Last Grand Canyon post
Awwww….really? All good things must come to an end. Most of you are probably saying “it’s about time!” right about now. I wanted to give a shout out to the great company OARS that organized this trip, and the awesome guides who kept us safe, well fed and as comfortable as you can be camping beside a river. We can highly recommend this organization for just about any river trip you’d want to take. Yes, they’re pricey, but literally everything is provided, and lets those non-campers experience true wilderness without having to buy the gear.
Overall, we felt 16 days was about 4 days too long. We definitely wanted to raft the entire Grand Canyon, but the last few days had lots of flat water, interrupted by only a few big rapids. If pressed, I’d recommend rafting the upper half of the Canyon for a week long trip. Pros: getting to see the various rock layers coming in at river level, and rising in height as you descend the river (this still was the highlight of the trip for me, because it was so unique); “Roaring Twenties” series of rapids in the 20’s mile markers, occurring about every half mile; numerous side canyons for hiking. Cons: hiking out (or riding a mule) at Phantom Ranch; missing some really big rapids (starting just below the ranch); missing the majority of the big waterfalls. You could do the lower half of the Canyon to get the big rapids and waterfalls; you’d hike down to Phantom Ranch; but the last half of your trip gets really slow. Knowing what we do now, I’m really glad we were able to do the entire thing, for all those varied experiences.
Enough chatter! On with the pictures -
The next morning we were greeted by this young male (check out how thick the base of his horns are compared to the female in the next picture) and his little family.
We then stopped at Havasu Creek (another brilliant turquoise tributary) -
We hiked up the canyon for about a mile…
…before stopping at this pool to while away a few hours resting, reading, eating lunch and listening to the sounds of water falling.
Some of you may have heard of Havasu Falls. This is located in Havasupai tribal lands, and was at least 4 miles hike away from the river.
We sure got our fill of Bighorn sheep that day -
Even though the canyon was opening up, we still found some really high walls.
Lava Falls Day! This is a famous (?infamous) rapid that has the highest rating given to any rapid in the Canyon - highest meaning most dangerous. Scouting the rapid:
Plenty of rafts have flipped here, so before we entered it, we had to cinch down our life jackets super tight, ensure our helmets were on firmly, recheck all bags were securely tied down (and wouldn’t flop around and hit us in the face as we were bucked in the waves).
We were also reminded what to do if we became “involuntary” swimmers - lay on your back with your feet pointing downstream, and if you can hold your breath for 17 seconds, it’d all be over that quick, and you’d be through it.
We all got through it unscathed, and it actually was kinda anticlimactic because it went by so fast, and didn’t seem like it was any rougher than some others we’d been “Maytagged” by (tossed around and drenched from all sides) - however, I wasn’t rowing the boat through the waves, holes and rocks. The raft we were in that day was piloted by a big, bearded guy who wore skirts every day. He asked that we give the boat good “mojo” by all wearing skirts, and to his surprise, all four of us did, including the 70 year old guy from Minneapolis. No one was surprised that Steve did. That night in camp we had Lava Festival, where everybody wore costumes. We had a lot of fun singing songs, playing horseshoes and telling bad jokes.
doesn’t look like much from the downstream side, does it?
The next day, we hiked up Whitmore Trail, that wasn’t much scrambling, but just kept going up and up - 1000 ft.
On the way, we passed by columns of basalt -
…that resulted from a huge volcanic eruption “only” 200,000 years ago. You can still find volcanic rock more than 70 miles downstream, where they were thrown by the blast (and not just carried by the river)!
Neat “sunburst” effect on these basalt columns:
Great views from up here!
note the rafts waayyy down there
View of the lava flow from the river aspect -
Last of the gorgeous multicolored walls -
Every night we could see tons of stars and the Milky Way, but this was the only picture that turned out halfway decent, with canyon walls as framing.
Several last comments:
- If you go on one of these trips, be in really good physical shape so you can enjoy all the hiking.
- Believe them when they say to bring extra heavy moisturizer (20% humidity and you wash your hands in cold river water a lot) - we did bring it, but didn’t slather it on at first like we should have, and suffered deep splits in our fingertips (that so messed up our fingerprints that we had to reset our devices when we got back!).
- This was the longest we’d ever been without WiFi/cell service (including the South Pacific and Africa).
I was going to finish this post with shots from both rims that we visited after we left the river, but I’ll save those for another one.
“Reflecting” on this trip, it was a pretty cool ride!