Trip #4…our first trip!

Just as an overview, Lake Powell has a full-pool shoreline of just over 1900 miles, more than the entire length of the West Coast of the United States. The Trash Tracker runs 24 trips from April to November. Most trips are five-day trips, but two are seven-day jaunts. I don’t know how much trash each trip generates, but our first trip volunteers gathered about 3,000 pounds of lost and discarded junk. To be fair to boaters, most of the stuff collected would have been blown overboard by the notorious winds, but there are WAY too many obviously discarded beer cans, cigarette butts and the like. The big stuff…towels, clothes, mattresses, umbrellas, etc. are due to the winds. Most of these items are totally unnecessary trash because people just don’t tie things down. If something on a boat is not tied down, it’s going to wind up in the water and have to be collected by Trash Tracker volunteers. We obviously can’t walk the entire length of the lake, but I bet we cover about 60-75% of the lake. The sheer rock walls can be covered by boat (we cruise slowly along the walls and impassable shoreline), but the beaches have to be walked by us and the volunteers. It’s a hard, but mentally rewarding job that is very much appreciated by Aramark and the N.P.S.

As D-Day (Departure Day) drew near, the weather turned snotty and the weather reports were more than foreboding. The forecast for Wednesday was for 15-25 knot winds in the morning starting around 10:00 am, increasing to 35-45 knots in the evening with gusts of 55-60 knots. Our plan was to get our volunteers loaded as rapidly as possible and take off before the big winds hit us. To say I was apprehensive was an understatement of the greatest magnitude. Sleep did not come easy on Tuesday.

Wednesday morning had us up early. We took most of our stuff down to the boat on Tuesday so all we had to load were the last-minute items. We pulled in the slides, buttoned up the rig, very reluctantly said “Goodbye” to Gizmo and headed for the docks. We grabbed two dock carts and headed for the TT. We were there before Greg and JoAnn, so we put our stuff away and got the boat ready to go. They showed up about 8:00 and we were soon headed for the Wahweap Marina where we were to pick up our volunteers.

I nosed the boat into the dock and we waited for the volunteers to arrive. After a few minutes, Cody, our boss, showed up and then Betsy, our N.P.S. Ranger arrived. Cody brought down our first paycheck…$40.17 each. Hot damn and hallelujah! Tonight is party night! When our volunteers arrived, we had the obligatory “Good Morning’s”, “Welcome’s” and “Thank you’s” They were from some very small towns in Colorado at about 10-11,000 feet. Their ages ran 50, 61, 64 and 81. The one woman, age 50 and the lone male, age 61, appeared to be in pretty good shape, but we had great reservations about the two older ladies being able to do the necessary work. Half their luggage was in bottles or cans. The boat was soon stocked better than our local BevMo liquor store back home. This was not looking good!

After the welcoming speeches by Betsy and Cody, we untied the lines and headed off to who knows what. We motored toward Castle Rock, went through “The Cut”, a dredged shortcut through Antelope Island, and headed uplake toward Gunsight Bay, our ultimate destination.

The entrance buoy at Gunsight Bay

The wind picked up as we motored along but it didn’t affect us too much as it was a following wind. (That’s nautical talk for “The wind was behind us”)

After a couple of hours, we pulled into Gunsight Bay and started looking for a sheltered “Honey Hole”. After a couple of false landings, we came upon a good-looking spot and I nudged the boat against the mud bank.

The "Trash Tracker"...our home for the summer!

The surrounding shoreline area was primarily covered with big rocks so we set out five mooring lines, all attached securely around huge and semi-huge boulders. Let the wind blow now. We weren’t going anywhere! Since it was still early, we all got ready and headed out for a few hours of picking trash.

"The Eliminator", aka "The Barge"

The trash picking lasted only about two hours, as the wind picked up and we were soon sandblasted with red dirt and sand. We quit and returned to the boat. Cocktail hour came early. Our guests were soon quite loaded, laughing mightily and raising all kinds of hell. Luckily, they were happy drinkers. Dinner was not uneventful and the party continued far into the beautiful night.

Finally, everyone fell into bed and the cove became quiet again, except for the pulsating howl of the wind. For the next trip, we will double the amount of eye drops we carry.

The rest of the trip went pretty well except for Thursday afternoon when we called Cathy, the lady who was dog-sitting Gizmo. The 60 knot winds must have scared him pretty badly. He was hiding under the driver’s seat and wouldn’t come out and snapped at her. Claudia and I made a semi-emergency run back home in the runabout and brought him back to the TT, much to the delight of the volunteers. As far as the rest of the trip went, we found the usual stuff…fireworks (illegal here on the lake), 154 golf balls, aluminum and tin cans, many shirts, towels and assorted clothing, four anchors, the cylinder head from a V-6 engine, two umbrellas, a pop-up tent and a burned-out boat.

Claudia, Greg and JoAnn digging out a fiepit

All was picked up or wrestled back to the barge.

On Sunday, we got up early and, since it was pretty breezy, side-tied both the barge

Captain Claudia at the helm of the Eliminator

and runabout and headed back down the lake. When we got to the junction near Navajo Canyon, we cut the barge loose and headed into the canyon looking for a mattress that Greg found earlier and tied to a rock. We couldn’t find it and returned to the TT under increasing winds and then headed for the Wahweap dock to unload trash and clean and refuel the boats.

We filled two dumpsters with just over 3,000 pounds trash, an excellent trip!
The volunteers loaded their car and we said our goodbyes. The four of us then cleaned, fueled and pumped the holding tanks all the boats and squeezed the TT into the dock at the end of a line of rental houseboats. After a last-minute, post-trip pow wow, we all left the boat and returned to our respective RV’s to R E L A X!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today, Monday, Claudia, Gizmo and I are headed back to the boat to fully inventory, replenish and rig it to our liking. Claudia will handle the interior, I will handle the outside engineering, line replacement, towing and rigging. Gizmo will direct the proper placement of his food and water dish. After that, we have a whole three days off! Look out Page, here we come!