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Through a rare alignment of the stars and relatives, I got the opportunity to be a swamper on a Grand Canyon river trip in October 2006. I have always wanted to run the canyon, but between the high prices, long waits, and skills and materials required, I figured I would never get the opportunity. Needless to say, I was pretty excited. I went to Fredonia the 13th, to get stuff packed up the 14th. Then the 15th I drove to Vegas to pick up my parents (who were also going on the trip). The 16th we hit the water, and we stayed on the river until the morning of the 31st.
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I'm not sure the best way to describe the trip. A day by day account could get rather boring, so I suppose I'll just put down some descriptions of things we did. At first we were 11 people, but 3 had to walk out from Phantom Ranch, so we were down to 8. A nice small group. Power boat trips are banned in October, which is after the high season anyway, so things were relatively quiet for us. We saw a few hiking groups, and when we passed under the overflight lanes, there could be a line of sightseeing planes and helicopters overhead. A few times we passed or were passed by a private trip and a dory trip. I later heard that both of those trips had flipped somewhere in the rapids. We had three 18 foot Avon oar rafts. Bianca and I were on the baggage boat, and the other boats were rowed by Jimmy and Terry, 2 veteran river boatman who had heaps of experience and stories from their many trips and years on the river.
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It was weird for me riding a raft through rapids without having something of my own to stick in the water to try to control where we were going. I wasn't the master of my destiny. I did get some good rides though, and high-siding and bailing were useful from time to time. It also made it much easier to take photos when I wasn't rowing, although for the biggest rapids, I stowed the camera so I could high-side, bail, and any other assorted tasks that might come up. There wasn't much to get worked up about before a rapid either. I did get to row some of the time, which was fun and educational. I felt like I got a lot better at it in the 2 weeks. One nice thing about rowing only part of the time was that I didn't worry much about getting blisters or too tired. I didn't have to wear gloves or pace myself like I would have if I had to row the whole time. I had never even been on an oar raft, let alone rowed one before this trip. One odd thing with the oars was that there was a whole lot more power in reverse, which somewhat changed your strategy when serious power might be required. Another was unlike a paddle, it could be difficult to get the oars out of the water or the way of things. I got to row a few of the named rapids like Bouchar, Kanab, Doris, fishtail, 164 mi, Fern Glen, Gateway, son of lava, and mile 219. These rafts were much slower and less manouverable than most of my previous small boat experience in canoes, kayaks, or packrafts. The line up and entrance to the rapid was critical, and then you mostly just went with the flow and tried to point the raft into the waves. The plus to being rather large and ungainly was that you could really punch through or over big waves and holes. I was quite impressed with the level of rapid that they could go through without flipping although we did have a some close calls including a few where I thought we were starting to flip before we finally ended up bottom side down. The water was quite cold as it always is, but the air could also be pretty cold, especially in the morning and evening when there wasn't a whole lot of sun in the bottom of the canyon. This made getting soaked something to try to avoid rather than in the middle of the summer when I suspect we would have been soaking our clothes on purpose to keep cool.
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There was a fair amount of rain the few days before we started, so the water ranged from muddy to really muddy almost from the start. Some of the rapids looked like hot chocolate cascades - perhaps with some cinnamon.The interface of clear side stream waters and the silty Colorado was cool to watch. The Paria and Little Colorado came in particularly silty though. The water level fluctuated daily, as well as especially low water from the weekend dam releases (the water released is based on the power needs and electricity prices). This meant that the shoreline was usually wet, and especially near the beginning of the trip it was very muddy. Sometimes a layer of slick mud over sand, sometimes knee deep or deeper mud. Bianca had a special talent for leaping out of the boat into particularly muddy parts.
As expected, the geology was pretty spectacular. Lots of formations and cliffs. Miles and miles of cliffs in fact. One thing that I wasn't expecting was how polished and fluted some of the rocks down by the river were. The pink granite and black schist were especially cool to look at. Another feature I particularly liked was the reddish chert layers mixed into the limestone. There were also spectacular springs, pools, slot canyons, caves, arches, and overhangs. You really could spend a lifetime exploring the region.
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We saw a fair amount of wildlife including coyote, bighorn sheep (on more than one occasion), california condor (probably), red spotted toads, mice, lots of lizards, a very few fish, ravens (Raoul and Maria according to Jimmy), hawks, ducks, falcons, great blue herons, other little birds, and beaver. we also saw a dead bighorn sheep floating down the river. The bobcat was probably the most rarely spotted. It was sort of sauntering along a streambed when we finished a hike, and seemed relatively unconcerned about us, enough so that we were wondering if it was ill. It was close enough for positive identification, but not really close enough for a good picture with my camera (see exhibit a). There were also plenty of canyon wrens, although usually when you heard one, it was really Jimmy whistling.
One thing that was fairly notable, although not a surprise, was how much food there was. Terry refered to this sort of a trip as a "float and bloat". When you have so much space with multiple coolers, you can really bring along a lot of good food. The diet was especially good in the first half of the trip while we still had plenty of fresh foods. This diet was quite a bit better than what I eat most of the time, especially on trips of similar length I have taken. For those that know me, the fact that there was often more food than even I could eat says it all - although I did my best to finish things up before they were thrown out. Especially good things like fruit and meat. I definitely gained a few pounds on this trip, but not as many as the sheer volume of food I ate would have suggested. The cold water, rowing, loading and unloading, and hiking and scrambling all helped to burn some of the excess. Near the end of the trip, the fruit and veggies were getting a bit sad and sparse, but we still ate quite well. I barely ate at all for the 3 days it took me to drive to Kentucky after the trip, and then I ate much less than my usual amount for another 4 or so days which dropped me back to about my usual weight.
The side canyons were also quite spectacular, especially the ones with clear water streams, waterfalls, and or slot canyons. We checked out North, Saddle, Buck farm, Carbon, Lava - or Chuar, Blacktail, Stone Creek, National, Matkatamiba, Deer creek, Tapeats, Thunder river, Havasu, Elves, Crystal, and probably a few others that I can't remember. If there was time (usually the nights I wasn't cooking), I'd explore up a canyon or around camp. Unfortunately it was usually too dark for photos in the canyons in the evenings. When we went up a scrambly canyon, the rate of progress was usually a bit less than I was capable of, so if it was a canyon we wouldn't go as far up as was possible, I often zipped ahead to try to see more before I had to turn around. It was still a bit frustrating to have to turn back when there might be something particularly cool around the next bend.
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One of the side hikes we did was up Tapeats creek, then up Thunder river (more of a waterfall than a river really) up to some really spectacular waterfalls. It was very much like what I imagine Rivendell in the desert would have looked like if elves liked deserts more than forests. The River almost shot out of some huge holes in the cliff, and cascaded down a series of lush falls. We stopped for the first installment of lunch on the lip of some of the falls. Then we continued up into surprise valley, where were met by Bianca coming the other way (she helped to take the rafts down to Deer Creek). She brought a thunderstorm with her. We hunkered under a rock, which didn't work, as the rain was coming down diagonally, so we went to the other side of the rock, which didn't work much longer, as soon the water was trickling down the overhang above us and pouring onto and under us. There was also some hail. We eventually found a slightly better overhang, but we all got a little cold and wet. The thunder was especially impressive as it echoed off of all the cliffs. It would roll on for a long time, and then just when it seemed like it was fading away, it would be back a few octaves lower for another round. When the rain started waning, we headed on down past another spectacular spring to Deer Creek. While I was taking pictures of the spring/waterfall, my candy bar was ignominiously swiped from my backpack by the very people who mocked my massive leftover burrito lunch - oh the inhumanity of it all. On the way we saw some transient waterfalls start up over some cliffs and run for half an hour or so. Deer Creek dropped into a slot canyon that ended up in a waterfall. The trail stayed up on a bench partway up the canyon and then went around to the base of the falls. Another memorable hike, that's for sure.
It got dark fairly early, and almost every night the stars were pretty amazing. Usually the milky way was quite bright and obvious. There are no major cities near the canyon, and being in a deep trench blots out a lot of light. When we were in narrow canyons, the stars were a sparkly ribbon between black walls. The new moon was near the start of the trip, so that didn't effect the stars until near the end when the moonlight lit up the walls. Around the 20th there were lots of really fast moving shooting stars which we later learned were the Orionids. Most nights we were all sleeping out without tents, so you could watch the stars for a while before going to sleep.
Bianca had a river mascot - Sasha, a stuffed rattlesnake. She lived wrapped around a carabiner on our boat until she disappeared in Hermit rapid despite a fairly clean run. We looked around a bunch but she wasn't to be seen. Two days later after taking water in some holes in Deubendorff rapid, I saw her swimming in the bilge while I was bailing. She must have been swimming around under the deck and gear. Sasha had a rough run, as she also needed a little surgery after something chewed on her tail.
It was a challenge to get decent pictures in the canyon. Everywhere you looked was spectacular, but getting it all into a photo was one crux. Often a wide angle lens would have been handier, but I just had my camera. Another problem was that the light was very bright at midday when it reached down into the canyon. This resulted in huge contrasts between the sunlit parts and the shadows. The reflected light off the cliffs was very nice, but it also tended to be rather dim. In the morning and evenings when the light was much nicer, it usually only lit up parts of the upper cliffs. I was also attracted to the reflections in the water, which tended to be much darker than what they were reflections of. I took my camera in a waterproof housing, so at least I didn't have to worry too much about it getting wet. My efforts to get photos in the midst of the rapids were not often rewarded with decent results though, and I stowed it for the biggest rapids which might have produced the most spectacular images. Taking photos of the other boats was tough also, as they often weren't very close. Enough of my complaining about the conditions, it was a fun challenge and I ended up with over 900 photos, which are hard to cull down to a reasonable number to show people without boring them to tears and numbing their butts. You, the internet readers are spared due to my limited storage space (at least until I visit you).
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I still hope to put some more photos on this, but that is all for now.