Dirty Devil: Angel 2 Burr

Here’s a sweet 3 day packraft just south of Hanksville Utah that takes one through the Heart of the Dirty Devil river. We started at the Angel Point trailhead Friday AM, hiked 3 miles to the mouth of Robbers Roost (1:40hrs) and paddled to Angel Cove to fill up with water for the trip from the perennial spring. Another ~3.5hrs paddling took us to No Man Canyon and camp for the night. No Man is definitely worth a hike with two Fremont Indian ruins, bones, arrowheads, and a sweet rim trail that catches the evening sun.

The river was running 100cfs making for interesting “paddling.” It required a Zen like mentality to intuit the river channel and avoid having to get out of the boat every 10min. One of the crew packrafted this section at 150cfs and didn’t see much difference. So to actually float the river would require at least 200cfs. I wouldn’t packraft it with less than 100cfs. Overall we averaged a leisurely ~2mph over 20 river miles. That said it was clean, drinkable, and fun.

On Saturday we paddled to the mouth of Twin (~6hrs) and camped on the west side of the river. (Anyone have any beta on that awesome Castletonian tower? Both front and back look to have 5 star, 300ft wingate splitters.) Sunday was up and out to Burr Point via Kelsey’s grand alcove trail (5.4 miles, 4:20hrs). This was a highlight of the trip, even with big packs. Bring a rope to haul packs up the easy 15ft cliff with a couple 5.2 moves.

Google Earth kmz with trip waypoints and tracks: http://bioserver.hci.utah.edu/Misc/BCB/KML/DirtyDevil-Angel2BurrMarch2014.kmz
Photos: https://plus.google.com/photos/111486868647455836782/albums/5997169920525545873

Misc:
Time to go, March or early April. They drain it in for irrigation in the spring.
Good camps at Angle Cove, No Man, Larry, nice looking one 1/2 way between Larry and Twin on west (see kmz), OK camp across from Twin at exit.
45min car shuttle each way between Angel and Burr trailheads. 2 wheel OK.
Class I, no need for spray skirt (you’ll be out of the boat a lot) or life jacket at 100-150cfs.
Don’t miss Jilberto burritos in Wellington.

Looks so good!

Yes to Jilberto’s in Wellington.

they are all great pictures! Nice rock art!