Blast Shelter: Green River Clean Up

Saturday several club members,

including myself, attended the annual Green River Cleanup. This has happening each spring for many years though it was the first time I was able to attend. This trip through the 10 mile Class IV Green River Gorge was not a trip where we took a bunch of passengers out for the day.

This trip was only open to guides and guide-trainees as it is our chance to "give back to the river & community" by picking up some garbage and squeezing in a little fun at the same time. We met at the put in a 7am which meant I had to be on the road around 5am so I was able to

sleep in an extra half hour today!

The setup went fairly smooth which was good since the shuttle on the river is a 45 minute drive each way. This worked out okay too since Tom was able to take a nice nap in the bed of my truck during the drive back to the put-it. The weather called for a forecast of "partly crappy" with some rain expected. As usual they were wrong again! The weather was cloudy but in the mid-50's with only a few minutes of light sprinkles after we were already on the river.

The river was low but still quite runnable near 1400cfs. I was a little worried since Friday morning the river was at 863cfs until they began releasing more water for all the boaters on Saturday.

We made it down the river without any issues (though that was almost changed by me running the catboat sideways through The Nozzle with one oar - don't ask - just know I made it!) and were able to do our part to save the planet from the onslaught of vile river trash.

We managed to fill a couple rafts with junk we found on the rivers edge. John Catron and Allison actually got to fill their boat up twice! This amazing feat was accomplished after offering the collected trash back to the river during a lovely high side maneuver and then regaining possession of the garbage after

another boater captured and then surrendered the treasure back to John and Alli further downstream. What team work!