Water Sports: A Playground on the Colorado

Disregard the proper, the conservative, the average. Get up the lake. Poke into its 96 canyons. Let the lake take hold. Listen to it. Watch the changes that occurchanges in color, shadow, reflection. Notice the people—their variety, their expressions, their antics.Remind you of something? If you think in terms of extravaganza, you're close. If you carry that thought back toward the turn of the century, you're closer, still.

Now, really go for it and put the whole caboodle onto a giant stage, call it vaudeville, and you've got it! All the colors, characters, comedy, and movement of a stupendous vaudeville sketch.

Lean back, close your eyes and listen. Hear that? Really, it's the gurgle and plip of water against the hull of a metal bass boat drifting in some shadowed cove. Or it's the drip of water off a canoe or kayak paddle.

Hear the hollow swish? That's Colorado River water pushing the rubber rafts closer to Hite Marina. And the full-bellied burble must be some multi-horsepowered ski boat idling, getting set to sweep up the main channel of Lake Powell.

Put them together with a wild snatch of laughter echoing from red canyon walls, a yelp of momentary agony following the quick splash of a lone diver belly flopping off the topside of some tied-up houseboat, or the silence of inner pleasure derived from watching that big striper come drip-ping off the end of a heavily bent fiber-glass rod.

Call it music of a sort. Background. Now, sit back and watch, for it's surely an extravaganza, my friend, with myriad water sports occupying stage center, high fliers overhead, and on stages right and left are all the hikers and photographers and painters and nature buffs who come to Powell each year and use the lake as their resource for pleasure. Besides providing a background of some of the world's greatest scenic splendor, it is one of the largest and most popular recreation areas in the country.

The big production begins each morning, no matter what the weather, in that before-dawn time when the most ordinary sounds are thinned and quickly swallowed in the great silence that hangs like a gentle mist over the lake. Fishermen stow their gear and shove off, looking for a new record. Stripers and largemouth bass, rainbow and brown trout, crappie and catfish, pike, shad, bluegill, and sunfish grow to astonishing sizes in the deep waters.

Fishermen come alone or they come in groups: families or clubs or tours. They fish for fun or for prizes, and they come from nearby Page or they travel hundreds of miles to test their luck and their expertise.

Arizona Bass-ters, Buckeye Bass Mas-ters, Four Corners Bass Club, Western Bass Fishing-all sponsor tournaments at Powell; all go for the record catch. Or to top it.

Plenty of places have plenty of fish, so why Powell?

Tom Stiles over at Western Bass says their 200 to 300 members go to Powell at least once each year "because fishing is good there most all the year, it's a scenic spot that can't be equaled, and while hus-bands fish, their families find plenty to do on the lake and at the marinas."

Like a shapely and well proportioned chorus line, boats of every description provide the basic framework for activi-ties on the lake. They sashay about, pull-ing skiers and para-sails, taking visitors from one place to the next scenic point, and providing a variety of people with a wide variety of services. They range in size from the little rental paddle boats that trundle close to shore, powered by the knee and elbow grease of their passen-gers, to the 100-by 26-foot Canyon King.

Canoes and kayaks, bass boats and sail-boats, powerboats, tour boats and private cruisers-a couple as large as the two 70-foot Summerset Cruisers up at Hall's Crossing-provide access to the nooks and holes on canyon-enclosed waterways. Folks with jet skis and wet bikes buzz around, and who knows when a houseboat -a rental or the do-it-yourself-in-your-own-backyard variety-will putt its stately way around a turn of red rocks? The rule of thumb seems to be, "If it floats or flies, try it on Powell." And they do. Vic VanHorn makes the eight-hour trip from Yuma, driving past other large waterways in order to launch his 19-foot Barron Sprint at Wahweap Marina. He usually goes with "a bunch of friends," rents a large houseboat for a couple of weeks and tows the ski boats behind. Again, why Powell? "It's big; you never see the same things twice. As often as we've been going up there, we haven't begun to see everything or every place on the lake. We can ski, fish, or race anywhere on the lake, and it's always the best experience." Vic's friends, Don and Polly Johnson, talk about those qualities and more. "The lake is vast and really beautiful. No matter how many people go there for a week-end or a vacation, the size of the lake seems to eat 'em up. There's room for everyone to find privacy and to just kick back and relax and enjoy yourself." In the water, on it, or above it, an explosion of people makes use of the facilities and they bring a great selection of gear to enjoy themselves with. David Price grew up in Page, watched the lake fill, worked as a tour guide out there, and has become a leading character in the extravaganza that comprises that particular water sports scenerio. "Collette and I were married out there a couple of years ago-July Fourth, off Antelope Point. About a hundred friends came out in their boats for the ceremony and a giant picnic." When the ceremony concluded, a friend rounded off the occasion by throwing rice from a para-sail. From that time, David and Collette and their family have spent every spare minute on the 42-foot cruiser they keep at Wahweap, and that cruiser is well fitted with all the extras: skis, wet bikes, and anything else that might provide fun on the water. "There's so much to do; so many things to see, and there's just not enough time to see and do it all. Every canyon is unique."

The Prices, like many other sportsmen, go to the lake for more than the spectacular scenics. They have and use their wet bikes and jet skis, pull their hydro slides and ski seats and skim boards behind the powerboats, try the ascending chutes and the neoprene J-tubes, and they talk about the new high fliers-water skis with the hydrofoil that can lift them up to three feet above the lake's surface.

Steve Ward, an avid sportsman and director of purchasing for Del Webb Properties, talked enthusiastically about the wide variety of water sports on the lake.

The sporting life at Lake Powell means a variety pack of adventures, from exciting para-sailing, to water skiing, to lakeside camping, to sailing and hiking among the lonely canyons washed by the lake's waters. Whatever your particular water-related sport may be you'll find it and experience it at Lake Powell.