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Show Record 1917. We then returned to our camp on the Colorado River. The ice gorge had gone out but we did not have much food left and thought we better go back up the river. We left our scow and came back up the river in our boat to Smith Canyon Bottoms, located two or three miles above Hanson Canyon, where we loaded our outfit on to mules and went up to Hite and thence out from the River through 3499 North Wash and back to Green River. Going up the river that trip, some of it was pretty tough. Rowing and towing we could make 3500 sometimes five, sometimes ten miles, according to the water. The trip I have just been describing was taken in 1919 instead of 1917. In 1916, which was the year of the Thanksgiving Day storm, my partner and I built a boat at Moab, intending to go down the river, but because of the heavy snow we were afraid to try Cataract Canyon and decided to make the river trip from the town of Green River to Moab. There was ice in the Green River that year from the middle of January until about the middle of February, 3501 when the ice went out. We built a boat at Green River that had a square stern and was a cross between a scow and a skiff. It had a draft of about seven or eight inches. When the ice went out in February we started down the Green River. There was still ice flowing in the river and occasionally it would jam. We would wait until it went out and follow on downstream. This continued until we reached the mouth of the San Rafael, when all ice disappeared suddenly, except a little along the edges, and from there on we had nothing to stop us. 3502 " There were some sand bars, but nothing of any consequence; they didn't bother us any. We were bothered a little just below Green River, but largely because of the cake ice that was lodged in the riffles there." Upon arriving at the junction of the Green and Colorado 3503 River, we went up the Colorado River. Going up the Colorado to Moab we had the usual upstream trip - rather hard and tedious. It 3504 was pretty much heavy rowing. We had two pairs of oars with us |