Camp #2--Holeman Canyon

SATURDAY APRIL 11, 2009

CAMP #2--HOLEMAN CANYON

Lunch was left over flank steak and snacks. We also dipped into the trail mixes, crackers and cheese, Clementines, and apples, and floated/paddled a mere 3 more miles to our next campsite:  a wash at the mouth of Holeman Canyon across from Valentine Bottom. Again we flirted with rain and could see heavy rain falling from the clouds in the distance.

This landing was a combination of soft sucking mud and rocky shallows. Before beaching the T-cat, Kim and Peter got out to determine whether it would be a good campsite. They were gone a long time and did not respond to our calls. Just as we were worried enough to get out to attempt to find them, Peter showed up and pronounced the wash “amazing,” a word that was true but overused on this trip.

We walked the T-cat between the rocks to beach it, and then lugged all of our gear to the top of the dunes at the mouth of the wash. Though I was a bit nervous about camping at the mouth of a wash when there was clearly rain all around us, the others convinced me to camp with them and not farther down the wash on a point of high ground that I’d discovered. We placed our tents high on the dunes and felt safe. Also, the wash was very wide, open, and over 2 miles long in a wide canyon so any runoff would not have come with the force it would have come down a narrow canyon.

It rained a bit when we first got there, so we didn’t put up our tents, immediately, but began to set up the kitchen. The rain came in earnest as Jess and I were trying to rig a tarp over the cooking area in the willows beside the wash. Not only did it rain, but it hailed! It soon stopped, and we managed to set up the cook area beneath the tarp, which was large enough for all of us to sit under it around the table to eat. We decided to wait to set up our tents until it had dried out a bit.

While unloading the T-cat we found a mallard hen decoy in the driftwood on the beach. She quickly became “Mama Mal-lard.” We tied her to our stern and she obediently swam the rest of the river with us. Since we had seen mallards on the river, we half expected a couple of males to be swimming beside her each morning.

Mama Mal-lard quickly became our mascot

While Kim was preparing dinner, Peter and I decided to hike back into Holeman Canyon. This canyon was truly gigantic and on such a grand scale that we felt as tiny as a pinprick on the skin of the world. I renamed the canyon, “Canyon of the Giants.” On our hike, we saw a blue grosbeak, eastern phoebe, and several black-throated sparrows. Peter has a good birding ear, and we kept hearing a descending song but could not locate or identify the bird making it. We heard this song often on our way down river, but it was not until journey’s end that Kim, searching through Sibley’s identified it as a canyon wren. We also came upon a deer carcass—mostly skeleton, really—and what looked like a huge fern fossil in a section of broken rock.

This looks like a huge fern leaf fossil but it is more likely a pattern caused by water; wish I knew someone who would know

Peter and I walked the wash until it came to a T. To the left about 500 yards away was a large “on edge” bowl over which water flowed from the high upper lip into a small pool . . . at times, that is. Only a trickle was staining the rocks when we were there. Peter had brought his Doctor Bronner’s and a towel in hopes of finding a spring in which to bathe. He wanted a bath, and particularly wanted to bathe his “undercarriage” as he called it. When we returned, disappointment drove him into the river for a brief icy wash.

To the right, the canyon continued for as far as the eye could see, with steep, high walls, lots of mammoth rock that had fallen from the sheer sides, and multiple caves and formations. We had a limited time before Kim adjudged that dinner would be ready, so when we got to our “point of no return” we turned around an hiked back to the campsite. We all planned to explore the canyon before leaving the next morning.

Peter lugged back some tree-sized firewood, so our fire definitely did not stay in the pan this evening. Jessica had set up her tent and mine, dear girl. She didn’t want to root around in Peter’s bag for his tent. So he again leveled the very highest point of the sand dune and erected his tent there.

I carved a niche in the dune and placed one of the canoe seats in it. This made a great place for resting and drinking my coffee. Kim had outdone herself with dinner, making spaghetti sauce from scratch and a delicious salad. Just before dinner, but after all tents were up, it began to rain again. We sat fairly snugly under the tarp. After dinner we had oreos and chocolate for dessert and then sat under the dripping tarp and played a game of Boggle.