According to the U.S. Dept of the Interior / U.S. Geological Survey there are 11 recognized islands in the Great Salt Lake, including Stansbury Island, the second biggest. Even the geniuses at BrainyGeography.com recognize Stansbury as a bonafide island. According to Webster's Dictionary, an island is "a tract of land completely surrounded by water".
Ken and I were seeking an endurance paddling session that would show our duck-billed teammates from the watery confines of Portland that we were keeping pace with the kayak training. Traveling in straight lines has never been our style, though, so rather than a shore-to-shore traverse across the Great Salt Lake, Ken took a queue from the USGS, and suggested we circumnavigate the 2nd largest "ISLAND" in the lake. We figured about 4-5 hours of paddling with the rudder turned to the left slightly and we would be done, with plenty of time to throw in a nine mile trail run and a 12 mile technical bike ride with the lights. The perfect tri-fecta. At least that's what we thought.
So, then, imagine the surprise to Ken and I when we discovered that this tract of land called Stansbury Island was actually connected to the mainland by way of a vast, bone-dry salt-bar. In fact, more, than half of the "island" is surrounded by a dry salt bed, which, we supposed, was a really salty moat of water during some recently transpired millennium.
Arrrrrrrrhhhh!!
In spite of our disappointment, since we had already gone through the trouble of schlepping Chad's Necky double sea kayak and all of our paddling gear out to Stansbury "Peninsula", we decided were not going to be denied so easily. We desperately searched for drive-up access to open water and a proper launching point. It turns out that all roads leading to the shoreline on Stansbury are blocked by locked gates situated miles away from the actual edge of the lake.
As we turned away from, yet another locked gate, we noticed right next to our road a long vein of water, a narrow man-made canal about 15 feet wide, filled with water and lined up in the right general direction. Okay, it was more of a ditch, but it fulfilled the minimum criteria: it had flowing water, deep enough to paddle in!
True to our "next epic adventure" mantra, we were in full-on discovery mode, and the promise of a first ascent up the unexplored channel and the discovery of a secret passage leading to the Great Salt Lake was giving us goose bumps.
Of course, neither of us had a clue how far away the source of the ditch flow was, nor did we know if the source was the main body of the Salt Lake or a bubbling crude in the middle of the Morton Salt factory. But, hey, we were no more clueless than the other pair of water-borne explorers. No, not Tom and Huck. I mean the guys who thought that the source of the mighty Missouri River was the Pacific Ocean. Okay, you're probably saying too yourself that Lewis and Clark didn't have access to the modern conveniences like satellite photos, Google Earth and USGS (big help!), but, hell, the original Corps of Discovery had a walking GPS Receiver named Sacagawea, so that has to even-up the navigational ambiguities a bit, doesn't it???
In any event, our first mile of paddling up the canal was pure Nirvana. The current was light, the bottom was a couple feet deep and we were making great time. The water itself was surprisingly clear, save the plethora of living and dead Sea Monkeys (i.e. Brine Shrimp) floating near the surface. As our two bobbing heads cruised past the grazing cows that lined either side of the canal, some of the elders bovines held their ground as if ambivalent, while the calves occasionally raised our concerns when they freaked out near the edge above us.
Into our second mile, our rhythmic efficiency was starting to be affected by deteriorating conditions: the water was becoming more shallow and the current was beginning to increase. As a result, we were forced to start "lily-dipping" and make our paddle strokes at a lower angle to the water in order to avoid hitting the mucky bottom with our blades. Needless to say, our progress was reduced to a crawl, and the cows were starting to make fun of us. We continued on in denial, selecting closer and closer "inch stones", so as to create some illusion that we were actually getting closer to the source that would eventually spit us out like Moby Dick, into the placid waters of the Great Salt Lake. So we hoped.
It was at some point shortly thereafter that we hit equilibrium between the strength of the current and the power of our lilly-dipper paddling progress. It was the equivalent of a kayak treadmill. We were forced to concede that we would not reach the source as paddling purists. Portaging would be necessary, as it was for Lewis and Clark when they reached Great Falls.
Being the resourceful adventurers that we are, Ken and I quickly rigged a towing system from spare Bungee cable and paddles that would allow us walk on or near the rim of the canal and allow the boat to remain in the channel, which was becoming shallower and shallower. We were off and running again towards our destination: the source of the Great Salt Lake Canal.
But there was one more obstacle that stood between our boat and the source: real white water rapids, formidable enough to wedge or flip our vessel, if we weren't careful.
After passing the rapids with some difficulty, we were back in a towing rhythm towards the source, whatever that would be. But as we looked upwards, towards the darkening skies, one thing became obvious: our hopes for a canal/open water circumnavigation were dashed. Thunderheads were building at an alarming rate and our time was running out. But in the same spirit that pushed Lewis and Clark, albeit on a microscopic scale, Ken and I forged on. As we turned a slight bend in the canal, we finally found the headwaters! A three foot wide pipe with a pump-head was gushing out a tube of sea-green water into the canal.
It was a fitting end to strange but adventurous journey up a little known thread of water through a salt flat peninsula that, when you have Google Earth zoomed way out. looks like it would go with a boat. Not so different than searching for a contiguous river that travels up and over the Continental Divide.
