“And if we have a hot, dry spring, that estimate will be eroded. There’s still a lot of uncertainty,” he said.
From the dam, John and I drove five miles north to Wahweap Marina, the winter nesting place of huge, luxurious houseboats, some with DVD playerss, staterooms, and fireplaces. There we claimed the far more modest 18-foot powerboat I had reserved for our trip up the reservoir.
Opponents of the man-made reservoir call it “Lake Latrine” and “Lake Foul,” but I can’t agree with their aesthetic evaluation. It’s majestic, with tucked-away coves and beaches backed by surrealistically shaped mesas and buttes. On the way, though, we saw Lake Powell’s bathtub ring, a white calcium carbonate deposit left by the receding water, distinct in some places, already wearing away in others.
At Dangling Rope Marina, we stopped for a $100 fill-up. The attendant, who hadn’t seen any visitors in days, told us about a good place to camp in Oak Canyon, a few miles farther, on the east side of the lake.
While tying up the boat there, I got caught in some Lake Powell quicksand, which has the consistency of cellulite and is sticky enough to suck in a short person, like me, to the thighs.
John and I pitched our tents, cooked up one of those wretched, dehydrated backpacker dinners, and went to bed. Unfortunately, it snowed that night and my tent leaked, leaving me with stiff joints, a sour mood, and a wet sleeping bag. I was ready to abort the trip in the morning, but John thought we should at least try to make our scheduled rendezvous with Wolverton at noon in Davis Gulch.
So I went on to Lake Powell’s confluence with the Escalante. Along the way, we passed Hole-in-the-Rock Arch, where Mormon pioneers cut a treacherously steep wagon trail from the plateau above to the river in 1880, and the mouth of the San Juan River on the east side—both places I’d only imagined in my dreams. We went astray a few times, but finally found the Escalante and turned in. Between periods of drizzle, the sun came out, revealing bright blue skies and scudding clouds. But the rivers’ meeting at Davis Gulch was an ugly scene, choked with flood-strangled cottonwood trees.
Then I saw what I assumed to be a hallucination: a man in a blue shirt, picking his way across the quicksand.
It was Wolverton, a canyon rat if ever there was one, strong and scrawny, with a thatch of shaggy brown hair. He had kindled a campfire up the gulch, where I warmed my feet and hands, dried out my sleeping bag, and decided that, having come this far, it would be folly not to continue.
Wolverton, the only backcountry ranger in the Escalante River region of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, had been keeping a close watch on sinking water levels in area tributaries. But the last time he climbed down into Davis Gulch and Fiftymile Canyon was the previous summer. Like us, he was eager to see what new glories the drought had revealed.
La Gorce Arch came first, a triangular window on the sky framed in lustrous sandstone, 100 feet wide and 75 feet high. Just a few years ago, when Davis Gulch was fuller, it could be reached only by kayak. Now, as nature intended, you have to crane your neck to see it from the creek bed.
Hiking up the gulch was sloppy, so we exchanged our boots for rubber sandals and neoprene socks. Sometimes the walls of the canyon narrowed, forcing us to wade in the cold water. Then they’d open back up, flooding the chasm with warming sunlight from the plateau hundreds of feet above.
“This place is like a big Christmas present gradually being unwrapped,” said Wolverton, stopping short once and opening his arms wide.
On formerly inundated rock ledges, spring-green vegetation had taken root and the bathtub ring had faded. Underfoot, we crunched “canyon popcorn,” perfectly proportioned balls of pebbles, a little like candied apples, fused together with mud on their roiling way downstream.
Farther up the gulch, we saw mounds of silt the size of tanker trucks, trapped and then left behind by the retreating water of Lake Powell, which has more silt-bearing tributaries than Lake Mead, another reservoir on the Colorado River impounded by Hoover Dam.
“Sediment is the reservoir’s fate,” Wolverton said. “It doesn’t matter how much boaters want [the lake] or how much water people need. It’s going to silt up and the whole thing will be gone.”
Wolverton led us out of Davis Gulch on a steep, old slickrock stock trail. The world seemed different—more horizontal—when we reached the top of the plateau. I could see places I’d known before only on a map: the long rise of Waterpocket Fold to the north and the tiered flanks of the Kaiparowits Plateau to the south, looking in the snow like a Mexican girl’s petticoat.
It was flat and easy going for about two miles north across the plateau, but then we came to the edge of Fiftymile Canyon and started down. No old stock trail there, just sure-footed Wolverton to follow.
He had already chosen our campsite for the next two nights, a wide, narrow shelf high above the stream, sheltered by a lip of rock. Delicious, cold, drinkable water was available from a seep in a nearby cliff, and there were plenty of secluded spots on the bank for a camping-style sponge bath. Fire rings and graffiti—including a well-rendered Donald Duck—testified that others had been there before us. Mostly boaters, Wolverton said.
So we settled into a place that even the most widely traveled soul could never forget. Protected by the overhang, we did without tents, though in my down bag I slept in three layers of shirts, two pairs of pants, gloves, and a hood. When I occasionally woke in the middle of the night, I saw a star-spangled crescent of black sky at my bedside.
We spent the next day exploring Fiftymile Canyon, which is even more beautiful than Davis Gulch—much narrower in places, like the Subway, a stretch where three people can’t walk abreast. The stream undercuts both sides of the creek there, and the canyon is wider at the base than at the top, limiting the light that filters in and bounces eerily between the walls.
Occasionally, I thought with dread about the prospect of climbing out of Fiftymile, recrossing the plateau, descending into Davis Gulch by the stock trail, and then retrieving the boat for the trip back down the reservoir. But there was the carrot of a steak dinner and clean sheets at a motel in nearby Page. More compelling was the here and now in one of the loveliest places on Earth.
I’ve seen the Sahara Desert and Denali in Alaska. But none of that tops Fiftymile.
I can’t wholly agree with houseboaters who think Lake Powell is paradise or with canyon rats like Wolverton who would be glad to see it shrivel up like a strip of fried bacon.
For now, Mother Nature seems to have decided against the reservoir. I take great consolation in knowing there’s no gain-saying her.
Four a.m. is a terrible time of day, too late for night owls, too early for early birds. The exception is 4 a.m. at Borobudur, waiting for the sun to rise with 504 figures of Buddha over the Kedu Plain in central Java.
The temple is one of Southeast Asia’s three great religious sites, but older and more esoteric than Bagan in Myanmar and Cambodia’s Angkor Wat. Construction began in the eighth-century AD by the Saliendras, a dynasty of Buddhist kings who ruled central Java for almost 200 years until their power waned and the temple was abandoned.
The