Kanoe wrote:
camping can be a little tricky to find ... your best bet is to look for campsites anywhere that creeks or slot canyons confluence with the Green and be prepared for lots of MUD!
Another good campsite sign is any accessible stand of cottonwood trees. Kind of like looking for a stand of pine on southern swamp rivers.
Kelsey’s book does a fair job of describing where the sites are located, and some of the site landings are right at a canyon mouth or even a bit upstream.
At lower water levels there are a lot more camping opportunities and some of the landings become much easier.
In May 2013 the Green River gage was at 3000 cfs/6.4 feet on May 3rd 2013 when we launched and rose slowly. Flow average for that date is 9,000 cfs.
At that level there were abundant campsites and easy landings but still enough current to paddle lazy 20 mile days (it helped that the winds were mild).
In late April 2014 the gauge was at 5000 cfs/7.25 feet when we launched and shot up to 11,000 cfs and 9 feet in 48 hours. Nineteen days later it peaked at 12,000 cfs.
At those higher levels some of the landings became quite challenging, both in terms of hauling the gear up some embankment and in securing the canoe. And more people were funneled onto fewer spots.
One oddity I noticed on the Green. I have never before seen as many people leave their canoes in the water tied off to shore. And not just rental Grummans and impossible catamaran rigs, but some nice private canoes.
And to confess, I had never done it before camping on some ledge sites on the Green. But there are some sites where the canoe is floating sheltered and serene deep in canyon backwater and the entrance to camp is some near vertical 20 foot bank.
In that situation we still manhauled the canoes up the embankment at times when things promised to become less serene. Paying attention to where a flash flood zone might impact the canoe is good hazard avoidance as well.
Even on the no-portage Green a lightweight canoe is advantageous. Part of that difficulty is simply that some sites with room for a half dozen tents don’t have much nearby room for canoes, especially if you are last to a group site in a fleet of rental Grummans.
A couple of gear pieces that absolutely helped at the more awkward landings: Extra line to attach if your painters are short; having 30 feet of available line at each end isn’t overkill.
And one of those spiral screw-in dog run stakes.
http://www.harborfreight.com/18-inch-pe ... 95489.htmlI’d rather not trust tying my boat off to a (now dead) Tammie, even while I’m just unloading. And those spiral stakes are handy for securing other gear in high winds. Enough so that Texs rents them. We have one per boat, with a piece of tubing tied on to cover the sharp tip.
While I am blathering I have another gear confession to make. In 2013 I used a mostly mesh Hubba Hubba tent and we had light to moderate winds. I had little problem keeping the Green’s fine-as-flour canyon sand and dust out.
I believe Kim used much the same tent that same year a couple weeks later and came back swearing that she would never again take a mesh tent on the Green. Pish Posh, I thought. I had a mesh tent; I just did a superior job of battening down the hatches.
In 2014 I used that same tent. It blew like stink, almost every day. Dust storms, sand storms, hard to paddle downriver against it stink. If I didn’t start off sleeping in filth I usually woke up that way.
I will never take another mesh tent down the Green