Rafting the Grand Canyon

What you’ve all been waiting for (especially my sister)! After two years of planning and waiting, it was finally here. We were setting off from Lee’s Ferry down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. As you know, to this point, we had been focused on southern Utah parks and loving the scenery there. But before we left Nashville, we had to pack for 16 days on the river - warm clothes for cold nights, headlamp for camp after dinner, solar shower, alcohol to last over 2 weeks… ;-)

At the introduction meeting in Flagstaff, AZ, our trip leader, Billie, confirmed that everybody had the alcohol that they had ordered ahead of time, and we were confident in the 2 liter plastic bottles of Jameson and aged rum that we brought. It sure seemed like a lot, but if you drink over 100 ml every day, for 15 nights, it adds up… We got comments from the river guides that it was rare to have guests ration their liquor like we did. Anyway, on to the sights -

This was the Navajo bridge that we crossed to get to Lee’s Ferry, and is the last crossing of the Colorado by car, for over 250 miles.

We quickly learned the difference between a “riffle” and a rapid on the river.

That was a minor rapid. You can tell by the amount of whitewater that you see. You won’t see any “major” whitewater pictures from me, as I wanted to keep my Nikon protected from splashes, unless we stopped and scouted a rapid for the safest passage through (not needed, except rarely).

This is what it looked like when we came to a sand bar for either a lunch stop or camp for the night. We had 6 of the 14-18 ft rubber rafts that carried the 15 of us passengers and 6 crew, and all of our gear, as well as kitchen and food.

It was amazing how quickly we became accustomed to jumping out of the rafts, clambering up the sand, and finding a flat, relatively private place to put up our tent for the night. And then, returning to the rafts, to help the guides empty the rafts of gear, kitchen, folding chairs and toilet for our stay that night.

The guides were amazing in what they were able to “whip up” for dinner each night. Entrees ranged from lasagna, to burritos to ribeye steaks (cooked perfectly!) to chili to pasta alfredo with shrimp! We were expected to serve ourselves from the VERY ample amounts of food served; wash our dishes in the prescribed order of hot soapy or bleach water; and leave the clean dishes in a hanging bag to dry. Several evenings we even had fresh baked cake or brownies for dessert. Breakfast was commonly eggs and bacon, bagels and cream cheese or oatmeal, and gallons of strong, hot coffee.

We saw bighorn sheep every day as we floated along, and I’ll have better pictures than this camera -shy ram, as we go on.

The geology was fascinating, as we floated down, to see the different layers come into sight, the deeper we passed into the canyon. I found this was the most interesting and unexpected highlight of the trip for me.

We had absolutely gorgeous weather the whole trip - Oct. 12-27. There were only 2-3 days of some clouds, but otherwise, every day had beautiful, clear blue skies and temps in the high 70s - low 80s.

We had expected a fair amount of hiking, but we did a LOT of hiking up side canyons. And yes, Steve was able to go on most hikes, as his ankle sprain was healing (somewhat). We saw some really neat rock formations -

…as well as cool waterfalls.

On our second morning, we stopped at Redwall Cavern -

…to wander and play frisbee for awhile, before we settled on a sandbar downriver to tackle what was to be our most challenging “hike” of the trip. We climbed up Martha’s Crack, gamely following our leader across rock faces where we had to feel for our toe and finger holds…

…and were rewarded by awesome views of the river…

(and tiny boats)

and canyon.

As we continued downstream, there were constant awesome pictures of “wedding cake” cliffs -

Throughout these posts of the Grand Canyon, there will be multiple views of sheer walls and the river (because I just kept saying “OMG, it’s so beautiful!”) -

I also got some neat reflection pictures (more to come).

The different colors in the walls due to the different types of rock were continually amazing.

This was our view from our camp one evening, so I’ll close this post with it.