Rowing a Baggage Raft down the Colorado RiverMy First Run of the Canyon:A few pictures are here
Before there was the first pull of the oars, before the first riffle, before the red-stained walls loomed above, there was anxiety. Anxiety and humility. For weeks before arriving in Flagstaff I had a great feeling of appreciation for being given the chance to row a raft through Grand Canyon. I felt privileged and blessed. (I also somehow mentioned to anyone who would stand still that I was going to go!) But I was also a little freaked out by the idea of rowing a large, heavy raft through some of the biggest whitewater in the world. I was green (still am). I had been guiding rivers for less than 3 months. I was worried that I wouldn’t enjoy the trip much because I’d be constantly concerned about the next big rapid. I knew that if I ran cleanly through House Rock Rapid, which is the first really difficult drop, I would be OK. House Rock comes at the end of the first day on the river.One thing I wasn’t worried about was my ability to do the hard work. Rafting is nothing if not hours and hours of ass-busting hard work, especially overnight wilderness trips. One of the ways I tried to gain respect while guiding in California before the Canyon trip was trying to work harder than anyone else. From my experience as a passenger on a Grand Canyon trip last year, I knew that this kind of attitude was not only preferred, it was required. And so it was from the moment we started on the morning of the day before put-in, and I didn’t have a moment to spare fretting about the rapids.
There is an amazing amount of gear required to run 21 passengers luxuriously through Grand Canyon. Six 18-foot rafts, 10 coolers, Dutch ovens and charcoal, shit cans, beer and soda, a satellite phone, a guitar, and packed away somewhere, a set of horseshoes. Outdoors Unlimited is the most organized company on the river, but it still took many hours to load the custom-built F-750 triple-crew-cab truck with a fork lift and stack the 30 foot long trailer with rafts and boxes of gear. Finally, we loaded up and drove to the put-in at Lee’s Ferry, Mile Zero. Rigging the rafts went very quickly because of the organization, and then we had dinner at Vermilion Cliffs Lodge before meeting the guests for an orientation talk. Somewhere in there, I was supposedly responsible for tightening two important Allen screws. I didn’t.
Permanent Grin
I slept better than I thought I would, and woke to a single thought: House Rock. My immediate remedy was to smile. Ain’t nothing going to keep me off the river now, so I might as well enjoy the ride. After the usual follies getting everyone packed and the passengers suited up, we jumped on the rafts and pushed off without ceremony. I was doing it, I really was doing it. My smile became a grin and my grin became elation. I may not have been the happiest guy on earth, but I’ll bet I was in the top ten. Word went around the passengers that this was my first run through the canyon, and as I passed close to the other rafts, people kept asking me “Is this really your first time rowing though the Canyon?” I smiled and smiled. People got out their cameras and took my picture. Well, shoot, I tried to say with my shoulders, you don’t need to take my picture. But inside I was eating it up. Twelve of the passengers were middle-aged women from Philadelphia, some of them on their first trip without their husbands since they were married decades ago. They kept elbowing each other and pointing at me, sometimes saying things I could hear (Look at Chris, he sure is happy), and sometimes saying things I couldn’t (All you’ve got is imagination when you row a boat alone).
This was my world: At my feet, six 105mm ammo cans, three on each side. Lunch garbage, snacks, and the trip library on one side, dinner/breakfast garbage, active shit can, and toilet supplies on the other. Underneath me a cooler and in front of my feet, another cooler. I have as a backrest a big drybag full of my personal gear. Up in the bow, a huge pile of dry bags full of passenger gear. Behind them, a row of 8 105mm ammo cans steadily filling with shit as the trip went on (let’s not mince words). On top of the shit cans are 2 tables topped by “paco pads”, which are sealed foam pads for the passengers to sleep on. On either side are 2 big propane bottles. Behind me is a wedge-shaped dry box full of backpacks, pumps, and miscellaneous gear. In the very rear are a stack of 12 or so 5 gallon buckets with the cleanest on the bottom and the dirtiest (pee bucket) on the top. Two 6 gallon water jugs are wedged in there somewhere too. My boat was the last to finish loading in the mornings on the river. Delivered to me just before pushing off were the active shit can and toilet supplies, the dinner/breakfast garbage, and the pee bucket smelling of Lysol. Oh, and strapped to either side in the back are small ammo cans labeled “bio waste” and “day tripper”. I’ll let you figure it out.
I grinned through Badger Rapid and laughed through Soap Creek Rapid, both just medium-sized and wavy. The raft responded suprisingly well for being so heavy, and it was easy to keep it pointed into to big waves. Rowing on the flats, however, was a little bit noisy. The pins that connect the oarlocks to the raft were very clunky. I jumped into the river to pee and cool off. As I climbed back in, grabbing an oarlock pin for support, I noticed that the pin moved in its socket. What’s this? After getting aboard, I pulled upward on one of the oars and the pin slid easily out of the socket. Whoops! I thought somebody else tightend those screws! Sure glad I noticed it on the flat water instead of discovering it in the middle of a rapid. An embarrassed baggage boatman sheepishly asked one of the senior guides if there was an Allen key easily available for a “minor adjustment”. But I was still grinning.
House Rock Rapid curves around a right bend and has a house-sized rock at the bottom left with a big hole next to it. Running it safely requires a move called a downstream ferry. You enter the rapid backwards with the stern at about a 45 degree angle and pull like hell for 10 strokes or so as you roll over medium sized waves. At some point you look over your shoulder and judge that you are going to miss the brunt of the rock and/or hole and turn the boat back around so that the bow faces the obstacles. I lined up to enter the same place as the senior guide I thought to be most conservative, and watched them make their run. I counted their pulls: 8 all-your-might strokes. OK, here goes. Set the angle, watch for the partially-submerged rocks (don’t want to bump and spin), and pull pull pull. Look and pull. It takes about 4 strokes to get the raft moving at all. I didn’t count my strokes, but after shooting a third quick look I thought myself safe and turned to face the big tailwaves, missing the dangerous parts by a wide margin. I grinned until my cheek muscles ached. I grinned for days.
Ghosts
There are a limited number of camping areas along the river large enough to accommodate big commercial trips. The first night, and several other nights later on, we camped at the same spots that I camped while on the Canyon trip last year as a passenger. Or I should say the same spots we camped. Jessica and I. I didn’t think about this fact until we pulled up to the same beach that first night. At the time of the trip last year Jess and I were going through the final discussions that led to our break-up. Or rather, we were putting off the discussions so as not to make the trip miserable. She was pushing me for clarity and finality, and so on the first or second night of the trip I told her that I would be moving out. The shapes of the canyon walls against the bright stars become burned in your memory when you lay awake and stare and think. Stare and churn once again the painful pages that have been torn from you, that you have torn. Will tear.
The rainstorm that first night didn’t spatter much, but I was thankful for the obfuscation of the sharp edge of the high canyon rim. Thankful that guides can sleep on their boats and don’t have to walk the beaches with the ghosts who might wander there left ashore from previous trips.
Confidence
“Anybody can do this!” I called to the other baggage boatman after running a rapid early in the trip. I was exhilarated at my lack of paralyzing fear going into these watery monsters.
“It might be easy for you,” she said back in her English accent, “but you’re a top gun.” She looked away. “I’ve been doing this for five years and I’m still not as good as you seem to be after 2 and a half months.” This was her 3rd Canyon run.I was taken aback. At first I thought she might be speaking from her insecurities, but I tried to resist that easiest of brush-offs. Rowing these big, heavily-loaded rafts took some amount of skill and some amount of strength. This is true. But it’s just rowing, I thought, having forgotten my pre-trip anxieties. You pull on these long wooden things. The river does most of the work. You can follow the senior guides into the rapids. Keep the raft straight into the waves and you will mostly stay out of trouble. It seemed that the mental challenge was much more daunting than the purely physical. Maybe that’s what she meant. It is not the skill, it is the confidence.
Fear is a double-edged blade. It can make you panic or it can focus you. I was scared of the panic on the approach to the rapids, but what came to me on the brink was the focus.
Feel the river. The raft seems a part of me just as I am the engine for it. The oars are antennae, sensitive and strong at once. I no longer think about needing to turn, and how to pull to achieve the turn, I just do. The raft is an extension of self, like a bicycle or a car after you have been operating one for years. You know its boundaries, you immediately sense any slight push or tug, you wince when approaching unavoidable danger.
I stick an oar blade into a hole as I pass and it is snatched from my grasp. I catch it back. Right. Don’t stick oars into holes. Learn. Adapt. Scold myself even as I still have huge tailwaves to run. Try to turn, and flail at the air with the oars. Retreat the stroke and pull at the air again. Now I really need to turn. Right. Get smart. Pull on the peaks of the waves, and not the empty spaces at the bottom. There. Wait for the next and pull again. That works better. Make a mistake and remember. Lessons are learned when focussed, and forgotten when panicked.
Control is a degree of feeling, not a definable state. Being in control means being in the groove. It’s not doing the perfect thing, it’s doing the right thing every moment. A raft skidding down the waves is there by the grace of inflated Hypalon and heaped water. By definition, it is always somehow out-of-control. An oarsman grasps at control by reacting, by adapting, and by predicting and preparing. Fight the river and it will stomp you. Tickle the river where it is most graceful and work toward that state of being OK for the moment.
It’s like downhill skiing on a mogul field that shifts, rocky and unpredictable, at every glance. Like cornices forming and collapsing before you. Like a relentless galewind always pushing. There is no stopping in the middle to catch your breath or rethink your course. No soft crashes to stop before an unavoidable obstacle. No pause button. The water’s as cold as ice and you are strapped into nothing. Your grasps of the oar handles are both your safety and your salvation. In your hands, they mean control and comfort. Out of them they are helicopter blades and rocket launchers with you in their crosshairs.
None of this means anything deep inside the wash across your deck. You saw the huge hole two waves ahead, and a big lateral just pushed your bow away from where you need it. Shit. Shoulda predicted that. You don’t feel the cold water. You don’t see the towering limestone walls all about. You do see the raft ahead of you take the edge of the hole and get hit hard and spun. You are set up to catch the center. “Turn, you son of a bitch!” you growl as you strain, pushing and pulling and cursing in what may pass, here in the heart of it, as coordination.
Then the second thoughts. The chess-like thoughts. What happens when I hit? Which way will it try to spin me? Is it deep enough to surf me? Should I get momentum as well as alignment? Is the reversal strong enough to snatch my oars if I try to correct when I hit? What comes after the hole? You make decisions. You act. Hesitation will give the river gremlins time to pounce and bite you in the butt. Your acts will either prevent undesirable hydrohappenings or you will be wrong and learn. This is confidence: Prepare; Predict; Act; Learn; React; Remember; Adapt. Know the limitations. Respect the possible consequences. Use the fear for focus. Panic is down there with needing to pee and being hungry; it’s a choice that you wouldn’t think of making.
I still didn’t believe her. It just didn’t seem that hard. As the trip went on and the rapids rolled by, however, this strong and experienced woman hit holes sideways, lost an oar and gave up getting it back until after the run, and put herself on courses where she had to pull with all her might to avoid rocks. My runs through the same rapids were clean and uneventful, for the most part. Luck, maybe. I didn’t arm wrestle her, but I’ll bet she could have put me down quickly. What did I have or know that she, an experienced Canyon oarsman, didn’t? Quien Sabe? Who knows? Some natural gift perhaps. All I know is that it felt good and right and flowing to be in the seat with oars in hand and roaring waves leaping relentlessly below. And even better to get kicked out the bottom after staying out of trouble. No, not just staying out of trouble but running it clean. The experienced guides put my runs to shame, of course, and I was standing on their shoulders of advice and entry and leadership. But for a geeky hiker guy with a few months of rafting experience, it sure felt nice. It felt confident.
Eddy
The water goes down, of course, its flow always about the same no matter where you slice it. But the enormity of it is hard for the human mind to grasp. Any tiny obstacle, any slightest curve, any small drop creates a turbulence that seems out of proportion to its size. Underneath, the river keeps flowing down, but on the surface, the bends and bumps and slumps create eddies. The surface is where a raft floats and where an oarsman does his job. An eddy, in the simplest sense, is when the water flows back upriver. This may seem impossible or counter-intuitive to those who have never rowed, but let me tell you it most certainly happens in reality, and happens especially on a river like the Colorado.
Here is the central truth of the river through Grand Canyon that I did not realize until I ran it: In between the big rapids, where the river is mostly going down (duh!), the river is actually mostly going back up (huh?).
Remember this is what happens just on the surface, while below the surface the river does what logic suggests.
In many places there is just a thin swirling ribbon of downriver flow between wide expanses of water running uphill. On a typical stretch of non-whitewater, some 70% of the surface water is running uphill. A raft that so much as touches these eddies gets slowed and sucked into them. You can feel them with your oar blades. Most of the effort an oarsman expends on a non-windy day is in staying out of the eddies, or pulling themselves out once they have been sucked in. It takes constant concentration. The oarsmen with passengers get distracted answering questions and are constantly getting grabbed and spun away to one side or the other. Baggage boatmen, unfettered by passengers, get to obsess about staying out of eddies. Two things I learned in the Canyon: The most important is how to stay out of eddies, and second, how to run the water when it is mostly flowing downhill (rapids).
Change-over
At Phantom Ranch, approximately 1/3 of the way through the trip, 19 of our 21 passengers hiked out and were replaced by 19 others. I thought they were nuts, both the ones coming in and the ones going out. After 5 days on the river, the ones leaving were finally settling in to the rhythm of the days and the water. Now they had 5000 vertical feet to climb out in the hottest week of the year. The ones coming in had it somewhat better because they were hiking downtrail, but the seven days they would have on the river seemed too short a time to really soak it all in.
The new ones arrived sunburnt, dehydrated and strung-out. Some had glazed looks in their eyes, and others just waded into the frigid water, sat down, and stared off into space. Obviously, they had underestimated either the hike or their ability to do it in the required timeframe. The guides did their best to get them going with rafting basics and packing their gear into drybags, but most were moving pretty slow. Some had had some rafting experience, and didn’t think they needed to listen to the how-to talks. They were encouraged with a mixture of smiles and persistence to please pay attention. A few got curt words.
It was like getting sucked into an eddy. We finally had a groove going with the first-half passengers, and now we had to start all over again…with passengers who thought they knew it all, to boot. Eventually we got them packed and life-jacketed and educated. A few were fully hydrated, but it was still a pretty ragged looking crew that gathered around to crawl on to the rafts.
Granite
The river turned ugly overnight. For our run of the upper canyon, the water was clear and green and cold. In the rapids, the whitewater was true to definition. The peaks of the waves and the froth were stark white against the green of the unthrown water. At a glance, a boatman could see the flow and the waves and the holes as written by the white language of the water. The morning of the mid-trip changeover at Phantom Ranch, we woke to a different river. A dirty river. The rain that had been threatening us thus far must have dumped into one of the major tributaries between us and the dam far upstream. The only two side canyons big enough to cause this much muddying were the Little Colorado and the Paria. From the look of the silt, the senior guides guessed the Paria. Fine silt, more brown than gray. The Little Colorado would dump bigger particles of a more steely color.
It was as if someone threw a veil over the river. The sharp white splashes and swirls were almost as brown as the water from which they sprang. The river was blank and obscured. I would have to learn a whole new dialect in order to read this new, more subtle and vaguely threatening water. (The natural state of the Colorado is, of course, even more muddy, but the switch was like someone replacing a color TV with a black-and-white one in the middle of a program)
Also, some god or other had seemed to bump the earth with its elbow in the night. The narrow walls of the Inner Granite Gorge, with its swirling deep water were now wider, and the river was tipped hellishly downward. We loaded our tired and red-faced passengers into the rafts and pushed off as if from a mountaintop.
Until that afternoon, the raft felt as if it had been pushed along by the water of the river. Suddenly, it felt as if we were sledding down a slope with the water lubricating the ride, the raft almost moving faster than the water. The river downstream looked like a freeway snaking down off a high mountain pass. The exhilaration that was felt only in the rapids now tickled my belly constantly. There was no warm up for the passengers. Minutes from Phantom Ranch there are medium sized rapids strung between with swift sloped water. No one but the guides were smiling. We were also riding a surge caused by mid-day power generation releases from that ever-meddling dam (truth be told, it is the dam that allows a rafting season in the Canyon to be longer than about 6 weeks. I’d give it up in a minute, however, to see the damn thing plucked and the river run free).
But wait, what’s this? Suddenly the water slowed into a pool. A quick check of the map showed what I already know. Rapid. Big one. Horn Creek, this one is called. Last year when I ran the river as a passenger, we stopped to scout this rapid. At the time, I was mesmerized by the perfect horn-shaped entry waves, and stared at them for as long as I could. The water was much higher this trip, and the horns were flattened and gone. A quick chat with a senior guide clued me in to this rapid’s character. Enter middle-right and square up to the big laterals coming from the right. What they didn’t say became obvious as we lined up and drifted in: this was the longest steepest rapid yet. The big laterals didn’t materialize and the rapid was more fun than anything. The paddle-boat lost a passenger and pulled her back in. “Fun rapid,” I called to the other baggage boatman when the roar had subsided.
I tried smiling at the passengers in other boats. Waving too. No response. Bunch of unfriendly cusses, I thought to myself, and went merrily down the river.
We encounter another pool above another drop. Granite Rapid. Looks to be the same as many Canyon rapids. Entry tongue, waves and holes, maybe a few rocks. It’s rated an 8 or 9 on a scale of 10, just like Horn Creek. Hmmm. Unlike most rapids, this one occurs at a bend in the river. I pull over to Sam, the most experienced guide, and ask him for advice. “There are three lateral waves that come off the big granite wall on the right,” he said. “The third is the biggest, and you need to be sure to square up to it. You can avoid them some by pushing left, but you cannot avoid the big one. You’ll see it coming.” He grins. OK, got it, I nod. Sounds routine, I thought. “Oh, there’s a huge eddy at the bottom right,” he continues. “You will have a hard time getting out of it, but try to get into it if you can so you can pick up swimmers.” The passengers turn their heads. I nod as sternly as I can. “Whoop!” I wanted to yell. Another big rapid, let’s have some fun! But I don’t, I take a big swig of water in the hope that the passengers will follow my example. Pretty grim lot.
We line up for the entry. The trip leader makes the hand signals for “close it up”. Get the rafts closer, she says. It’s always amazing how close you can get the rafts at the entry to big rapids without there being any interference in the middle of them. The water and the slope snatch the rafts one by one and slingshot them down the river to their wildly separate fates. I’m third in line. The first raft drifts in but I cannot see its run because the drop is too steep. I’m close enough to see the second one get about halfway through before I need to pay full attention to my own run. Doesn’t look too bad. I push left, trying to follow the conservative line and avoid some of the big stuff. Wouldn’t like to get up against that granite wall either, I think.
The rapid has an unusually long run-in. A stretch of fast smooth water before the waves of the rapid proper. This gives much more acceleration than is typical. Suddenly, the first waves hit, or rather, I hit them. Not from any direction, but from everywhere. The waves stand still and I bash them with this huge load of rubber and gear. My raft weighs as much as a VW bug and this water is dirty and mean. “Oh shit!” I say to no one and everyone as I slam into the middle of it. But the only It out there is a roaring chaos of water. Waves reinforcing and canceling into drops and haystacks. Square up to what? There are no defined laterals, just enormous spouts of water shooting, literally shooting, from every direction but up.
The raft twists lengthwise, front corners opposite back corners, something I’ve not yet seen. Water jets into my mouth but I cannot close it for the cackling. A big wave from the right snags the oar from my right hand and I grab it back a second later. For ten seconds or twenty seconds or thirty seconds I don’t know I fight to keep the bow square to everywhichwave. The granite wall looms and I get downright scared of being pushed into it. I try to turn to set a ferry angle, but the walls of water loom larger and I keep the boat square to the waves instead, hoping that the wash from the wall will keep me off of it. I look to its base and see seething boils and angular rocks. Don’t wanna be in there at all, but there’s not a thing I can do if the river wants me there. Words seem so insufficient to describe the utter dissolution of sanity that such a snarl of water and air and rock as Granite is at 20,000 cfs. Then just as suddenly, the core of it is past. I see the first two rafts getting sucked into the big eddy and I see that I will not, even if I try. I take stock. The raft seems in one piece and in order, and I find my grip on reality quickly returning.
In the tailwaves are three thoughts in my head: This is the biggest rapid I will run on this trip, bigger even then Lava Falls; They are crazy to let a boatman with 2 ½ months of experience run that kind of water; And: This is the kind of rapid that our mothers, worrying at home, conjure up and then dismiss as too radical and borne more from their fears than any reality on the river. Then I just hoot and cackle and the passengers on the paddle boat look at me strangely as they pass shellshocked. Now THAT’S a rapid!
The rafts in the eddy struggle to escape. One does. Others try, and ride the cycle around again and try again and fail again. And again. Finally they try exiting through the bottom of the eddy, which is usually too rocky to allow a raft to pass, but the high water let them through.
The announcer comes on the river PA: “But wait! To complete the trio of rapids that you folks must enjoy or endure this first day we next present for your gratification Hermit Rapid! Reputed to have the biggest waves of all the unflooded rapids in the Canyon. Hermit Rapid everyone!”
In the pool above, I sidle up to my best friend Sam and see what mysteries might await. “Hey diddle diddle,” he says. Which is river-code for “run right down the middle”. “Are they big enough to flip a raft?” I ask. “Oh yeah,” he says grinning, “but camp’s just downstream.”
That night, just as darkness had fallen, someone suggested I pull out my guitar (for the first time on the trip). And for the first time ever, I sang and played a song by myself in front of a group of people. A group of strangers, too. Confidence is a drug. I sang Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page”. Someone joins me to sing “Angel from Montgomery” and we play it twice since everyone likes it so much. We go on try a few CCR tunes and then everyone claps and wanders off to bed. These folks aren’t so bad once you get some halibut and water into them, I think as I myself wander down to my shitty little boat to sleep.
Commandeered
The length of a Canyon trip varies depending upon where a company takes a trip off the river. The company I worked with goes all the way to Lake Mead, or about 245 river miles. Our trip was 12 days long, with the 12th day being a jet boat ride across Lake Mead, so there were 11 days of rowing. This is a very short trip as Canyon oar trips go (private trips are generally 18 days or more), and if you do the math you can see that we needed to average more than 20 miles a day. This is easy on many sections of the river, especially the upper section, because the water moves very quickly. On the lower part of the river, however, the water is more languid and there are up-river winds which frequently blow strongly every afternoon. The dilemma is that most people who can afford a Canyon trip feel the need to hurry back to their jobs, and prefer shortened trips or half trips.
Mornings were pleasant drifting, and after super-gluing the cracks in my hands and brushing my teeth (as a guide, there was no time for such luxuries at camp in the morning), there were moments when I could watch the light on the walls and get brief glimpses of clouds as they quickly leaped the canyon rims. We stopped for hikes, but the relentless pace meant that they were generally short and rushed. One exception was Deer Creek, where we stopped for 4 or 5 hours. Deer Creek ends in a spectacular 100 foot waterfall which splashes into a huge pool at the river’s edge. Above the falls is a cool slot canyon with smaller waterfalls and pools. Usually, there is a horde of river runners stopped to enjoy the beauty and tranquility, but by some twist of luck we had the place to ourselves.
Just below Deer Creek and just above camp that night, the paddle raft took a course between a pinnacle and a cliff and bumped a sharp rock. Whooosh! I heard from across the river. Uh oh. When they arrived at camp the 6-inch gash in the side of the raft had deflated one of the four main tube chambers. Time to dig out the repair kit. After dinner, the senior guides patched it once, let it sit for a half hour and tried inflating the chamber. The patch blew out. They tried a second time just before dark and blew that one out too. The company had just switched the type of glue stocked in the repair kit, and the guides were unfamiliar with how long it might take to set. The previous type was ready for full inflation pressures withing 20 minutes. Or the glue might be bad.
In the morning they tried a third time, but upon adding some air, they could see that the patch was starting to go too. Maybe the glue needed longer to cure. Maybe it never would. An unlicensed baggage boatman like me can row myself but no one else. The other baggage boatman had a license, and so they decided to distribute the 7 passengers from the paddle raft on the remaining rafts, roll up the damaged raft, put me on the other baggage boat, and use my boat to row passengers. They commandeered my raft, poop and all. I launched myself into a depressed mood. I’d come to row the whole Canyon. We would get to Lava Falls the next day, and I probably wouldn’t have the chance to row it. Rowing the Canyon without rowing Lava was like having a birthday cake without getting to blow out the candles. The other baggage boatman and I switched off rowing that day, but I wouldn’t ask, and I’m sure she wouldn’t let go, the opportunity to row Lava.
That night we arrived in camp at dusk because of the hard rowing against strong winds. It was my turn to cook, too. I accidentally gashed my pinky with a knife cutting tomatoes, perhaps out of some bizarre sympathy with the damaged raft. I wrapped it up with tape, I kept glancing over at the deflated pile of rubber laying on the beach. I’d be able to super glue my finger the next day, but no one could do anything for the raft but wait. After dark I gathered some passengers and showed them summer constellations, and pointing to the place where Mars, bright and orange in retrograde motion, would emerge from behind the canyon wall hours hence. There was a windstorm that night, and everyone who could sleep woke to find grit in everything.
Lava Day
All the guides, even the most experienced ones, are stressed-out on Lava Day. The newer guides are stressed about the upcoming run, and the senior ones are stressed about the stress that the newer ones feel (and maybe subconsciously about the rapid itself). It’s also about ¾ of the way through the trip, and everyone’s a little tired of each other but not yet close enough to the end to let it go.
As I cooked breakfast (gritty bagels) I watched them inflate the patched tube. They stood around as if a campfire waiting to see if it would hold. They shook their heads. I hung mine. We ate. Damn.
But it held, barely. It fizzled in one spot when you spat on it, but it held. I told them I’d stop every 15 minutes to give them the pump if that’s what it would take to row Lava. Wahooooo! Back in the saddle. Any stress I might have felt about the rapid was smothered by big squirts of chocolate glee.
Lava Falls has been called many things, including the biggest navigable rapid in the world and the fastest runnable whitewater in the Western Hemisphere. Like the other huge or dangerous rapids in the Canyon (Hance and Crystal) rafts try to squeeze through on the margins of the otherworldly maw created by enormous amounts of water pushing over steep rocky drops. In the case of the others there is a path which, if run right, follows relatively calm water. In Lava, even the calmest water is still hungry and angry.
We stopped to eat lunch in withering heat. We boarded the rafts into gusty hot upriver winds, 30 or maybe 40 mph blasts. I pulled until my fingers ached and my shoulders burned, sometimes standing still for a full minute even though I was pulling with all my might. Big puddles of slack water and sucking eddies aided the wind in its inhibition of us. Passengers fell silent to let the oarsman concentrate on the pulling. Hats flew and were snagged by retention cords. Teeth were gritted. Oarsmen couldn’t drink or pee because losing momentum or being pushed upriver meant double the work to regain the same progress. I thought sinful thoughts of internal combustion engines.
Finally, late in the afternoon, one by staggering one, we pulled into the scout for Lava and walked up the long trail to the overlook. This was no “hey diddle diddle” rapid. The senior guides explained in detail the best run through the foaming, spitting mess of whitewater below. There were no moves to make, so no matter how much talk was made and how many angled hands were twisted in the air to show raft angles, the basic idea was the same as so many other big Canyon rapids: Enter at the right place or be destroyed, and then the rapid will do with you what it wants and you can only react and try to keep the boat square to obstacles. Throw yourself at fate in the right place and face the consequences. After all the hard rowing, I couldn’t bring up much adrenaline and I found myself calm and focussed.
We ran in two groups, with me in the first. A passenger from the second group video-taped my run. When I watched my Lava run after dinner that night, I was surprised how long I was in the thick of the whitewater. It felt like 10 seconds, but in reality was more like 40. I watched myself struggle with the wind above the brink, hot on the heels of Sam’s boat. My entry was in the right place. I saw my heavy boat punch through the big laterals and then wash up on the boil of the rock they call the cheese grater, avoiding the huge waves at the bottom. The “reality” as captured on video was nothing like the reality of my memory of being there: sound and overwhelmed senses and focus could not be captured.
On the video all the rafts but one had very similar runs, although it didn’t look that way as I watched them from below. One passenger boat entered too far right, got hit hard, and lost a passenger who clung to the side of the raft, her shorts getting sucked off by the whitewater (she was half naked a good deal of the time in camp, so this was nothing new). The oarsman lost grip of her oars too, and the raft ran the last half of the rapid under the whims of the river only. Below, we regrouped with smiles and whoops and compliments all around, happy to be alive below Lava, and to a person, wishing to be nowhere else in the world.
The run through Lava, which skirts the core of the rapid, was not the wild ride that we ran in Granite, where we punched through the heart of the maelstrom.
Night Run
At the end of the trip, on the slackwater of Lake Mead, a jet boat brings an outboard motor and waits overnight to ferry passengers across the lake to the take out in the morning. A lucky group of boatmen partially derig the rafts, and form them into a great barge. A light is attached to the front of the barge and the outboard to the back.
After dinner, the barge sets off into the darkness. It’s destination is a buoy marking the center of the channel somewhere near the take-out, where the lucky boatmen catch a few hours’ sleep before continuing at dawn to the take out. The journey through the narrow twisting canyons takes about 5 hours. The driver leans into to the darkness, more feeling the cliff walls and sandbars than seeing them.
We had been travelling under a waning moon, and that final night must have been the night of the new moon. Total darkness save the blazing stars both near and distant. Mars high and red. A light haze on the flatwater. Warm wind through my hair as I sat next to the guy with his hand on the handle of the outboard.
“This is idiocy,” I say over the whine of the engine, squinting into the darkness.
“Yeah, and we do it every trip,” he replies.