Working on 4 hours of sleep it is no surprise that I forgot to remove the river knife from my life jacket before trying to take it through airport security. So my first Grand Canyon trip began with a rush to get my former carry-on bag checked and then wondering if it will make it to Flagstaff. I needed to meet my ride to the Canyon 2 hours after arriving in Flagstaff so I wasn’t optimistic.

10 years after declining my first offer to take a trip through the Grand Canyon, the timing finally worked out and I was excited to be on my way. Our group was mainly composed of ex or current raft guides plus family and friends. I’d been invited by a friend from my guiding days in Colorado. He ended up not be able to make the trip so I knew one person out of group of 14 people. Since trips are generally on the river for 18 days, I’d always heard that group dynamics can make or break a trip. As I met everyone in Flagstaff, I privately wondered how our group would do after many days on the river.

As everyone was getting all their stuff organized for the pick-up by PRO Outfitters, I felt like the big goober of the group. My bag hadn’t made it to Flagstaff so I had to scramble over to the Wal-Mart across the street and do my best to replace as much stuff in the bag as possible. Since that bag was supposed to come with me on the plane, it had my “must have” items; namely, my life-jacket and river clothes. I quickly bought some cheap clothes and figured I’d have to make due. There were several spare life jackets in the group so I wasn’t too worried about replacing that.

We opted to do the Painless Private trip with PRO. They basically provided our transportation to and from the river, all food, rafts and other gear. We had Mike and Carlyn (trip leaders), Debbie and Jamie, Liz and Chris, Stuart and Kari, myself and Jennifer rowing PRO rafts, Tom with a 16′ Cataraft, and Bob with a 14′ raft. After loading a BIG truck with all our gear and a quick stop for lunch, we headed down the road. It’s about 2.5 hours to the Canyon from Flagstaff. The scenery is pretty uninspiring; flat, sagebrush country. The 5 of us in the truck chatted for a bit and then drifted off with our own thoughts and expectations of the trip. I was pre-occupied trying to get cell phone coverage as the airline folks said they were going to try to and deliver my bag before I launched the next morning. I gave up after awhile and hoped for the best.

The scenery of the Grand Canyon starts with a bang right at the put-in. After a long drive over flat, unremarkable terrain, the change to the beautiful walls of the Canyon is dramatic. I kept pausing while unloading gear to look up and soak in the scenery. Blowing up the rafts and unloading all the gear took about 2 hours or so. We also got some instruction on how to rig the frames on the rafts and where to stow all the food supplies. Liz and I ended up with pretty light boats but in general, no one was particularly overloaded.

After floating downstream about 100 yards to the campsite, we set up tents and headed back up to the highway to the Marble Lodge for dinner. Towards the end of dinner I went out and phoned the airline delivery company to see on the progress of my bag. To my delight, the driver was down at the campground looking for me! In a couple minutes he was up at the Lodge and I was reunited with my bag. Sweet! Now I could relax and focus on the rest of the trip.

First river day starts with an early start although I’m only guessing since I don’t carry a watch. We get a LONG orientation from the ranger. Similar to a commercial rafting safety talk except even more basic. Spent 15 minutes at least on life-jackets! Oh well, I’ve got no place to be. After a long time rigging everything in the rafts we shoved off and finally headed downstream. After Paria Cr. comes in about 1/2 mile below the put-in, we have cloudy water which will continue the rest of the trip. I was hoping for at least a bit of clear water. The scenery is excellent and the river moves along although there aren’t any particularly big rapids. We scouted Badger Cr. Rapid but it turns out to be an easy run right down the middle. Nice big waves. After a relatively short day we make camp right above Soap Cr. Rapid.

Day 2
Soap Cr.–North Canyon
Soap Cr. Rapid is a great start to the day with a fun run right down the middle through some big waves. The Canyon narrows dramatically with some nice sheer walls in places. Hard to believe the scenery will get even better as we continue downstream. First major rapid of the trip is House Rock. Big wave and hole along the outside of a right turn. Having seen the rapid several times in Ryan’s video I had already decided to just take the easy sneak down the right. I’m still trying to get a feel for what the raft can handle and don’t feel like risking a flip so early in the trip. About half the group takes the main line with Debbie and Liz hitting the wave the biggest. This is pretty much the way the rest of the trip goes as well; Liz and Debbie’s boats generally take the more aggressive lines, Tom, Mike, and Bob generally are very conservative, and me and Stuart are somewhere in the middle. Everyone comes through just fine in the end.

We camp at North Canyon tonight. Tom, Jules, Nan, Jen, Liz, Mike, Carlyn, and myself do a nice hike through some slickrock. We get back for dinner bit late. My goal is to hike as much as possible no matter how I feel. The thing about the Grand Canyon is that you never know when you’ll get a chance to do another trip so I don’t want to miss anything on this trip. I found a scorpion under my tarp in the morning. I’ve heard lots of people warn about scorpions so I’ve been pretty careful about checking everything before putting on clothes, taking things out of bags or picking stuff up from the ground.

Day 3
N. Canyon–S. Canyon (Roaring Twenties)
Watched a beautiful sunrise over the canyon walls this morning; pink clouds drifting upriver. Today everyone was excited to start the Roaring Twenties; a five mile stretch of river with some great, fun rapids spaced nicely throughout the stretch. Several of the rapids and large breaking waves which were easy to miss. I had a hard time deciding whether to go big or sneak a bit. The toughest thing about the Canyon rapids so far is that you have to decide early where you want to go. For a first time rower like me, that means that I have to decide where I want to go before I really know how big a rapid is. For me, that means I ended up sneaking more stuff just to be safe. Liz was the opposite and pretty much decided just to run everything big. To her credit she pulled it off. Anyway, there were lots of very fun rapids and the canyon walls rose right out of the river in several places.

We stopped for lunch at Shimuno Wash at hiked up Silver Grotto after lunch. Silver Grotto is a beautiful slot canyon with polished, white rock. The hike has several sections that require some rock climbing skills as well as some wading and swimming though pools. Most of our group made it the short distance up to the top and then did some rock slides into the pools on the way out. I wasn’t too keen on sliding down the rocks and possibly taking a hit on my knee so I opted for the short climb back down to the river.

Mike roping into the bottom of Silver Grotto


Inner Silver Grotto

Jules and Nan

We camped at South Canyon today. My group (me, Kari, and Nan) were in charge of dinner and did bar-b-que halibut steaks. Dinners seem to be a bit labor-intensive so far and it seems like we don’t always have very much time to relax before we have to get the cooking going. Cocktails seem to help, though. We are sharing the camp with a large group of scientists. They are surprisingly rowdy at night but I slept well.

Day 4
South Canyon-Dinosaur
We started today with a short float down to the Redwall Cavern; an immense cave with a sandy floor. I hopped a ride in Liz’s raft for the ride down. As we approached the eddy at the base of the wall my brain had a hard time judging the enormous size of the wall and cavern. We rowed through what seemed like a small eddy and it took us forever. Never seemed to get any closer to the shore. Very strange. Pictures can’t do this place justice. The weight of rock above my head while hanging out in the cavern is a bit overwhelming at times. We hung out here for a really long time. We’ve had nice warm weather so far.

Coming up to Redwall Cavern

Inside Redwall Cavern

Jason had told of wonderful surfing on the wave in President Harding rapid so I was looking forward to seeing what it was like. I made a point to mention this to Jules so he could get some rides in his kayak but when we got to the rapid there wasn’t much of a wave there. Must be a water level issue. A bit of a disappointment. Just above President Harding Jennifer and I noticed a couple of the other rafts looking up at the canyon wall and pointing. Despite looking and looking we only realized afterwards that they were looking at the remains of an Anasazi wooden bridge that spanned a gap in the canyon wall.

Jen behind the oars

Mike had planned to camp at one of the Saddle Canyon camps but they were both occupied so we pushed through another 3 miles to Dinosaur Camp. This was our longest day on the river so far so folks were a bit grumpy. We didn’t have much time to get dinner going but Carlyn whipped the kitchen into shape and got out some great burgers to end the day on a good note. Everyone is still treading a bit lightly and getting to know each other.

Day 5
Dinosaur to Kwagunt
Well, today was an interesting day. In the morning I got up and headed upstream for a quick side-canyon hike I’d noticed on the way down. So far all the hikes in the canyon were pretty well-established with trails. I was looking forward to doing a bit of bushwacking on my own. After struggling a bit to get past some steep hills along the river, I was able to get up to the canyon I wanted. Turned out to be a nice hike up a creekbed with some nice slides and waterfalls. Good slickrock climbing and then some bouldering up to a nice amphitheatre at the top. I was a bit late getting back to camp but quickly threw my stuff on the raft and shoved off. The previous days in the canyon had taught me that it is usually quite easy to rig the raft while floating downstream. Usually there are miles of flat before any rapids of significance.

We started off with an easy 3 miles down to Nankoweap. After a quick stop to filter some drinking water, the group split up with Mike, Carlyn, Tom and Liz heading down a few more miles for camp and the rest of us stopping for lunch and the hike up to the Nankoweap granaries. The hike to the granaries is one of the most popular stops in the Canyon. It’s a steep climb up to the bottom of a cliff where the Anasazi carved out storage structures. The view from the top is one of the signature views in the canyon. We hung out for awhile at the top watching some rain showers sweep up the canyon. In between rain showers the sunlight illuminated the immense rock wall opposite the granaries. Bright reds and orange. Simply amazing.

Classic view from the Nankoweap granaries

After a short 3 miles we pulled into a great camp at Kwagunt. I could tell rain was coming in so I raced to unload and set-up my tent before the rain hit. I just got it secured when a huge shower hit. I ran over to see if I could help get Chris’s tent up but it was mostly a lost cause. There were already puddles on the floor and it certainly didn’t look like a particularly attractive place to spend the night.

Just as soon as the rain arrived, it clear off and we were blessed with a few hours of wonderful sunny weather. Our camp had a great beach area so everyone spread their stuff out and either did some chores (bathing, laundry, etc.) or hung out and played washers. Cocktails were out and it was a wonderful lazy afternoon. Sometimes with all the organizing and packing and unpacking and rowing, it seems like you don’t have a lot of time just to soak in the atmosphere of being in the Canyon. With the short day on the river, we had plenty of time to appreciate where we were.

Afternoon relaxing before the storm

Just before it got dark we saw black clouds coming up the canyon towards us and realized it was going to be a wet dinner. Thankfully we had a good set of tarps up and while Debbie whipped up spaghetti under the kitchen tarp, the rest of us huddled together under the “living room” tarp and watch the rain come pelting down. Soon the side creeks filled and we were rewarded with the sight of waterfalls cascading down into the river as thunder echoed off the Canyon walls. Well worth getting a little wet!

I was pretty content heading up to my tent since I knew I got it buttoned up before the rains hit. I was looking forward to snuggling up in my sleeping bag and listening to the rain fall. I was a little perplexed when I noticed some water in the vestibule of the tent but even more disappointed when I looked inside and realized there was a pretty good puddle right where my pillow was! Unfortunately the tent was leaking right in the middle of the ceiling so I had drips on me most of the night. It wasn’t too bad though as I threw on some long underwear and slept pretty well.

Day 6
Kwagunt to Furnace Flats

We had a pretty long day on the river today after the wild weather over night. I slept pretty well despite having rain drip on me all night. Our first stop of the day was at the Little Colorado River. Just before we got to the mouth of the Little Colorado we hit a vicious upstream wind and a tricky eddy. Almost everyone got sucked into the eddy a little bit and the combination of fighting the wind and the upstream current at the same made it extremely difficult to make any downstream progress. Extremely frustrating.

If boaters are lucky enough to get to the LCR when the weather has been dry, the river is wonderful clear blue. Perfect for swimming and hanging out compared to the cold, sandy main Colorado. Unfortunately for us, the recent rains meant that the LCR was flowing brown with silt. Still, we stopped and hung out for awhile and Jaime played in the mud for a bit.

Little Colorado confluence

After boating another 3 miles we stopped at Carbon Creek to do a hike. Our idea was to have Mike, Carlyn, Jennifer and me hike up Carbon Creek to the top, hike downstream a bit and then come back down Lava Canyon to the river. Everyone else would boat a mile downstream and hike up Lava Canyon, hike upstream and return down Carbon Creek to the river. They would then hop in our boats and meet us downstream at Lava Canyon. Complicated? Not really.

The hike up Carbon Creek was very nice. We had to climb up some boulders as we worked our way up the dry creekbed and then a steep climb up a large pile of boulder in order to get around a waterfall. Once above the waterfall the cliff walls closed in and we had some nice slot canyon until we emerged at the top. A short hike downstream and we began the descent down Lava Canyon.