Take In The Quiet Rhythms Of Labyrinth Canyon, Utah Adrenaline Pumping, This Raft Trip Is Not, But If You Are Looking For A Relaxing Trip, Labyrinth Is It

Big white water gets all the hype, but the supreme sensations of downriver rafting aren’t always visceral and high-adrenaline.

Where the stream runs quiet, the scenery and the geologic past - sometimes the entire cosmos - roar. And we’re free to listen, drifting into what guides and veteran boaters call “river time,” with each day’s rhythms dictated by current and sun and human whims.

River time is especially unhurried on the Green River in southeastern Utah’s remote Labyrinth Canyon, just above Canyonlands National Park.

Labyrinth begins the longest stretch of undammed flat water in the Southwest. Through it the Green runs smoothly, between orange and purple-red cliffs, for more than 50 miles, just right for five days of leisurely rafting and canyoneering.

The Green flows flat for another 60 miles through connecting Stillwater Canyon, which is within Canyonlands Park.

“I can’t think of anything that goes that far without at least a riffle of some kind,” says Ken DeVore, a retired rafting guide who lives near Moab, Utah, with 20 years experience in Utah, Colorado and the Grand Canyon.

DeVore was referring to the combined Labyrinth-Stillwater stretch. Because the entire distance is too long for five days or a week of lazy rafting, his downriver idyll of choice is Labyrinth, as it is with most Green River boaters.

You might imagine that days of slow floating, in current so sluggish that rafters sometimes have to row just to keep up downstream motion, would bore such a seasoned riverrunner.

It doesn’t. “Rapids get in the way of a perfectly good river trip,” DeVore says. “Labyrinth is the epitome of a great river trip.”

His praise for this sleepy stretch of the Green is echoed by other veterans of the world’s wildest rapids.

“If it’s very rough white water, you’re concentrating on the rafting. If it’s a lazy river, you can look around,” says Dr. Bruce Payton, a Denver physician.

Payton, who rafted Labyrinth Canyon on a five-day guided trip, has taken river trips from Alaska’s North Slope to the extreme white water of the Bio Bio in South America.

Easy water made everything on the trip easier, Payton says. “On a lazy river, you take a little more time before breakfast, and you don’t need to be so meticulous about lashing everything down.”

Bob Tanner, a retired orthodontist from Maine who has run the Grand Canyon twice, also floated Labyrinth Canyon on a commercial trip. He spent hours meditating on the geologic history written in the canyon’s walls, which rise vertically more than 1,500 feet. “You get the idea of time and space. It’s just amazing.”

Flat water also lets clients get hands-on experience because it’s less demanding. “You can get behind the oars, be captain of the boat,” Tanner says.

Chuck Nichols, co-owner of Nichols Expeditions, which offers a five-day Labyrinth raft trip, says clients like to slip into the Green and float alongside the group’s rafts.

People can loll comfortably in the river at summer’s end and in early autumn, when the water is about 70 degrees. In spring runoff, high season for white-water aficionados, temperatures are much too cold for comfort.

Labyrinth also lends itself to exploration on foot. Its walls are riven with long side canyons, where hikers burn off excess energy built up in lazy days on the river.

Up every side canyon, and along the Green River itself, people find what may be Labyrinth Canyon’s greatest gift - quiet.

“Once they experience it, they realize that quiet is a resource you don’t have everywhere,” Nichols says.

Because it lacks rapids, Labyrinth Canyon is especially quiet in terms of human intrusion. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which controls this remote canyon and its surroundings and manages recreation use, says that 4,000 to 5,000 people float Labyrinth annually - less than a third of the traffic in white-water Desolation Canyon, just upstream.

But there are signs that the Labyrinth float trip is being discovered.

“White water isn’t all it used to be,” says Sherri Griffith, owner of Sherri Griffith Expeditions in Moab. “As people get past big rapids, they’re going to be needing this more and more. People just want to get away.”

Nichols’ five-day trip in oared rafts costs $725 per person from Moab, the jump-off for most forays into Utah’s Canyonlands area. The company’s final scheduled Labyrinth trip of the 1995 season is Oct. 15-20. The company also offers River Quest, a five-day trip that emphasizes spiritual contact with the wilderness and self-exploration, for $850.

A bargain among guided Labyrinth adventures, for those at least 55 years old, is the $360, six-day, five-night Elderhostel canoe trip, led by the Canyonlands Field Institute, a non-profit environmental and educational organization in Moab. The institute also leads an all-women trip.

But on a river this mild, going guided is only an option. With basic boat-handling skills and competence in low-impact wilderness camping, you’re good enough for Labyrinth.

Outfitters in Moab rent rafts, canoes, kayaks and other equipment, and arrange pickup and drop-off.

Most float-it-yourselfers go by canoe. Tex’s Riverways in Moab rents canoes, with paddles and life jackets, for $15 a day. Round-trip shuttle for equipment and paddlers is $40 per person for just Labyrinth Canyon, which takes four or five leisurely days.

Tex’s also offers its shuttle services to boaters with their own equipment, or who have rented from other companies.

Those with the time to combine Labyrinth and Stillwater Canyons for a 110-mile downriver trip go back to civilization from the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers aboard a jetboat. The fast home stretch follows the Colorado River upstream through Canyonlands Park. Tex’s shuttle service with boat pickup at the rivers’ confluence is $110 per person.

Rental for an oared 12- or 14-foot raft that can comfortably hold two or three adults and ample gear runs $70 a day and up, with discounts for multi-day trips. River Runner Sports and Western River Expeditions, both in Moab, rent oared rafts.

Rafts cost more and go more slowly without the encouragement of a stiff current, but river epicures still consider them the better deal because they’re so much more comfortable.

Bigger, more stable and filled with air, rafts become river-going lounge furniture. You can drift supine, like Huck Finn, and rafts can carry enormous amounts of provisions and gear. Big coolers are standard equipment.

As Ken DeVore puts it, “A raft is your home on the water.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO General Information: Moab-Green River Visitor Information, 805 N. Main St., Moab, Utah 84532; (800) 635-6622 or (801) 259-8825. About Labyrinth Canyon: BLM San Rafael Resource Area, 900 North 700 East, Price, Utah 84501; (801) 637-4591. Equipment Rental And Livery: Tex’s Riverways, P.O. Box 67, Moab, Utah. 84532; (801) 259-5101. River Runner Sports, 401 N. Main St., Moab, Utah 84532; (801) 259-4121. Western River Expeditions, 1371 North Highway 191, Moab, Utah 84532; (801) 259-7019. Tag A Long Expeditions, 452 N. Main St., Moab, Utah 84532; (801) 259-8946. Guided Labyrinth Canyon Trips: Nichols Expeditions, 497 N. Main St., Moab, Utah 84532; (800) 648-8488 or (801) 259-3999. E-mail: nictripsaol.com. Canyonlands Field Institute, P.O. Box 68, Moab, Utah 84532; (801) 259-7750. Holiday River And Bike Expeditions, 544 East 3900 South, Salt Lake City, Utah 84107; (800) 624-6323 or (801) 266-2087. Moki Mac, 100 Silliman Lane, Green River, Utah 84525; (801) 564-3361 Adventure River Expeditions, P.O. Box 96, Green River, Utah, 84525; (800) 331-3324 or (801) 564-3454. Sheri Griffith Expeditions; P.O. Box 1324, Moab, Utah 84532; (800) 332-2439 or (801) 259-8229.