The Colorado River and her major tributary, the Green, together comprise the lifeblood of the Colorado Plateau. This is the largest river system in the west outside of the Columbia River. At one time called the Grand, the Colorado begins her 1,400 mile journey to the Gulf of California in the Never Summer Range of the Rocky Mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Trickling and burbling and leaping over boulders and cascades, she gains size and power with every tiny rill and stream that joins along the way. In southwestern Colorado, the Gunnison and Dolores rivers double her size, and when the Green River joins her in the canyon country of southeast Utah, this river becomes the force capable of carving the Grand Canyon, 225 miles downstream.
For much of its length throughout Colorado, the river is a bubbling mountain stream: clear, cold, narrow and energetic. Then the river begins to carve into the Uncompahgre Plateau in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah. Here, she changes character dramatically, gaining power and momentum as she makes a deep incision into the layered red rocks of the uplifted plateau. In some places, these sediments from the Age of Dinosaurs sit directly on top of black and twisted schists, ancient rocks formed when our continent bore no resemblance whatsoever to the country we know now, and no living creatures inhabited the land.
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As the river exits the Uncompahgre Plateau, she flows out into the familiar red sandstones of Canyonlands country. Here she runs serene and calm, between the narrow sandstone and limestone walls splashed in sunset colors, meandering through wide bends, looping back on her path as if uncertain of which direction to flow. When she makes up her mind, she straightens her course and moves downstream to her confluence with the Green in the heart of Canyonlands National Park.
CISCO TO HITTLE BOTTOM
MOAB FLAT WATER DAY PADDLE
MEANDER CANYON
Red River Canoe Company
1371 North Highway 191
Moab, Utah 84532
800-753-8216
redriver@redrivercanoe.com