Rafting the Grand Canyon with Western River Expeditions by Ellen & Hank Barone

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Whitewater’s Edge: Rafting the Grand Canyon

by Ellen & Hank Barone

At first, we confused the noise for the pounding of our hearts as boatman Evan Tea maneuvered us toward the lip of the rapid. But soon the thundering roar grew louder. It wasn’t our hearts — it was Lava Falls, the largest rapid in the Grand Canyon, a spot where the entire Colorado River churns into chaos. It’s been called the fastest navigable white-water rapid in North America - a tangle of massive waves and roiling currents where the river drops 37-feet in a few hundred yards - yet, we were having the time of our lives.

To most of its five million visitors a year, Grand Canyon National Park means a pit-stop view from the rim gleaned from a crowded, guard-railed overlook. But, there is another side to the Grand Canyon, one very few people know about. It is a world of billion-year-old rocks, where rapids roar and sensuous swirls of rock, thundering waterfalls, maidenhair fern and cherry-red monkeyflowers.

In 1869, Major John Wesley Powell and his men — with a few bags of moldy flour and a large sack of coffee — became the first to complete this journey. Today, some 23,000 people a year run the river in a bit more comfort—enjoying steaks, fresh fruit, shrimp cocktail, Dutch oven treats and even ice cream. Still, a trip through the Canyon is one of the nation’s quintessential adventures.

t was early August on a six-day rafting trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. There were two boats, 37-foot rafts made from five neoprene tubes, four boatmen and 30 passengers of all different ages, walks of life, economic backgrounds and nationalities including, three-generations of the Thompson family (ages 14 to 72); a bookish accountant from Wisconsin, two fun-loving Brits, a Massachusetts doctor and his 12-year-old son, a Baltimore lawyer celebrating his 65th birthday and his sophisticated, but amenable, wife who’d never been camping a day in her life.

“Everybody ready?” asked Travis Pearce, the trip’s head boatman. “Badger Rapid?” one passenger asked, half-heartedly as the rumble of the first rapid got closer. New to the game, we checked our life jackets, tightened the strings for our sunglasses, reached for the handholds and put ourselves into the maw of the Colorado River. But hydraulics were only half the story of the trip that introduced us to the depths of the desert Southwest, new friendships and stars that sparkled shamelessly in a pitch-black sky and experiences.

Life between the walls began to feel normal about midway through the voyage. Without even realizing it, we’d grown accustomed to awakening to the song of a canyon wren and the sun's first light as it brushed itself across the desert sky. While we went about packing-up camp we’d gauge the time, not by a wristwatch, but by the golden band of light that raked it’s way down the steep, mile-high walls until it warmed the crisp morning breeze tinged with the aroma of brewing coffee and frying bacon.

But there was more on the breeze than the smells of breakfast. There was an edge of anxiety. We had entered the Inner Gorge, the dark heart of the Grand Canyon. At 1.7 billion years old, Vishnu schist is some of the oldest rock on earth. It squeezed the river tight. The shadows seemed to swallow the light. This is where the rapids are that the Grand Canyon is famous for--Horn Creek, Granite, Hermit, and Crystal. Granite was just downstream, close enough to have rumbled all night in our dreams.

To ease the tension, the boatmen tell a joke before heading down the river: “How do you tell when a boatman is lying? When his lips are moving.”

Despite the humor, they take this stretch of the river very seriously. After a long scout, with Travis sketching the rapids in the sand to be sure of the route, both boats run Granite safely, we relaxed a bit. Still, Hermit was ahead. The first boat hit it square. The second smacked the rocks. The large neoprene boat bounced off the boulder like a rubber ball. No one was hurt. The boat was fine. But the privacy tent for the latrine had gone overboard. For the rest of the trip, getting to the "groover" – as the portable latrine is referred to due the groves its round top can leave – involved long hikes up bolder-strewn slopes to a private spot. Spectacular cliff-side views more than made up for it.

The Grand Canyon is not a single slash. Hundreds of smaller canyons cut their way to the main canyon, slicing their own depths through rock, each one a new discovery. We spend our last full day on the river splashing around in the blue-green paradise of Havasu Canyon. There was time to relax and explore.

The next morning a helicopter came to whisking us, our memories and our rolls of film, away. But for all the photographs we took and all the words we use to describe it, the canyon remains just beyond the reach of the imagination. There is no f-stop for the softness of the cool sand in the morning, or adequate words to describe the taste of fear in your mouth as you climb the steep, narrow ledge of a slot canyon. The only solution is to put yourself into the maw of the river and experience it yourself.

For more information contact Western River Expeditions at 1-800-453-7450 or www.westernriver.com.

Ellen and Hank Barone are travel writers and photographers based in New Mexico, USA. Their work appears in a wide variety of regional, national and international publications.

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