Kikut and Graham Lederer move quietly by the beautiful geologic formations along the Green River.

In the desert, mother nature provides us with curved and sharp edged shapes, thorns and soft cottonny seeds, as well as brilliant and subdued colors side by side. The desert seems to have a bit of everything.

Three boats make their way around the bend near Dinosaur National Monument while the jagged edges of Split Mountain tower in the background.

Tom Minckley and Nick Hammond study the shore for plant and animal species and to enjoy the beautiful landscapes as they pass by.

While the lavendar color of the Tamarisk plant is nice to see, the plant is actually an invasive species. The Tamarisk Beatle was released in 2005 to combat the spread of the plant and has been quite successful in doing so.

Mitch Eaton attempts some fly fishing ultimately to no avail while Austin Alvarado looks on. As with the original 1869 Powell expedition, catching fish in the Green River is not an easily acocmplished endeavor.

Flat Canyon petroglyph panel in Desolation Canyon, Green River, UT during the Powell 150 SCREE-USGS expedition, June 2019

These lands have never been empty, although in some places it feels that way. Before western settlers arrived, these lands were polulated by other peoples throughout prehistory. Tom McKinley estimates that these images were drawn during the Fremont age. Some images are clearly human, one may be a fish, others are less clear.

Most of our views were from the river level, where you are intimately connected to subtleties in flow, wind, and temperature. It was a welcome opportunity to view the river from above and gain context. We stopped here on the last full day on the river.

Anya Metcalf was the insict expert on this trip. We started pointout out and catching bugs for her to identify. This one crawled across camp during our podcast recording. It turned out to be a Golden Stonefly with a small pseudoscoprion attached to the mandlible using the fly for dispersal.

Our first day was full of uncertainty about what we would experience. Many of us did not have experience on the river (although Anya Metcalf, in the photo, did). We left the impressive cliffs and topography of Split mountain wihout knowing what lay ahead, expecting less exciting topography, but we were all proven wrong about the Uinta basin.

Most of our days had this view- looking back on the river and having conversations with the rafter rowing the boat and whomever else we shared space. We were constantly surprised at the beautiful views and the impressive cliffs, which often housed cliff swallows.

One of the topics we frequently talked about was land use. The Green River in the Uinta is different from other segments because it is surrounded by industrial activity, with scattered farms, livestock, oil pumpjacks. It is not known as a recreational destination, although the beauty is overlooked.

Tom McKinley was able to answer many of our questions about plant names and ecology in the area. When I shared his boat on the second day, he told me that the orange Globe Mallow flowers close up at night. Solitary bees will hold the stamen and let the flow close around them, using the flower for warmth and protection.

The last night, as we neared Desolation Canyon, the bluffs got taller. Since the Green River is calmer here, it reflected the colors of the sunset. I was so worried about making it before the sun went down that I climbed the peak in my chaco sandals, a decision I regretted the next day since my foot were banged up.

The Green River in the Uinta basin is fairly flat, so it carries a lot of foam. The foam often follows the fastest part of the river, with is ties to the shape of the channel and the curve of the river. From this level, you can sense subltle changes in the plant like, flow speed, temperature, water clarity, and fauna.

On our last day of the expedition the landscape was dominated by the Green River Formation, famous for its fish fossils (although none were found in camp).

We camped on a 20-30 ft. tall hill our last night, so shuttling kitchen gear up and down from the rafts was no easy task.

Nicholas Hammond is soaking up the views on his last day on the river. Photograph taken by Ben Capelin (SCREE).

Although we were all hoping it would never end, the final day on the river was a bittersweet reminder of the amazing experiences we had in the Uinta Basin.

Early morning panorama of cliffs that signal the start of Desolation Canyon. This was our last, and probably most spectacular, campsite of this section of Uinta Basin. It was approximately 9 miles from our take-out at Sand Wash.