During the week of March 20, 2006, Chris Ballew and I took a kayaking trip to Lake Powell in

the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area near Page, AZ.  We rented two sea kayaks on

Monday in Page, and then headed out to the lake.  We ended up putting in at Wahweap Bay

because I had heard there were problems with car break-ins at Antelope Point.  I asked the

guy we rented the kayak from about the break-ins, and he said it wasn't a big problem,

because he only knew of one client who had been broken in to.  Well, that seemed like enough

to me, so we put in at Wahweap.  Unfortunately, the weather was calling for winds to pick up

by 2 pm in the afternoon, and it was calling for some bad winds and rain on Tuesday.  And we

wouldn't be on the water until 11 am on Monday.  So we were faced with trying to get to my

goal at Labyrinth Canyon which was about a 5 hour paddle, or stopping somehwere closer.  I

opted to go to Warm Creek Bay since we didn't have much paddle time on Monday before the

wind got bad.  But since we were putting in at Wahweap, that would still have required at least

a 6 hour paddle.  So I decided we should try to portage to boats across what used to be

Antelope Island, but what is now really Antelope Peninsula since the lake water levels have

dropped about 90 feet.  This was a lot of fun.  We paddled across Wahweap Bay and carried

our gear and kayaks the .68 miles across Antelope.  It took one scouting trip, one gear trip and

two kayak trips.  In all, we hiked about 4.5 miles for this portage...and, believe me, it was not

easy carrying those sea kayaks.  But we had to do it, because the wind kicked up at about

noon, and we would have never been able to paddle very far around Antelope Point.  We then

tried to paddle across the other side of Warm Creek Bay, but the waves coming over the bows

of the boats, and it was taking us forever to paddle the mile and a half across the bay, so we

turned around and camped on Antelope on the Warm Creek Bay side.  The next day the wind

was worse with gusts up to 25 miles per hour, so we hiked about a mile and a half out to a

geocache.  We found the cache and hiked back to camp.  Chris left a glove at the cache,

however, so he hiked back and got the glove.  Then we hiked along the bay some, until the

rain came at about 2 pm.  From then it poured rain non-stop until about 5 am on Wednesday.

Which was great, because my relatively new tent decided this would be a good time to start

leaking.  So that was a lot of fun.  To add to the fun, my water filter also decided it was a good

time to stop working.  I don't know what was wrong with all my gear on this trip.  So we spent a

wet, sandy day and night in the tent on Tuesday.  Then we got up by 6 am on Wednesday and

paddled back to Wahweap.  It was a 16 mile paddle that took us about 7.5 hours altogether.

But the weather was outstanding and the lake was perfectly calm, so it was a lot of fun.  The

lake was really pretty with the looming canyon walls and the sandstone side canyons.  There

weren't many other boats on the lake at all, so that was nice.  At the camp we saw lots of

coyote tracks and some tracks that I really believe were mountain lion, but I wasn't positive.

We only saw two people the whole time we were out there before we got back to the main

channel of the river on Wednesday.  One was on a boat in Wahweap Bay as we were

beginning to try our portage, and he asked us if we were okay or needed help.  The other was

in a small plane that flew over us while we were hiking out to the cache on Tuesday, and he

banked his plane to check on us.  It was nice to know that people out there would look out for

you if you needed help.  But this was a great trip.  Because of the weather we didn't get to go

to Labyrinth Canyon, but I'll save that for another trip.  Lessons I did learn from my first sea

kayking trip: I only average about 2.5 miles an hour on calm water; it's better for my back if I

slouch a little in the seat; the rudder really helped a lot; I need waterproof gloves; I need to

keep my sunscreen, food and water close by (I did this, I just need to be sure I don't forget it!);

and lastly, weather is a MAJOR factor when you're paddling a boat.  I've experienced that

problem in Okefenokee, Boundary Waters and Alaska...and now I've expereinced it in Arizona.

So I'm batting 1000 on encountering bad weather on the water.  But I think I'll try to keep at it!

This is a great trip, though, and highly recommended.  Just be sure not to go in the really busy

summer months, because all the boats would be irritating.  We also did some hiking along the

Paria River in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on Sunday before we went

out on the lake.  We hiked about 5 miles up the canyon to Kitchen Canyon and then turned

around after the weather started to get questionable.  Also, you can check out our track log of

the paddle from the camp back to Wahweap on Wednesday.