Originally posted June 22, 2016
By Mat Bozek
Big Trujillo Wash to Enron Gas Wells Take Out – 65.5
We had 6 people that had signed up drop out, and wound up with just 3 of us in 2 boats. So it was me in my Rendezvous and Kit and Henry in their tandem. Since we are all retired and had no time constraints, we opted to start a day sooner – that is, start on Friday and drive back home on Sunday so as to avoid the holiday weekend traffic.
The White River is characterized by hundreds of logjams and sweepers. You need
to approach every blind corner as if there is a river wide jam just out of
sight, and be prepared to eddy out if needed. Very often, there were logjams
around the corners, but not quite blocking the whole river. We mostly took the
conservative path, keeping to the inside of the corners mostly, so as to be
able to scout a little better. There was one jam that we wound up bypassing
using a very shallow and narrow channel through the inside corner gravel bar.
Most of the times, there was a fairly clear choice, but often included some
slalom turns around several jams. Another characteristic of this river is very
narrow main flows of current with sharp eddies on both sides, especially at the
many 90 degree turns. So you always need to be on your game and stay sharp.
I monitored the flow rate (Boise Creek Gauge) for a couple of weeks or so prior
to the start, and the water levels were holding nicely a bit above 2000 cfs –
just a bit above average. Right up to the day we started, when the gauge was
reading 1800 cfs, and continued dropping to about 1550 cfs when we finished,
which was below average. I had expected the water level to stay above average
and keep going up, but maybe they were filling up the reservoirs or something.
In any case, it was a nice level for open boats, and not too pushy at the
logjams. Anything up to about 2500 cfs is a nice level for this river which
maintains an almost constant fast pace with very little slow water.
Day 1: Big Trujillo is at river mile 89.5, and is about 4.5 miles from Rangely
on county Route 2 (watch for the “Entering Public Lands” sign and immediately
turn down the 2-track to the river. We met there at 8 and did the long shuttle
in 2.5 hours and were back by 11:30, and after a bite of lunch took off at
noon. Henry had a gps with him, and said that the first few miles we were doing
7mph, while paddling at an easy pace. Generally we averaged about 5mph. 21
miles later, we pulled in to camp at mile 68.5, at 4:30. About 5 minutes after
we started to set up our tents a front blew through, with winds maybe 30 or 40
mph or so and a little bit of rain – that made pitching the tents a challenge,
but we’d beaten that front to camp anyway. There was a hen turkey not too far
away, who seemed quite fearless of us as we enjoyed a pleasant bug free
evening.
Day 2: Even if we had wanted to sleep in next morning, we had a turkey alarm go off about 6 am or so and every few minutes thereafter for at least a half an hour. That hen just kept yelping and yelping, looking for company and made a big circle around our camp before wandering off. I assume she was nesting nearby. We got an early start, on the water at 8:30, and after a few miles hit the section that holds the one CII rapid. American Whitewater (and other sources) call this trip C1 – CII and so we used our helmets here. This ten mile stretch was the most fun on the river. It runs through more canyon and has less strainers, and is just a fun run of C1+ rapid after rapid – hard to say if there was any CII at this level, but I’ve seen it at higher flows and wouldn’t argue with the rating. We did that 10 miles in an hour and a half. As we passed the Bonanza bridge put in, we passed one canoe on the bank, and 5 or 6 rafts just below probably waiting for their shuttle to return. In any case, we were ahead of the whole bunch and had the river to ourselves until late afternoon. We’d seen no one on the river at all the first day. On the way down river, we passed close to a Bald Eagle nest and the eagle passed nearly overhead, and youngsters could be seen poking heads up above the edge of the nest. The weather was nice and cool with some cloud cover and conditions were very pleasant as we continued to paddle easily down the river. We were aiming to camp at the Goblin City trail head camp, but wanted to check out the Aichee Wash site also. We did, but it wasn’t very aesthetic, as it was the end of a jeep road and just a big dirt turnaround kind of place – be quite muddy if it rained much. While we were checking out that site, we sat out a bit of high winds, maybe 20 minutes or so and a little bit of rain. Otherwise, the weather was near perfect for paddling. Goblin City is at mile 38, so we did 30.5 miles on day 2. Got there in early afternoon, maybe around 4 or 4:30 (I forget) and had our choice of spots, so of course we took the prime sight that included a semi-official fire pit and enjoyed an evening fire after dinner. That group of rafters caught up with us later in the afternoon and set up both above and below our camp, and while they were a bit noisy, it wasn’t too bad. Certainly less noise than I was expecting. Again, there were no mosquitoes or biting flies at camp, though there were some nuisance flies. None of us was too gung ho on doing the hike, so we just relaxed.
Day 3: up early again and on the river at 8:15 and 2.5 hours later we were 14 miles down river at the take out. Saw 5 or 6 elk down at the river once, which was a bit unusual, and only one big flock of sheep, but no sheep dogs or shepherds – usually we have seen several flocks on the river. We made it back to Big Trujillo by 11:30 and headed back home
I hadn’t done the White in several years, since 2010, and I enjoyed doing it again. A nice trip
Mat Bozek