Up until now I haven't seen his eyes. It's the second day
of the trip and I realize, as Chris takes off his sunglasses in a shadowy
side canyon, that it is the first time we have made direct eye contact. It's
the first time I have seen the eyes of any of my companions. "You've
got eyes," I say with a smirk. With its location on the border of
Arizona and Utah, Lake Powell is this wayÑlots of sun.
Before Lake Powell filled the tributary of canyons known collectively as
Glen Canyon with water, it was a land loved, revered, and practically
worshipped by those that came regularly to hike and sit within the spirit of
the towering orange walls, the twisting, rippled and reflecting river, and
the contrast of the baby blue sky against these drastic natural statements.
There were canyons called Cathedral in the Desert, Mystery Canyon, Music
Temple. There were petroglyph panels and prehistoric artifacts like sandals,
pots, pieces of woven cloth, cliff dwellings with the thumb prints of
ancient inhabitants still visible. People returned each year to run the
river, hike among the hanging gardens given life by the seeps in the rock,
and ultimately to listen to the songs and echoes of the canyons and chutes.
In September of 1963 when the last bucket of concrete in the Glen Canyon Dam
was set and Lake Powell began to fill, it all disappeared under water. The
second largest manmade lake in the United States, Lake Powell is punctuated
with the tops of these fabulous Utahesque canyons - red cliff walls soaring
hundreds of feet into the air, mesas, buttes, plateaus, all in a maze of 96
canyons and 186 miles of river channel. Lake Powell, with a skyline of color
and shape unlike any other, is an inland kayaking dream-- canyons so narrow
motor boats must go elsewhere and scenic hikes into slot canyons when you
reach the water's end. And now, with water levels at 42% of high water mark,
the walls are higher, the slot canyons deeper, and more of Glen Canyon is
exposed to explore.
(for more of this article contact Sea Kayaker Magazine for their August 2005 issue)
