Floating through Canyonlands National Park on the Colorado River is a desert river runner’s dream. However, for over 20 years, getting your boat and gear off the river has been difficult and dangerous. Earlier this month, the Utah Division of Outdoor Recreation, in partnership with Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and the Utah Public Lands Policy Coordination Office, hosted a ribbon cutting at the new and greatly improved North Wash Boat Ramp. If you’ve put off a Cataract trip in recent years due to the dangerous conditions at North Wash, it’s time to get a trip on the books!
American Whitewater had many conversations with the National Park Service and Utah decision-makers, taking this issue to DC on multiple trips to try and get a solution in place for North Wash. This work, alongside determined and persistent advocacy from local guides, outfitters, and the Cataract Canyon research group, Returning Rapids, saw the state finally commit to completing this project. We are incredibly grateful for our partners’ work to see this much-needed infrastructure development through.
The history and story of this river access point is an interesting one and one that is tied to and illustrative of the crisis of water management on the Colorado River. When the reservoir reached full pool in 1980, it had fully drowned Glen Canyon and the bottom rapids of Cataract Canyon. River trips through Cataract had many miles of flatwater to reach the Hite Marina to take out. River flows in the Colorado River Basin decreased significantly at the turn of the century, and this downturn in water availability, known as the Millennium Drought, we now see as a long-term shift towards hotter weather and drier conditions. These reduced water supplies have created massive impacts on the water storage in Lake Powell.
In 2003, the quickly dropping reservoir levels left the marina at Hite unusable. A “temporary” ramp was quickly cut into the reservoir deposited sediments near an existing road going up North Wash Canyon. Reservoir levels have never fully recovered and have actually become much lower, leaving the “temporary” ramp as the only usable river access in the Hite area. This new ramp was never formalized and was constantly changing due to extreme fluctuations in reservoir level and the lack of stability of reservoir-deposited sediment.
Starting in 2004, river runners were getting creative and strong, by using roller tubes or lots of hands to roll and carry boats up from the ever changing ramp. Fast forward to 2023, and the reservoir reached an even lower extreme low point, and sediment continues to erode at North Wash to the point that the “boat ramp” is essentially a cliff (see before photo). This is the year some local outfitters stopped selling Cataract trips altogether and others absorbed higher trip costs by traveling downstream 50 more miles to the next access point. I highly recommend you read the full history of the ramp from the Returning Rapids Project.
The completion of the hardened new ramp in the North Wash area is a huge and much more reliable access point for Cataract trips. Thank you to the Returning Rapids Project and Utah Guides and Outfitters for helping us all secure access.
