Green Means Go

The Green River below Flaming Gorge is one of those special places that I get really excited about, especially this time of the year. The first time I floated Red Canyon I felt like I had won the lottery. I had just gotten back from a summer in Alaska, a trip that got me reinvigorated (to say the least) about fly fishing, when I was first invited to float the A & B sections with a work friend in his home built wooden dory. This is the same friend and the same dory that inspired me to dive in and build my own. I still get that same feeling there.

The earliest boatmen in the canyon sought knowledge of what lay just over the horizon line, and characters like J.W. Powell, the Kolb Bros. and Buzz Holmstrom left their mark here in wooden boats of various design. Even before them the natives traveled the river in 'bull boats', a round predecessor to the skin-on-frame kayak.

When the BOR built Flaming Gorge dam, they forever changed the river downstream. The river that once flowed warm and silty now flows cold and gin clear, it's flows fluctuating wildly like the tides. Suckers, chubs and squawfish have been replaced by brown, rainbow and cutthroat trout, and where natives and interlopers once eked out a living hunting and trapping, and outlaws came to hide from the law of the approaching fronteir, scruffy guides and wannabes now try to eke out a living taking paid clients through the canyon for a shot at catching the brilliantly colored fish that now thrive here.


Wooden boats had all but vanished from this river and many others, replaced by far more practical rubber, plastic, fiberglass and aluminum ones. But it seems now there is a resurgence in interest in wooden boats, and not just for a sense of nostalgia or aesthetics, though both of these certainly play a part. I would like to think that some people are starting to realize that cheap plastic crap isn't all that great afterall. Wooden boats are light, strong and beautiful, and with some care will last a lifetime. And you can build one yourself in your garage.