Each raft trip we guide along the Green and Yampa Rivers are unique and special in their own way. Whether this be the great people that you meet, the animals you see, scenery, rapids or any number of things along the way each trip is truly special. One trip that stood out for me during the 2019 summer season was a film trip with Visit Utah. Visit Utah is the state of Utah’s travel and tourism marketing department. Visit Utah reached out to us to help guide and host a film trip with the sole purpose of getting high quality video and photography to market Dinosaur National Monument and river rafting along the Green River Gates of Lodore. Visit Utah is promoting lesser known areas of Utah to tourists looking to see the spectacular sights we have here. They are also looking to promote local guide and outfitters in these lesser known areas. As Vernal, Utah’s only locally owned and operated outfitter we were the chosen company. The end results of this co op after six months of editing and refining the video and photos is nothing less than stunning and world class. Visit Utah and there team did a fantastic job of capturing the essence of Dinosaur Monument and what it maybe like to take a river rafting trip along the route of the Green River. This section of the Green River through the Gates of Lodore canyon begins its journey in Colorado’s Brown Park region. With that said most commercial rafting trips begin and end their adventures in Vernal, Utah.
The trip started out as usual with a pre trip meeting at our Vernal, Utah office meeting the guests and film crew, getting them oriented as to what to expect the next four days and providing them with dry bags for day gear and camp time gear. This meeting also provided us an opportunity to learn about what the KNHO film crew would need from us to successfully accomplish their vision while traversing the river canyon. We learned a lot at this meeting and were able to prepare with adequate dry boxes and storage systems for the multitude of cameras, laptops, chargers, solar panels and assorted gear that was required to obtain the high quality footage they took.
The guests were an incredible family that were full of life and excitement wanting to experience as much of the river trip as possible. Nushin (mom) and her three children Layla, Noah and Eesa were chosen from an online audition process to be the focus family in the final film. This family was a great choice, their sense of adventure lent itself perfectly to all the possibilities found on a multi day rafting trip. Each person was excited to hike, swim, try their hand at inflatable kayaks or stand up paddle boarding. Which all lined up perfectly with the story that the producer had envisioned for the films story line. Nushin followed up after the four day trip with a great write up of her and her families experience visiting Dinosaur National Monument and going on their first big river rafting excursion.
Check out her write up here. https://www.visitutah.com/articles/utah-family-rafting-dinosaur-national-monument/
The film crew was a fun group of characters (in a good way, they all had awesome personalities) with some neat backgrounds in the film arts. Sandra Salvas was the trips producer and organized the components for the film crew. Mike Eldredge of KNHO was the films director and a camera man, Austin Balls was the second camera man and Tony Hagerdorn was the photographer. This crew like I mentioned before knew their stuff. The equipment they brought along was Hollywood quality filming gear, single lenses that cost upwards of $10,000.00, super powerful laptops to download each days footage, really cool solar powered generator from Utah’s own Goal Zero. We knew they were good, because we had the opportunity to view previous works on Utah adventures where they captured the essence of mountain biking the Bears Ear National Monument area, horse back riding in Monument Valley, snow skiing the Wasatch Mountain range. All of the film we viewed in advance was beautifully done.
As always, we the crew departed Vernal in the early dark am hours for Brown’s Park Colorado where we would start our four day journey. After a 2 hour drive we arrived at the Gates of Lodore put in where we unloaded the rig truck and trailer load of gear and began preparing the rafts for the guests and film crew to arrive. This process is not quick and can be quite laborious. It takes a lot of gear and the gear can be heavy, cumbersome to move around on a sandy beach and awkward. This part of the trip has to occur to make all the magic happen, without fully rigged rafts it is tough to take a rafting trip. When all the heavy lifting is done there is always a little downtime between having the rafts ready and when the guests arrive. This is guide time where they get to take care of themselves. Brushing teeth, putting on sunscreen, finishing coffee and breakfast the basics that keep them healthy and functioning well. Guide time becomes very valuable as the summer progresses and the wear and tear of sun, sand and water take their toll on a body.
Once the guests arrive everything goes fairly quick from loading the last bits of gear to securing life jackets and safety speech. You are off the van and on to a river adventure in a small whirlwind of time. This is where for me as a guide of 25 years, the trip took a turn and became really interesting. The interesting turn was the artistic aspect that was brought along by the film crew. As an artist and art teacher it was fascinating to work with the crew in setting up the perfect shots, finding the vantage point that really highlighted the scenery and wilderness found in Dinosaur National Monument. These guys are pro’s, their work is all over Hollywood, the internet, You Tube channels with millions of views. They knew what type of imagery they wanted and were meticulous in obtaining it. The film crew had their own boat that was able to leap frog the rafts and set up in advance to take video and photos. At times the film boat would be an hour or so ahead of us while the film crew would take hikes up above the canyon floor. Sometimes hiking 500 vertical feet or so above us to get some of the most incredible aerial views I have ever seen of Lodore Canyon. This process became rather quick and seamless as we all became a tight crew working on this film project together.
Throughout the filming process, Sandra and her crew amazed us constantly with high tech and low tech camera gear. All the while they were excellent at answering our layman questions as to what this equipment was and why they chose different cameras, lenses or apparatus for particular shots. The tools that really amazed me were all of the Go Pro sports camera accessories. I have several Go Pro cameras and dabble with taking video and photos with some success. The accessories they brought along were game changers in taking action footage. A camera mount you hold in your teeth, this one gets perfect point of view video. A camera housing that takes perfect video at the water level. This half round contraption allowed the camera to have clear focus under and above the water at the same time. All cool items that showed their use when the video was edited out and the awesome shots that they got using these cool tools.
Overall the filming trip had great weather, water levels were perfect, group dynamics were spot on and it was wonderful experience for all of us. The end results are beautiful photographs and extremely high quality video that is fun to watch. After six months of waiting patiently to see the end product we could not be more proud of the whole teams collaboration to create a wonderful artistic work. Thank you must go out to the entire Visit Utah team and Nushin and her family from the Dinosaur River Expeditions crew.
