Walter’s Camp to Fisher’s Landing (WTF) is a little visited flatwater run on the very lower Colorado. Slow flat water, no rapids, complicated to access, limited hiking options due to impenetrable tule grass, unpredictable water levels, and for the most part, simply pointless. We love that sort of thing. For our final adventure of 2022 seven of us took six of our wooden boats and spent the Christmas holiday enjoying temperatures in the 70s while the rest of the country endured record-breaking freezes and blizzards.

Here’s a beach.

Cricket struggling:

There are many backwater lagoons due to flooding from Imperial Dam in the 1930s. When I first ran this stretch a dozen years ago, many of the lagoons were accessible through tunnels in the reeds. Now most are closed off with overgrowth. But here’s one that’s still passable.

Sunsets and sunrises were pretty sweet.

Andy’s birthday.

Evening light on Bernie, our adorable little lapstrake dory tender. Bernie likes to glow.

Cricket in the Picacho jail. Somehow she escaped.

More light shows.

Our last evening we chose a dry-topped sandbar, mid-river. Certainly the water wouldn’t come up and cover it for no reason.

Wrong again. We woke at 5 to find the camp underwater and sinking.

But it got us on our way at first light and, consequently, home before dark. All’s well that ends. Well…

A finale sunrise shot to close out 2022. Happy new year, y’all.