Summer 2009

A beautiful day on the waters of Lake Powell. We had booked an all day tour to Rainbow Bridge National Monument, about 50 miles up the lake. When we got to the marina, the weather was mostly cloudy and it looked like it would rain. As the day progressed, we got sprinkled on but not enough to even bother getting off the top deck. The forecast was for possible thunderstorms in the afternoon, but the afternoon turned out better than the morning. We still had a high overcast, but lots of breaks in the clouds so that you could easily get a sunburned.

The level of Lake Powell is currently at 3,630 feet above sea level. That is 70 feet below the maximum level, which has not been reached since the lake filled in 1980. The last time the lake was even close to the maximum level was in 1991. The lowered lake level exposes a white band, locally referred to as the Lake Powell Bathtub Ring. The white coloring is from calcium carbonate deposits from the waters of the Colorado River. The lake level is currently rinsing, as it does every spring and summer, due to snow melt in the Colorado River watershed. The depth in the main channel of the lake, as well as in many of the side canyons, exceeds 400 feet. Lake Powell is a boaters paradise and one of the main type of vessel is the houseboat. Another popular vessel is the personal watercraft whose operators take great pleasure in flying across the wake thrown by the tour boat (see photo below).

The tour took us into two side canyons off the main channel. The first, in the morning, was Cathedral Canyon, which we thought was quite tight to maneuver in such a large boat. Cathedral Canyon was a wide canyon compared Cascade Canyon which we navigated in the afternoon. In navigating Cascade Canyon, the boat has to be inches from one wall in order to make the turns. Wind conditions were tricky in Cascade Canyon and we did scrape one wall. The highpoint of the tour was Rainbow Bridge National Monument which is reached through a series of narrow canyons. On the return, we stopped at the marina in Dangling Rope Canyon. There are no power lines, pipelines or highways going to the marina. Supplies are barged in and waste is barged out. Electric power is provided by one of the largest arrays of solar panels in the western United States.

Navajo Generating Station produces more power than Glen Canyon Dam. It relies on coal found on the reservation at Black Mesa.