River: Into the Grand Canyon 5, In Camp

Room for four in the arms of tamarind trees

"BUMP!" shouts Shad as the five tubes of our J-Rig hit the beach.  Travis runs forward and vaults to the shore with ropes to tie us up for the night.  We all begin to stand, uncurl, and stretch cramped legs and arms.  "OK…the kitchen will go right here in front of the bow and the toilet will be up there behind those trees."  At least one person from each couple or group hits the beach and begins a search for "the perfect" place to set up for the night.  Soon, we are joined by the others carrying day bags and water bottles.  Sites are approved or moved, and then, "FIRE LINE!"

Most of us shag on down to the raft and form a line.  A few of the guys get up on the tubes and Shad and Travis begin handing down camp essentials:  tables, pots, utensils, gas bottle for the kitchen, then, "CHAIRS!" and bags of chairs are passed up the beach, hand-to-hand.  "COTS!" and they go up the beach in their bags.  "DRY BAGS!"  and the big, personal gear bags come off.  We grunt, and groan, and curse people whose bags weigh more than the 20 allotted pounds.  We praise those whose bags are light, and threaten to drop the really heavy ones overboard in the morning.  "Take Five," means that's it and we can begin to carry to our camp spots, shed wet clothes, make clotheslines, and gear up for a bath.  

A few stragglers hang around the raft, "Tents?" one calls up.  "Tense?" answers Shad.  "Nah, I'm never nervous."  "No.  Tents!"  "I'm just not an anxious guy."  "I mean TENTS!"  "Oh," laughs Shad, throwing a couple of tent bags to the sand.  "That's what you want?"  Unless it is raining or looks like rain, most of us just put up cots, throw sleeping bags on the cots and flop out on top of the bags with the stars and night sounds as our shelter.  

 At this point the guides and Judy begin with dinner prep as the rest of us hang clothes, set up cots, and go back into the river to bathe ("Guys go downriver there, women you have the area upstream.")  Some of us bathe by taking clothes off in the river, others just apply soap under and over whatever they have on.  About the time we arrive back at our camp area, Travis or Shad blows the conch shell and we hear, "hors d'oeuvres are served!"  A circle of chairs has magically appeared next to the kitchen.  We grab our plate and utensils and drinking mug and claim a chair.  Beer drinkers rifle through the drag bags to find their own cold beers, and I scramble through one of the big coolers on board the raft to find our wine.  The chardonnay is in boxes, but the boxes disintegrate after the first day and we are left with plastic bladders filled with yellow liquid.  Looks like a bladder of pee, but tastes just fine.  

On the first night, Shad takes the women aside to have a pee talk.  "We know it's tough in the night when you don't want to wade back into the river, so…we have a present for you."  He hands out clear plastic containers with Ace Hardware written on the sides.  "Just pee in here, cap it, and empty it in the morning.  Simple as that."  By the third day, Jeanne quietly asks Shad for an extra Ace container, and nonchalantly shows up in the hors d'oeuvre circle sipping from her "Pee Bucket," as we call them.  The wine is indeed pee-toned.  She is a big hit.

We sit and drink, talk about the day and show off new scrapes and bruises; all the while the guides are chopping, sautéing, and assembling.  The conch sounds again and we rise to queue up for dinner.  Faced with primitive conditions and limited to what could be carried and kept fresh on a raft for seven days, what did we eat?  Chicken, rice, veggies, and salad; steak and a potato bar; fajitas, rice, and beans; hamburgers and brats; and two specialty meals--Italian night,  featuring pasta with chicken, and garlic bread with bananas foster for dessert (yes, real ice cream!), and our last evening's meal, the Captain's Dinner--shrimp cocktails for hors d'oeuvres, and trout and potatoes.  For dessert, Travis bakes a white cake and adds chocolate frosting.  

The third night out, the wind begins to blow during dinner and soon we hear distant thunder and see lightning far down the canyon, so far away that no one seems overly concerned.   Armed with headlamps, we straggle down to the river to brush teeth and then settle down to sleep on our cots.  

But within thirty minutes, the wind picks up and the thunder is louder, the lightning closer.  Then Shad and Travis are running along the beach distributing tents.  Fortunately, most of us remember their tent-pitching demonstration, and soon blue tents spring up all over.  We move our cots inside just as the first rain begins to patter on the fly.  The wind picks up and I turn on my headlamp to find the zipper to close the "windows" in the tent. Super-fine sand is blowing sideways and through the fabric of our tent.  We get the windows closed and then fall asleep.  Hours later?  Minutes?  I'm not sure, but our tent is blowing over on top of us.  We push back with our hands and the tent rights itself.  Rain is pelting down, wind whirls.  Water is leaking in from somewhere. 

In the morning we learn that Lee and Jeanne's tent completely collapsed during the height of the storm.  "All of a sudden it was on top of us.  We used our feet to hold it off of us, but then the rain started coming in.  Our sleeping bags were getting wet, so we opened up and crawled outside.  It was pouring and blowing.  Somehow we managed to get the tent poles back into their notches, but one got broken and bent in the wind.  We were able to straighten it and jam it together and climb back inside.  By then, the wind was backing off a bit, and the rain was stopping.  We were wet.  Our sleeping bags had big wet patches and we had about an inch of rain on the tent floor,"  Our first clue to this havoc was Jeanne and Lee hanging everything they owned on the bushes around our tent sites in the morning.  What a night!

The guides rise with the sun...about 5:30 a.m.  They get water going for cowboy coffee--loose grounds in the huge coffee pot--and tea, and begin to assemble breakfast.  As we hear them, we roll from our cots and begin to gather clothes scattered about on bushes and makeshift clothes lines.  When the coffee and tea water is ready, we hear the conch shell.   Some of us are already in line to use the toilet, others are packing, dressing or tooth brushing and face washing in the 50-degree river.   A few others sit in the social circle and drink coffee.  Before or after breakfast, we roll sleeping bags, shake out ground tarps and stow them back in the bottom of the big personal bags. Cots are disassembled and bagged, and when all is done, we pile the equipment down by the boat.  When the conch blows again, it's breakfast.  Before every meal and after using the official toilet, we thoroughly wash our hands in a clever two-bucket system.  Then, before dishing up, we rub in hand sanitizer.  What did we have for breakfast?  During the course of our trip we eat  fresh fruit, orange juice, toast or muffins, french toast, breakfast meat, scrambled eggs, eggs Benedict (yes), bagels, cream cheese, assorted jams and jellies and honey.  After breakfast and dinner, there is a four-bucket dishwashing system.  Each person washes his or her own plate, cup, and utensils then puts them in a zip lock that is stowed in the personal dry bag.  We do not use plates or cups at lunch.  But lunches are worth mentioning.  No plates or utensils because all lunch items can be "handled."  Curried chicken or tuna salad we can put in conical wraps (very clever) or on three different kinds of bread, assorted sandwich makings--one day pastrami 'n fixin's, chips, condiments, and cookies.

While we eat, the guides begin to clean and pack up the kitchen while eating their own breakfast.  By the time we finish, the kitchen is packed and waiting on the beach to be loaded.  Soon, "FIRE LINE!" is called and the usual suspects line up and we begin moving our equipment.  "Take Five!" call the guides when all is aboard.  They throw giant tarps over all equipment, then strap and tuck and tighten everything.  "Last call for the toilet..." the line dwindles to one, then no one and Travis moves in to secure the toilet gear.  When all is ready we climb on, push off and give ourselves once again to the river. 

As you will see in the pictures, Italian night and the Captain's Dinner were very special.  Attire for the Captain's dinner:  Gentlemen must wear ties, ladies must wear skirts. 

Fire line…personal dry bags 

Picking up personal gear

Set up and waiting for the conch to sound

Cots and personal gear on our bedside tarps

Cots into the tent ahead of the rain!

Hand washing…soap up, rub it in, step on pump, and rinse at spigot in empty bucket

Ahhh…the throne!  Usually best view in the house from here

  

"Cheers!"  Jeanne and her cocktail pee bucket…the fans love it

Fixin' hors d'oeuvres

Italian night…Perry Como singing through the iPhone speaker

Captain's Dinner 

Lyn and Kristi

Sande and John

Lee--our personal pick for best dressed, and...

Judy, Travis, and Shad--Captain's Dinner

  

Travis serenades on our last night

Good night, Moon

River: Into the Grand Canyon, 4 Slot Canyon and Poetry

Moonrise above the canyon walls

Our favorite hike, Pam's and mine, is one led by Shad in the hours before dinner on Day 4.  The afternoon is soft and mellow.  We've traveled a particularly rough stretch of rapids this day and only a few of us follow our guide as he heads out for a slot canyon upriver, a narrow floor between two walls of rock that reach to the sky.  A large Sacred Datura, mother plant of dreamers, nestles in the shade near the mouth of the canyon.  As we enter, a lizard scurries from the sand to the safety of a wall of rock.  Her colors somehow blend with any and all of the contrasting rock layers she traverses.  These canyons are particularly dangerous during rain storms, as there are few places one can escape a deluge of rushing water roaring through such confined space.  Beings of all kinds die in slot canyons. 

 High above us, the sky is clear and blue.  It is very quiet.  No river sounds, no wind, the hikers hushed, respectful.  The only sound is river rock crunching beneath our sandals.  Lee and I fall behind the others early on, taking pictures of the walls, the sky, rocks, lizards, tadpoles skittering across small pools of water, and the backs of our fellow hikers.  

In some places it is cool and dim; in others, the sun still stretches fingers down to the rock-strewn floor.  The others are stopped ahead of us, bending over something at the foot of the wall.   It is a Western Tanager, dead.  Shad tells us that a storm the previous week was so violent (he was on the river guiding), that he finally had to turn his boat around because he couldn't see anything in the downpour and the driving wind. As we pay homage to the bird, Shad shakes his head and says the storm was surely strong enough to knock a bird out of the sky.

A bit further the remains of a bobcat, probably caught in the same flash flood, lies twisted, mouth wide open in what might have been an angry and disbelieving scream.  Climbing up a lip in the riverbed, we meet backpackers coming off the canyon trail.  They seek a sand bar on which to camp for the night.  We talk a bit, Shad offers them anything they need from our raft and directs them to a beach just below our camp.

We walk on.  The walls open out and we can see that the sun is going down.  As the canyon opens into a large amphitheater of flared walls and ledges, we pick our way upward along pale yellow layers of sedimentary rock.  Shad stops here, offers us a seat, and passes out trail bars. We drink water and spread out on shelves of still-warm rock as the sun cools.  As on every hike, Travis' mom Judy is with us.  Shad pulls out a book and tells us he's going to read to us.  "I dropped out of college after the first semester," he tells us, with what looks like a tinge of regret, "but I did have a chance to meet this great teacher, David Lee, and this is one of his poems.  It's hard to read 'cause it's in dialect but…here goes." 

"Ugliest man in town

was Rafael Martinez…

this one morning he woke up

wished he hadn't of

couldn't stand up the pain was so bad

he known he couldn't live with it

he found his pistol

put it in his mouth and pulled

bullet torn out his cheekbone

shot off half his ear

never hit no brains at all

and that was his only bullet left…"

We snuggle down into the rock.  Out beyond the lip of the amphitheater is more wall and at the top, a notch across the canyon rim. The whole thing is glowing gold in the setting sun.  The almost-full moon slowly rises like a lazy balloon, perfectly framed in the notch.  The sky is the blue of night coming.  

Shad continues:

"…so after he waited to die

and finally didn't

taken his knife

cut his throat but didn't hit a vein

stabbed hisself but the blade was turned wrong…"

Shadows lengthen, and the moon rises higher until it is free of the canyon walls.  Golden rock, soft words, dark canyon walls.  Big moon rising.  It is magic.  

Sacred Datura

Jeanne and John with a cairn marking the way…

Big rock, little people

She blends

 No matter the colors

Amazing rock

Looks poured

Tadpoles

These walls…

Bobcat

River rock

 Shad's poetry reading

River: Into the Grand Canyon, 3--Hiking

Jumping Right In! (to the mud) on our first hike

"Hey, so…all day long you just float down the river getting splashed in the rapids?"  A common question we are asked by many both before and after our river trip.  The answer is an emphatic, "No."  Our days on the river are varied and always interesting.  Every day there is at least one hike--up a gorge, into a slot canyon, down the shore to a waterfall.  We make 10 minute pit stops between our landings for snacks or lunch.  The hikes, no matter when they happen during our day, are amazing--because of the beauty we see, the creatures, the stories we hear, or the huge effort they take to get where we are going.  The pictures will tell the story better than words, so I will try to be somewhat brief, although that is always difficult for me.

Pam reminds me that our first hike started through mud.  Sucking mud.  Once in, the more you wiggle and struggle to get out, the deeper you sink.  Most of us need a helping hand to get back onto solid ground.  Where the hike went after the mud bogs, I don't remember.  The first hike I do remember follows a steep and switchbacked trail up toward the rim in the heat of the afternoon.  The promised reward is a scramble up a rock ledge to a pool of cool water fed by a small waterfall.  Exhilarating!  

On another day, we disembark at Deer Creek Falls, which is hung with bright green ferns and is within sight of the river and provides a brisk, welcome shower.  Some of the group stays at the falls while others hike up a steep trail, blazing hot in the afternoon sun.  We have to place our hands on the rocks to steady us as we scramble steeply upward.  The rocks are so hot that I fear my fingers will suffer first degree burns.  When we reach our destination--a plateau far above the river and our boat, the view of Powell Point is spectacular, with vistas opening up far into the distance.  Below our tiny boat looks like a turquoise toy sitting on green water.  When we reach the canyon floor again, a shower in the pour of the waterfall is so refreshing.

One day we leave camp in a steady drizzle.  The chop and cascade of water from rapids soon has most of us shivering.  "When we get to the Little Colorado," Shad calls from his captain's perch, "we'll stop and hike up the river if it looks clear.  If it is a pooey color, we'll go on."  The pooey color is a result of flash floods up side canyons carrying red silt and rock down into the main channel.  The Little Colorado is pooey but we stop anyway just to get out and walk.  The rock that lines the riverbank is much warmer than the air and soon, all of us find rocks to hug, niches in which to cozy up, crevices where warm radiates from wall to wall.  Another afternoon hike takes us up a canyon trail to rocks where petroglyphs hint at ancient ways and lives whose meanings we can only wonder about.

On still another blazing hot afternoon we stop to inspect the former settlement of some pre-Puebloan people.  Those who lived here were nomadic farmers.  Planting crops on the rich alluvial soil between riverbank and canyon walls, the people migrated from canyon bottom to canyon rim.  In this area there are thousands of potsherds…remnants of a people long gone.  We find them, inspect them, feel them in our hands, and then place them back into the red canyon dirt or leave them arranged on rocks for others to admire.

We are now into Havasupai country.  In the middle of a rapid, Shad skillfully pulls the raft into an outcropping of rock and Travis jumps off to tie our boat in.  We get up onto the rock and begin the hike in to Havasu Canyon.  Here the water is a milky turquoise as it pours and tumbles its way toward the Colorado.  This is the same river we hiked many miles upstream when our friend Gail took Lee, Mare, Pam and I backpacking down into the canyon so long ago.  We spend a few hours here hiking the banks, wading in the river, and wallowing in shallow pools.  On the way out, we discover a small pink canyon rattle snake curled into a depression on a log.   Very tolerant as we stop to admire him, he merely opens his eyes and shifts his coils a bit to let us know he is watching us too.  We hike out just ahead of a rain shower.

"Ahm goin' down!"

Up toward the rim…

A final scramble

Sweet reward!

Canyon Waterfall

Tiny raft below the plateau

  

View back up the river

We made it

  

Perfect end to a hot hike

  

Metate

Potsherds

  Havasu River

  

Tiny, iridescent Havasu frog

Grand Canyon Pink Rattlesnake

River: Into the Grand Canyon, 2 -- The River

Rapids on a J-Rig--"Gusto Seating" on the tubes.  Western River Photos

For most people, the rapids on this river--if not the main attraction--are certainly the excitement and challenge that thrill passengers.  I travel this river shivering in the bang-splash of early morning rapids, then warm my bones in the afternoon wind pushing up the river, or in the reflected heat coming off canyon walls.  I travel this river with the love of my life (Canyon keep her safe), our life-long friend, people near to our hearts, and people we have just met.  We chatter and laugh as we go along, telling stories of our lives outside of the canyon, or just quietly rising and falling with the moods of the river as it navigates and flows its way southward. Mostly, I travel quietly...watching, thinking, feeling, trying to fathom the experience.  It's not that the rapids don't interest me.  Of course they do!  They demand and command riveted attention.  But for me, they are not the main part of the trip.  There is no way, onboard a raft that I can see to capture the thrill, the excitement, the danger of going through rapids.  I have resorted to taking pictures off the internet to attempt to show what this was like.

I love the softness of the river and the contemplative, reflective time spent aboard.  The river color changes from green, to blue, to "pooey brown" as Shad says.  The color depends on what is happening in the sky, sun bouncing off canyon walls, and conditions in the side canyons.  Muddy colors reflect flash floods from near or distant rain storms that send sediment and rock crashing into small rivers that empty into the main channel. 

As for the difference between calm and turbulent water, Pam explains the dichotomy best, I think: "It's being between these canyon walls, on this river where time in the surrounding rock is measured in millions of years, where a human lifetime is less than an eye blink.  And then suddenly you are in the rapids, feeling the river rock kick your raft this way and that, having hundreds of gallons of water crash over you, push you, knock you…you are feeling time in mini-seconds…all attention to what you need to do next.  What is coming at you."  And then you are through the rapid and back into calm or just choppy waters.  I suppose one could reason that this is like life compressed into a day.

Travelers know when large rapids are coming.  Travis walks forward and stands by the "Adventure Seating" or bench as we call it, or on the outside tube.  He tells us the name of the rapid, who it is named for, how many people died here (if they did) and reminds us to hold on.  Then he either sits on the end of the bench or retreats to the Chicken Coop.  The rest of us get ready.  Lee and I ride on the tubes most of the time…sometimes as the number one, at others number two or three.  Jeanne comes out often, and Pam does occasionally, mostly in the late afternoon when it is warmer.  Kristi and Lyn are regulars on the bench, although toward the end of the trip, Kristi took her turn on the tubes as well.  Anchored behind me, Jeanne says, "Watch where we enter this rapid.  Shad is aiming for the calm V between the rough water.  That's where you enter.  Then, watch out!"  Jeanne is an experienced white-water kayaker.  When the guides yell, "SUCK RUBBER!" you know that this is BIG WATER.  Those of us on the tubes flex forward, attempting to put our faces as near the tube as possible.  In this way, you are less likely to have the crashing waves slam you off your perch.  My record through rapids:  kicked by a bench sitter the first day, the bruise on my arm just fading two weeks later; knocked flat off my tube inboard and tangled with my neighbor, who was also knocked off his spot; banged in the back by a rider who fell from the bench; unseated because I held on with an overhand rather than an underhand grip with my forward hand (it makes a big difference);  knocked flat backwards going through Lava Falls.  

Rapids, we learn are caused by constriction and unevenness due to debris fans deposited in the river from side canyons.  At river mile 179 Prospect Canyon enters the south side of the river.  At the foot of its debris fan sits Lava Falls…A debris flow is different than a mud flow because it is a mixture of rubble, sediment, and water that has the ability to carry and deposit boulders the size of automobiles…somewhat like the debris flows around Estes Park after last year's flood.  Lava Falls was, in part, created by the eruption of three volcanoes seven hundred thousand years ago.  Lava from the eruptions choked the river for some time before the water, once again found its way and created a passage through the black rock.  Lava Falls is the great rapid that looms at the end of the last day of our trip.  Everyone talks about it.  "Wait 'til you get to Lava."  "Lava is just the scariest."  "Lava will give you the thrill of your life."  "Can we get out and walk around it?" 

I haven't thought much about Lava,  I suppose because rapids were not the big draw for me on this trip.  I think about it now as we approach.  Now, I am nervous.  How will I do?  Will Pam be OK?  Lee is in front of me with Dan, the young Aussie, at the front of our tube.  "SUCK RUBBER!!!"  Dan is smashed mid-rapid and is knocked backward onto Lee.  Lee, ends up on her back in my lap.  I am flattened backward wondering how to recover…no hand hold with my forward hand.  Both Lee and Dan have their right feet caught for a few seconds between two tubes.  I feel gentle hands pushing me upright from behind.  It's Biff from his perch on the bench.  His wife Annie is laughing, so I know things are O.K.  Lee and Dan become unentangled, feet free and we help one another to an upright, secure position again.  Soon after, we are in the chop at the bottom of the rapids laughing, whooping…making all the sounds and words one says when one is relieved and grateful to come through a scary experience in one piece.

 I cannot say enough about our guides as steersmen.  Never were we in danger.  Never was anyone seriously hurt (bruises and small cuts?  Not too serious).  Never did anyone go overboard.  We were given some wild rides, but through it all, the most amazing thing was their skill and knowledge of the river.

Coming next:  River:  Into the Grand Canyon, 3 -- Canyon Hiking

The following three images courtesy Western River Photos…not us, but just what we did!  

Loaded and ready for adventure

Morning shadows…note the varying colors of the water

Lee bundled against 45 degree water in the early morning

Reflecting on the river

 
 

Annie as Holy icon courtesy of canyon winds

Pooey Little Colorado…Lee sitting on rock for warmth…Ummmm!

Lee, Jeanne, and Sande--Tube Girls all!

Travis and Chad…dressed and ready for Lava Falls!

Riding the post rapids chop

Brown and gold reflections on our last morning

Jeanne with the end of the wine, "Thank you river gods for a safe and beautiful trip."