Post
by DIRTYDEVIL » Sun Oct 27, 2013 11:29 pm
I packrafted the East Fork of the Virgin last spring through the Barracks. There is a way around the waterfall. You have to scramble about 50 feet up on river left, right before the falls. There is an eddy to take out among some vehicle sized boulders in the stream. Once you climb 50 feet up, there is a cave you have to slip through to get back down to the stream. The takeout is a few minutes down stream, dont miss it if the stream has a decent flow or you will enter a cataract full of seives and falls, with no way to go back up stream. At the takeout, its a class III and IV climb for the first few hundred feet, then a half day hike across petrified sand dunes and through some narrows west of Checkerboard Mesa. The route out requires great map reading skills. I only paddles the bottom 5 miles of the barracks an 80 cfs from the gage near Sprindale. If you want to paddle from the top of the gorge down to the Zions boundery you will been at least 50 cfs on the USGS gage above the gorge. It looks like may be class III if the stream was higher, say 200 cfs. There are some clear feeder streams and springs for drinking, and slot canyons to explore along the way. The Barracks dont get unreasonably narrow. I didnt encounter any wood portages in the bottom 5 miles, but there maybe some above. The gradient is low and the canyon is plenty wide for portaging above the bottom few miles. The river mostly has a sandy and gravel bottom.
The Uintah Rivers are plenty big enough for paddling. Ive done Chalk Creek, Provo, Duchesne, Yellowstone, and the Uintah Rivers. Ive known of other paddles doing the Weber, Lake Fork, Rock Creek, Whiterocks, Ashley Gorge, Red Rock Creek, Henries Forks, Blacks Forks, East Fork and Stillwater Forks of the Bear. There are other streams that are raftable but have wood. The best whitewater is inside the uintah slate boxes on the south slope. The upper reaches of many of these boxes contain bedrock slides, ledges, and waterfalls. All of these rivers peak around 1000 to 3000 cfs and are pactraftable May through July. Watch out for fallen trees! Best level for safely packrafting these rivers is under 500 cfs visual. You will have to wait till mid May/early June to escape the snow in the lower elevations of the High Uintah Wilderness. And be very careful to not attract bears while camping here, not only for your safety, but because the locals of Utah and rangers are trigger happy for bears that have raided camps even once.
Yes, less is more with the 'mites. 
