Last month, Rani and I spent 24 days on the Colorado River rafting 280+ miles from Lees Ferry to Pearce Ferry. We were provided this amazing opportunity by Kevin Burke who is a good friend and fellow adventurer of my brother, Mike. There were 10 of us all told, with 2 leaving at Phantom Ranch about a week into the trip and 2 joining at the same place (8 people at a time on 5 rafts). John, a veteran of 12 descents of the Colorado was our leader with Doug and Karl, joining him as experienced rafters on their own rafts. The remaining people shared 2 larger (18 foot) rental rafts.
Rani has written a brief summary of the trip:
One of my brother-in-law's friends in the USA, Kevin,invited us on a whitewater rafting adventure on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. It was all privately organized and therefore less expensive than the commercial tours. You have to enter a Grand Canyon National Parks lottery each year for a permit to run the river and it took 10 years for Kevin to get his permit. We rented the rafts and ordered the food from an outfitter, Ceiba Adventures. The whole trip was 286 miles in 24 days, of which we rowed 246 miles and motored the last 40, which is flat water anyway.We launched from Lees Ferry, close to Marble Canyon, in Arizona and took out at Pearce Ferry, on the boundary of the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead, Arizona.
It was hard work but amazing. We had to be up at 5.30am on most days, pack the tent by the light of our head lamps, cook breakfast (we took turns at this as there were 8 of us), pack the kitchen, load everything on the rafts, row for 12-14 miles, unload everything again and set up at a different campsite. Most of the campsites were steep sandy banks and it was hard work carrying all the gear up and down the soft sand.
John, our team leader, rowed the "kitchen boat", a 16 foot catamaran raft. He owns all the equipment, tables, grill, camp stove, heavy duty pots, frying pans, and bowls, plates and utensils for 16 settings. Most of these are stowed in his custom built aluminium trunks, lashed onto the frame of the raft. The trunks reminded me of the classic cars with their carriage trunks. It was hard labour, unloading and loading those trunks on slippery shores and carrying them up the dunes.
The food was spread between 4 rafts, dry goods stored in surplus metal ammunition (ammo) cans, which have excellent water-proof seals, and meat, fish, dairy, fresh fruit and vegetables in coolers packed with blocks of ice. We ate very well but that also meant we had a lot of solid waste to carry out - you must pack out EVRYTHING to preserve the park. So each day we had to set up "the groover", an ammo can with a toilet seat placed on top. In the old days, there was no seat, so bum cheeks would be imprinted with a groove from the metal can edges, hence "the groover".
For 4-5 hours each day, we rafted down the river through some calms and rapids, some rated up to 8 (by the Colorado River rating system) and one rated 10 (Lava Falls) near the end of the trip. We could hear the roar of the rapids well before we reached them. Some were "read and run", i.e. we could see the flow of the water, the overfalls, holes and rocks with time to adjust our course, while others we scouted from a vantage point just before their approach.I had a go at the 4's but did not feel I had the strength to get through the huge lateral waves and avoid the holes and obstacles in the higher rated rapids. Chris did very well, following closely in the wake of one of our leaders and we did not flip or damage the raft. Learning to read the river takes a lot of experience and we were thankful to have John, Doug and Karl with us to share their knowledge along the way.
Some sections of the river were very narrow with the canyon walls rising steeply on both sides while other sections were wide enough to split around tiny islands of volcanic rock or sandy shoals. We stared in wonder at the pink, orange and red colours of the walls, seeing castles,forts, pyramids, temples, theatres, totems and towers shaped by water coursing down over billions of years. In some sections shiny black basalt columns rose up from the river, and huge boulders of "coal" stood ready to tumble from the hillside. There were pink and grey granite sculptures, curvaceous urns, twisted candles and arches that would make Henry Moore take note. All this created by nature!
These photos cannot do justice as our own eyes see depth that the camera lens cannot capture.
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