OCR Text |
Show Record and rocks are a constant strain. For the first year or two after Mr. R. C. Wheeler quit as pilot we touched sand bars now and then and I remember that we once touched a rock; however, we never got stuck on sand bars. We might on occasion have used poles or cars to get off a sand bar that we hit, but usually the water washed 5405 us off. The engines that we used were rather crude and would often stop and we would row ashore at times and would use oars to get off sand bars which were most troublesome in July and the latter part of August. After heavy rains we would only have trouble at the mouth of side washes where floods had come in. Probably the wash at Spring Canyon, which is at the east end of Bowknot about fifty miles below Green River, was the most trouble 5406 some side wash. We never had any trouble at the mouth of the San Rafael, although a good deal of debris and sand is carried down by that stream. I found October and November to be the best period for navigation and the most objectionable time to be in the latter part of June and forepart of July. We do not get the same condi-tions on the river from heavy rains as we do from spring floods. The debris thrown into the river from floods is strictly local. 5407 After a flood comes down a side canyon the debris is gone in few days, except perhaps at Spring Canyon, where the river is twelve to fifteen hundred feet wide and the sand will be spread nearly across the river. The deepest water is always on the outside of a bend, except where a rock has fallen from a cliff and diverted the 5408 channel. There is no general rule as to the passing of the channel from one side of the river to the other. When it swings across 5409 the river there is invariably a cause for it; sometimes its is a rock that has fallen or been thrown in there by a wash. I wouldn't say that there was any deflection on the channel on account of a curve in the river. When the current crosses from one side of the river to the other, you will invariably have sand on the short side of the crossing. So far as my experience goes I have not |