Is Lake Powell worth a long road trip?

[cxk]

What kind of skis are you doing the trip on? My svho will get over 100 miles on a tank while cruising. Of course in the boost not so much. But you are cruising and looking at what you get to see rather than flat out trying to get to point b.
Enjoy take lots of pictures and stop and enjoy the views.

We've got Seadoo GTI 130SE's. After seeing what CJ posted, I think we can make it. I'm sure we will go pretty slow to site see.

[CJ River Rider]

Docks @ Rainbow Bridge.

[blkturbo!]

Oh I forgot to check the map and I'm back at work again. I can't tell from the map posted above (with my phone) if that route is including or not including the famous "short cut" in the Wahweap bay. The short cut does make a notable difference in time and distance spent (which does NOT apply anyway since water is way too low). Plan on a long time riding round trip to Dangling rope and/or Rainbow Bride on skis alone. Especially if you get choppy water to slow you down.

A say long time because not only the distance alone, but also the sight seeing and pics will of course add to time and also because that's a lot of time in direct hot sun with no boat as a home base for some shade. I'd start early for the calm waters, less boat chop and the cooler sunlight. Also, wear light colored long sleeve or rash guard for total sun screen.
Not trying to sound like your dad or whatever with all this...just a reminder to the already obvious that Powell is very vast and very shade-less

[blkturbo!]

And don't forget about the boat tours offered through Wahweap marina! It's a great/much easier way to spend getting to and from Rainbow Bridge if you decide to keep the skis for "local" riding! By boat tour, Rainbow is 6hrs (or 7 max) round trip without the shortcut. The shorter tours are cool too...all are great with the girl under your arm

Do Antelope Canyon while in Page! Maybe I said this already in this thread, I don't remember. I suggest doing the "lower" Antelope canyon since it's much prettier and more interesting. Plus, you won't want to kill anybody by the end of the tour as you do in Upper canyon.
It's off the road to your left as you approach Antelope Point marina by car, across the highway from the "upper". Look for tons of cars in the parking lot now

[blkturbo!]

Just 2 of my personal favorite shots (of many) that I've taken in the Lower antelope canyon. If you do go down there and you enjoy taking pics, be sure to enter the canyon LAST in your tour group. Certainly not first. It'll make your time in there more enjoyable with extra minutes to snap as many pics as you can along the way

[nmpeter]

in regards to shade and water, you can never have enough of both.

apply sunscreen to your ears, especially the tops, a ball cap does not protect these very sensitive patches of hard to replace skin.

So if I sound like your dad, tough nuts. Half an ear is kinda hard to look at in person, if you love the person with half an ear.

UV is stronger now then it was 20 years ago and exposure is cumulative.

If it's a tell..this is what the say about skin cancer if your an outdoorsman in New Mexico:

You've had it already
You're on the way to getting it.

Deadly it is. And in ways you wouldn't even suspect.

So word of the day for lake p
Expect to be exposed
take precautions
get any edge you can

that's pretty much the day rule around here. You get in trouble someplace not often traveled, and you could have a life changer on your hands if something goes really wrong.

Consider having a personal locator beacon in your kit. The tech available now and coverage is vastly improved and I have one on the list for the coming duck season here. Couple of hundred bucks well spent if you have to actually deploy it. Decent conversation starter if you don't.

"If I push this button..watch the black helicopters appear!"<<and guess what..they will!>>

going back to powell is on my short list, but I have far more exotic locations to visit while I'm still comfortable walking. stay tuned for those

[cxk]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]363624[/ATTACH]Just 2 of my personal favorite shots (of many) that I've taken in the Lower antelope canyon. If you do go down there and you enjoy taking pics, be sure to enter the canyon LAST in your tour group. Certainly not first. It'll make your time in there more enjoyable with extra minutes to snap as many pics as you can along the way

We are planning to go on the tours from lowerantelope.com. My wife will lose her mind in there, I'll probably have to push her along haha.

in regards to shade and water, you can never have enough of both.

apply sunscreen to your ears, especially the tops, a ball cap does not protect these very sensitive patches of hard to replace skin.

So if I sound like your dad, tough nuts. Half an ear is kinda hard to look at in person, if you love the person with half an ear.

UV is stronger now then it was 20 years ago and exposure is cumulative.

If it's a tell..this is what the say about skin cancer if your an outdoorsman in New Mexico:

You've had it already
You're on the way to getting it.

Deadly it is. And in ways you wouldn't even suspect.

So word of the day for lake p
Expect to be exposed
take precautions
get any edge you can

that's pretty much the day rule around here. You get in trouble someplace not often traveled, and you could have a life changer on your hands if something goes really wrong.

Consider having a personal locator beacon in your kit. The tech available now and coverage is vastly improved and I have one on the list for the coming duck season here. Couple of hundred bucks well spent if you have to actually deploy it. Decent conversation starter if you don't.

"If I push this button..watch the black helicopters appear!"<<and guess what..they will!>>

going back to powell is on my short list, but I have far more exotic locations to visit while I'm still comfortable walking. stay tuned for those

Thanks for the tips. We will be very careful with the sunscreen. My wife already went through chemo last year, not for skin cancer, but we still aren't willing to take any chances. I'll have to google that personal locator thing, that sounds like a great idea. I know cell signal will probably crap out after a short time out there.

[04gtxsc]

the spot can be bought at pretty much any out door store. Cabellas, bass pro etc

[blkturbo!]

I also may have already mentioned -- wear an analog watch to keep track of time since your cell phone will be confused and flipping back and forth between time zones once you get away from Wahweap marina going upstream.

And for the Antelope canyon, the photographer will benefit from a tripod because of the lower light. Otherwise, plan on laying against the walls for steady shots with slightly delayed exposures, but you'll be doing that all along the way anyway.
*For the photographer, the better all-around time slots for Lower Antelope is mid-morning or mid-afternoon (1-4ish) ---> for softer sunlight, capturing a wider range of color potential in your photos such as mine posted above.
*For Upper Antelope, lunch time (mid day/noonish) is best for seeing and photographing the famous light beam effects from the sun shooting straight down into the canyon (not something you really want for the Lower canyon photos.

Try to reserve a couple hours to hike to and from "Horseshoe Bend overlook" (15 minute hike each way) - CO river overlook just a short few mile drive below the Dam...my river pic posted above.

[cxk]

Anyone live near or get out on Powell regularly? I've been planning this trip for about 4 months and now this "toxic sludge" from that colorado mine is about to enter the lake just weeks before we are planning to go. Now, I know theres roughly 1-3 million gallons that have leaked and Powell has 4.24 trillion gallons in it currently. It's entering the lake near the San Juan river portion and we likely can't reach that point without needed to fuel on the lake. It's got my wife a little concerned due to her health history. If anything I can shift our trip dates back since we don't have to worry about hotels. I'd rather still go when we've planned though.

If anyone here will be on the lake or have some intel on how its been affected by this spill please share.

Side note: The EPA seriously let this happen? I have a pest control business and I spend a lot of my days not doing this or that and reading pesticide labels that are primarily used by high school graduates at best but are written like a horrible word problem from college math classes. Accidents happen, but when I screw up they can fine me. Do I get to fine them after this one? hah

[nmpeter]

I somehow doubt the epa will prevent the entry of the contaminated water into lake powell.

Nothing better to get people out then to contaminate the water supply.

just who were these epa whiz kids?

Dilution is NOT an acceptable solution. We'll be seeing the effects of the BP spill and subsequent dilution for decades to come.

This spill will go down on the books as one of the worst.

Wait till the wells start coming up bad.

[DrivingZiggy]

The EPA seriously let this happen?

It was my understanding that they made it happen.

[nmpeter]

things happen fast when large quantities of water are involved.

That's the problem in this part of the county. There are thousands of abandoned mines, typically dug until they breached the water table so you have deathtraps everywhere ready to snag an uninformed hiker. In some situations the water can accumulate until it can breech a low point and run downhill.

The dry holes are worse, you'll fall 100 feet to the bottom of a shaft with no hope of escape.

The water there was already tainted..but now it's REALLY tainted and people are freaking out. The water couldn't support fish before the release...for a while it's going to be further restricted...the economic losses are going to be huge.

The workers involved should be held accountable, but we know they won't "it was an accident"

mining was very dirty and dangerous work, but without it, the county wouldn't have grown.

I have a buddy here who has small claim and works about $1000 a month worth of gold out of it. Less these days with the drop in prices, but hauling hundreds of five gallon pails full of dirt all day isn't my idea of a good time.

They really should be treating the water again before it reaches lake Powell, as I said earlier, dilution is no solution.

[cxk]

Well, we went to Lake Powell. Not everything went perfectly but goddamnit, I went haha. We were supposed to go August 22nd but as I was packing the truck and preparing we noticed our house's AC was having trouble, turned out the inside fan motor was going out. We weren't able to go that week so I quickly scrambled to reschedule and work with my family for new days off 2 weeks later. Of course, the weather was looking crappy out there leading up to the trip dates. Everyone told me "Its the desert, it will barely rain if it does at all." I also realized there was no way I could postpone it again and still go this year so I just said screw it, and we headed out.

There isn't much to do on the drive, but the scenery is pretty nice at times. We left on a Sunday, got to powell Monday around 3 after a night outside of Albuquerque and a short stop at the Grand Canyon. I wish I could say the weather was nice, but we rolled into Page and it was pouring. After the weather cleared it was 70 degrees and almost 5pm. We decided to at least get on the water that day since we didn't have a ton of time there. Holy crap, that boat ramp is the craziest thing I've ever seen. I knew it was long, but after putting the skis in the water and parking the truck it took me 8-10 minutes to walk back to the skis. I didn't stop for a break, its about half a mile if you map it on Google lol. After about 30 minutes of riding the storms started rolling back in, we could see lightening so we decided to get off the water. The weather for the next day wasn't looking great either, I was getting pretty bummed. The rain was unbelievable that night. If you read the beginning of this thread you'll see we were sleeping in the truck. We drove to the Lone Rock campground and decided not to stay there since it was raining so hard and we've get sand all in our bed and possibly get the truck stuck. We ended up sleeping at Walmart, which was actually quite nice, lots of RVs there. The only down fall was it kept raining...almost all night. We kept having to sleep with the windows up off and on, luckily it was cool. The next day we found about 5 inches of water in the ski's foot wells. The weather had started to work with us Tuesday, we got on the water around 9am after it warmed up to about...68 degrees lol. We got to ride for quite a while, but then the wind picked up to about 18-20mph which seems to much higher than the usual wind speed. The canyon walls helped but we found white caps around a bend that prevented us from making it too far down the lake. My wife was getting cold, the spray was pretty chilly.

I had made reservations to visit Lower Antelope Canyon but they called and canceled from all the rain the night before. It may sound like I'm complaining about the rain but a group of people died just a short time up the road from us due to flooding. I'm grateful we were safe even if we were put out. We did stop by Horseshoe Bend, that was an amazing thing to see. The lake is really gorgeous, I hope we can go back soon and spend a lot more time there in the next few years. Luckily we didn't spend a ton of money, we probably spent around $650 on gas, food and the outrageous $60 entry fee to Wahweap ($20 for the truck, $20 for each jet ski...yikes) Not staying in hotels cut several hundred dollars from the cost. If anyone is wondering, we slept great in the truck, better than I expected by far. I'll add some pictures and a video of the lake.

Lake pics:


Watch in HD

Our bed, I've had more questions about that lol

[cxk]

I figured I'd just use this old thread instead of making a whole new Powell thread. When we went the first time, I wanted to try to jet ski from Wahweap to Rainbow Bridge. The weather and time didnt allow for it. Its roughly 50 miles each direction.

Has anyone pulled off this trip on jet skis? I know I'd need to stop for gas at Dangling Rope and I'll be paying a crazy about for it. Its actually cheaper than taking the boat tour though, and the adventure of it would be cool.

Does anyone know if this channel is actually passable on jet skis? It saves several miles if so.