Grand Canyon White Water Rafting Adventure(s)-- Don't Go Big. Go Pro.

 

 

In 2011, Scott and I bought two seats on a private non-motorized trip down the Colorado River. Four good friends joined us. Three rafts were oared by Sven, Dimitri, and Carlos. Dimitri applied for and won the lottery, a once yearly chance to raft the Colorado. Dimitri and Carlos had previously run river trips in Washington State, I think, but nothing that came close to Colorado River class ten rapids. Sven was a newbie.  By day two, my friend Steve and I each had a credit card and our IDs in the top zipper pocket of our ExOfficio rafting shirts, just in case we had a chance to escape the trip. This was because on day 2, Dimitri, with Steve and Mark in his boat, turned on the Go Pro attached to his head and announced he was going to "GO BIG!" Of course, the raft flipped. Steve managed to hang on to the upside-down raft through the crazy rapids, but Mark went for a long, submerged swim. I thought he was a goner. Hypothermia is a big deal on the Colorado River. The air is hot, but the water is very cold. It's comes out of the turbines of Glen Canyon Dam at around 46 degrees Fahrenheit.

Over the next days, the trip deteriorated. Dimitri, supposedly in addiction recovery, began drinking. Carlos, who seemed like a genuinely good person, was one of Dimitri's program sponsors, I think. He tried his best to keep Dimitri on task. But Dimitri was preoccupied to say the least. Sven should not have been there at all. His lack of confidence were palpable. I began to feel like my cat who seems to be on high alert, in Code Red mode all the time. Fight or flight, mostly flight was on my mind from day two. Also like my cat, I have a fear of drowning. Fear of drowning, and having sharp things poked in my eyes, are my only two fears in life and it seemed a high probability that these two things could happen at once on Dimitri's trip. Mark's friend Natalie was nothing like my cat. She seemed to be having a ball, especially on the rapids. But Natalie is the kind of person who takes life as it comes and appreciates time off from work with friends more than anyone else I know. While I sat at the front of Carlos' raft, day after day, helmet on, sitting on my knees, getting as low as I could, my tightly-shut eyes barely clearing the front of the raft, feet jammed into the bottom of a pontoon behind me, gripping on to a rope for dear life, Natalie rode the rapids with one arm in the air, like Annie Oakley on a reared up horse. Yeehaw! 

Fortunate for the group, one of the participants was an experienced Colorado River white water rafter and kayaker, Gabe. Gabe saved the trip. He possibly saved lives. I can't remember how many times he had gone down the Colorado before, but it was a lot. He sort of took control of the trip the first week, then completely took over the second week. (I'll get to the reason for that soon.) Gabe knew how to ride every rapid. He knew the best pullout spots for lunch or where to preview a rapid from above. He instructed Scott, Mark, and Steve on how to steer through the rapids, safely and without "going big." 

Fortunate for me, my friend Ron and I had, two weeks earlier, agreed to swap seats half-way through the trip. I only wanted to do the first week, and Ron could only do the second. So at Phantom Ranch, the half-way point, I hiked out of the Grand Canyon, while Ron hiked in. We hadn't had cell reception since we launched, so Ron didn't know what he was getting into. Carlos, and one of Dimitri's daughters unexpectedly hiked out at Phantom Ranch too. But not with me. As soon as we landed at 3pm, they took off, abandoning Dimitri to his fate. Due to risk of heat exhaustion, the rangers stationed at Phantom Ranch don't allow people with permits (of which I had one) to start hiking out of the Grand Canyon until dusk. It's a 4800 foot climb. It's hot, even at night. It took me nine hours to reach the South Rim. It was really hard. I don't think the rangers knew that Carlos and Dimitri's daughter hiked out during the day. I assume they made it. Since I was not there the second week, I got the rest of the story from my husband, Scott.

Gabe took over running the trip. It's not like he wanted to. He had won a spot on a random group trip, his lucky day. But he thought he would do his own thing, which was to paddle his kayak down the river with little interaction from strangers and without drama. Instead he stepped up on day 8 or 9 to run the trip after Dimitri failed to securely tie the rafts at the outlet of Havasu Creek. Steve later said it was because Dimitri had "seen something shiny"; a piton in the rocks, and got distracted. As Scott and the others hiked up Havasu Creek, another group of rafters noticed that three rafts, with not a soul on board, were floating down the river, and began shouting, "Hey! Your rafts are floating down the river!" 

Without life jackets or water, the group had to hike for a couple of miles downriver, climbing up and down the cliff walls, before coming to a spot where a Good Samaritan from another raft trip had captured the rafts and secured them to shore. (Having just completed this section of the Colorado last week, I honestly don't know how they did it. The walls are sheer and and covered in scree in places.) Anyway, Havasu Creek was when Gabe took over for good. The story goes that Dimitri kept insisting he was the trip leader because the permit was in his name, but after Havasu and the mutiny, he submitted. Gabe was angry and embarrassed that he should be on a trip with a leader as incompetent as Dimitri, and that Gabe's name and reputation might be associated with the time "some idiot lost his rafts" and become part of Colorado River lore infuriated him. 

Gabe took over the trip as leader, Natalie took over management of the meals, and Scott and Mark and Steve learned a new life skill; how to oar rafts safely through Colorado River rapids.

I thought I had scratched white water rafting off my bucket list. After all, I did the Colorado, the biggest rapids you can raft, the best of the best- if you don't count the Zambezi River between Zimbabwe and Zambia, which I also did, in 1995. But Steve and his wife Cheryl had done a trip down the Colorado with a company called Grand Canyon Expeditions a few years ago. Not a private trip, but a commercial motorized trip with experienced guides. They were considering doing it again and asked other friends to join them, including Scott and I. Two things made me want to say no. One, I was terrified on Dimitri's trip, so why would I want to do that again? Second, I am not great with high temperatures so I thought August, especially in 2023, a summer of record breaking heat, was a very bad time to go. But because it was the only trip that year with an historian, and because eleven of us old college buddies would be going, and because Grand Canyon Expeditions does all the cooking, I decided to go. Mostly because of all my buddies going.

 I had the time of my life. It was like night and day compared to the 2011 trip. In 2011, I was so focused on the walls of waves coming at me, I hardly noticed the canyon walls looming over us. In 2023, I sat towards the back of the boat in the VIP lounge, better known as the Chicken Coop, bouncing over the rapids like a person having fun, not terrified. I spent my time gazing at the beautiful layers of rock that make up the Grand Canyon. I must have said, "This is so pretty" a hundred times. I was relaxed and happy. I felt totally safe, in good hands. I want to do it again.

There were two motorized rafts, captained expertly by Zack and Glade. Sedona and Robert, referred to by the company as Swampers, did everything from casting off, securing the boats, to loading and unloading the boats, to cooking meals, to passing around drinks and snacks while we were underway, and more.

They were the first to rise and last to bed and they were stellar. Richard, also known as "Q", was our Historian and boy was he great. Each day we'd have a talk about the men and women explorers who have rafted the Colorado since Powell's inaugural trip in 1869, or we'd get a history of Hoover Dam, or when we passed the spot where an explorer died in a rapid, or from a heart attack while doing a rapid (my cat and I can totally see how that could happen) he'd give us the details, down to where the body was buried or how it was extracted. If you are thinking of booking a Colorado River trip, I'd recommend doing the trip with Q and his crew.

Aside from we eleven college buddies, there was a family of seven including 9-year-old twins, a group of four friends from NY, a couple also from NY, and an aunt with her college-age niece and nephew. It was a terrific group. We had a bar. We all liked to drink.

We peed in the river together (gents downstream, ladies upstream of the rafts) and we pooed privately in a metal can called a groover. Never mind. Suffice to say, the view was always inspiring. At one camp, Aunt Angie even saw a ring tailed cat while grooving!

The days, like the rapids, ran together. What stands out for me were two short walks to waterfalls, one big, and one small, and a short hike up the Havasu side canyon, this time with rafts professionally secured. The best part of these hikes was getting to stand under clear water. It was glorious. Because of the heat, I chose not to do the longer hikes. I'd get around 20 feet off the river and begin to feel right poorly. Instead, I'd sit in the river in the shade of the raft until the group returned.We rarely were hot while rafting because the waves from the rapids would wash over us and cool us down at once; especially on Hermit Rapid where rafts were briefly submerged and some folks at the front had to grab on to life vests of two others when they were air-born. I watched this with one eye shut from the Chicken Coop.

We all hung on more tightly through the infamous Lava Falls, a class 10 rapid renown for it's vigor a few days later and it wasn't as scary as the hype. Though right after Glade sang out "Hang on tight for Lava Falls!" I told Scott I loved him, just in case.

The highlight of the trip was all of Day 5. That was the day we had a short walk to a sparkling clear pool and waterfall, the small one, one you could climb up behind and slide down into the pool, which we did. Later that afternoon, we did a short hike to a magnificently colored slot canyon. Glade sat on a large boulder in the canyon playing his guitar and singing songs he wrote accompanied by nature's acoustics. It was beautiful and moving. It was also the only time on the trip all twenty-eight of us were quiet. Glade not only sings, writes his own lyrics, captains rafts and sea dories expertly on the Colorado, builds boats in the off season, but he can ALSO COOK.

Zack was the trip leader. He is also known as Mr. Kitty. He promises the story about how he got the name will get better, so I won't go into it here. It's like how my nieces and nephew call me Will. Never mind. Mr. Kitty has been rafting for over twenty years and is a seasoned pro. And he can COOK.

The food. Oh my word. At the beginning of the trip Zack gave a safety briefing, including not only the necessity to stay hydrated, but also the need to eat a lot, even if we didn't feel like it. As a group, we did not disappoint. Breakfasts consisted of coffee, pancakes, eggs, fresh fruit and more. Lunches were sandwiches or wraps or salad on a beach along the way. Dinners included mahi mahi, chicken, Chinese buffet, pork, pasta (with the best sauce I have ever tasted), and the final night we had the most tender steaks with baked potatoes with all the toppings. Dessert every night. Often cake or brownies cooked in a dutch oven. Snacks and drinks were always available while underway. The food was so good.

 

We slept on cots under the stars. Perfect. Scott brought along battery operated fans that he hung from a tripod of branches he'd find on the beach, so I wouldn't die of heat stroke. In the middle of the night he'd trudge down to the river to re-wet our sarongs, which lay over us. The air from the fan hit the sarong and acted like an air conditioner. Bliss. We ate on the each, slept on cots, and bounced in the rafts wonderfully. 

When I told Scott I wanted to do it again next year, he laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Tris

Grand Canyon Colorado River Raft Trip 

August 3-10, 2023