Rafting the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon - River Log
04/08/2010
Yesterday was day one. We let in at Lee's Ferry in Marble Canyon - about 20 miles down river from Lake Powell (I forget the name of the dam). The water is cooler than I expected as it comes from about 200' below the surface of the upstream dam and is a constant 54 degrees F here. The guides explained the Grand Canyon rapid's rating system (based on the difficulty/challenge of running the rapid successfully). Instead of the 1-5 international rating, more shades of grey are required so a 1-10 is used. The canyon has four 10 rated rapids and we are going to run them all - neat! First day we had 5-8 rated rapids - good strong warm ups and I certainly got wet!
The boat is called a "J" Rig after the company founder of Western. Five sausages about 30 or 40' feet long with a center mounted cargo box and a 30hp outboard motor. It has three main flex points and rolls over the water very easily. The design came about because the founder bought a full rail road car of rubber sight unseen expecting it to be WW2 surplus boats - instead he got pontoon bridging pontoons. He and his boat men shook off potential disaster by designing and patenting a superb new river runner.
I sat in one of the up front seats on the first day and we did one of the four class 10 rapids on the canyon - I went completely, totally under water - to the point where I could hear water burbling in my ears! I definitely got very cold after a while but supper warmed me right up again.
Guides are great - not many trips are running this time of year (we are the second down the river) - so the senior guides get to pick them up. Mark and Craig are both ski patrol in the off season and they just switched over to the river - being senior they get their pick of trips - normally they would not have the opportunity to work together - instead they would be running their own boats. Having them both is great fun. Awesome camp cooks. I am so used to back packing all my gear it is completely luxurious to have the raft lug all this stuff around!
I splept out under the stars last night despite a bit of a chill - very dark. We were on a sand bank by the river and the rushing water was great stuff.
4/9/2010
Good rapids today - a couple of near 10's out of 10.
One rapid - Hann's (sp?) was one that the guides were not comfortable with the way it was running and they backed off and redid their approach (or swung around intentionally to get a better look before committing?) It went great - 199 runs down really helps!
We got a long hike up Carbon Creek today - lots of igneous rock thrust up and then a very, very neat dry walk on the way out (we cut the corner on the river - the raft met us on the other side). In my pictures you can see that there is snow on the canyon North Rim). Camp tonight is in the Vishnu Schist area - hard schist rock thrust up and as it cooled, it contracted and liquid granite squeezed like toothepaste into the cracks creating really cool cross hatching. Apparently the geologist who named the rocks was very into the Indian pantheon - he named much of the area after Indian gods. Our camp is called Grapevine - I think because the rock looks like red wine in color but supposedly because wild grape vines were in the area. Another sand bar/beach campsite - I see a trend forming.
4/11/2010
Yesterday was heavy river running - including the rapid Crystal. It is challenging enough for the guides that they threw an awesome ABC party last night - "Alive, Below Crystal" party! We all were required to dress up in an original fashion for the occasion. I decided to put on "River War Paint" - which was Indian war paint made from duct tape - my thought was that any problem on the river could be solved with a knife and some duct tape -including a costume party!
People were pretty creative and an iPod and boom box appeared along with a horse shoe set! great mexican food and beer
Crystal is a tough rapid due to its rock garden and the manuevers the guides need to make. It is a pretty new rapid - a rain storm in the late 1960's dropped 19" of rain on the rim over a three day period and caused a flash flood to turn into a debris flow of rocks and junk. Craig said that he got stuck on a rock in there for 2 hours before getting himself off. The camp we are at is called 118 - after the mile marker...
Going to sleep last night was amazing - we had all these rock ledges as a cliff wall, a shelved off beach and fire going - the ripples of shadow, the spray of stars overhead and the gentle suss of the river in the background was positively primeval. Oh and I saw a Ring Tailed Cat running around last night too - gotta go - I smell bacon for breakfast!
End of day 4/11/2010
Some interesting rapids today. A german sounding one at around 1:30pm was tough. There was a giant rock in the middle of the river. Plan "A" was to go right - which we did. Plan "B" was to go left and get bounced like a pinball - glad we avoided that. We stopped at Deer Creek which had a giant and awesomely powerful waterfall - I think I got some shots of Jonathan getting pummelled in it. We hiked to the top of the slot canyon it came out of and back inside to The Patio - which has a small stream and a grove of Cottonwood trees - really neat! we say some native paint/hand prints on the walls - very careful not to touch them. The whole place reminded me of a fortress oasis of the Fremen on Arrakis in Frank Herbert's Dune
The elevation of the oasis was about 400' above the river according to Craig's GPS and the waterfall was little less than 50% of that - still a big drop!
After lunch but just before we moved through the narrowest part of the canyon (76' by the way...), we went through a good and strong rapid. I was on the Buckboard and Ara was up front - he got completely bounced out of his location and lost his front hand hold - fortunately he had good technique and was holding on with his rear hand strongly and stayed in the boat. The tubes at the front were folded back to well above my head! best ride of the river so far...
4/12/2010
My pen broke so I am using a borrowed one....
Interesting day today - started slow, we went into the "Ice Box" - a place of very little sun - for about 90 minutes. We stopped at Havasu Creek (or Crick as Craig would say - he is from Montana...) Brilliant blue water flowing out of the side canyon. Further upstream than we went is the Havasupi Indian Reservation. Beautiful place.
After lunch the wind came up and it started to rain heavily - really heavily. The wind was blowing up river and causing white caps to flow up river against the current!.... Mark got us off the boat at one point and we ran laps around a beach to get the blood flowing - and then he broke out tonight's desert (candy bars) early - really helped, expecially for the kids who were getting really very cold. The temperature dropped about 40 degrees.
When we camped it had stopped raining but as we were setting up tents, I noticed it had started to sprinkle and very heavy rain was on the rim of the canyon. I told the kids to hurry up the tent construction. Funny thing was I had earlier noticed Cirrus clouds and off mentioned to Shea that it might rain later - wish I was wrong! I ended up helping setting up a parawing over the cook set and holding it down when we got hit with 40 mph hour winds. Clam Chowder, Chili and grilled cheese sandwiches - good job guys for an adhoc menu!
Tonight is the first night I am going to sleep indoors.