When the Rapids Return

When Mike DeHoff was a young Outward Bound instructor on the San Juan River in 1993, the last days of his trips were a literal drag. DeHoff and his students had just spent a week rafting through seventy miles of remote, goosenecking canyons in southern Utah. Even on low water runs, the San Juan’s current was swift as the river slid around bends and through rock gardens. Making miles was easy. But when they reached Grand Gulch, a day’s paddle from the takeout, the river slowed. Their rafts ran aground on sandbars, and his students often had to wade next to the boats or push them downstream. Then the current stopped completely. They’d reached a stagnant finger of Lake Powell, and the river had disappeared into the reservoir. By the time DeHoff rowed all the way to the boat ramp at Clay Hills Crossing, he was usually past ready to head back home to Moab.

Before the completion of the Glen Canyon Dam in 1966, early commercial