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PrintShining Waters, Ancient Stone
Downriver in the Grand Canyon
Photo by Earle F. Layser
North America has other canyons. Gouged by the Snake River’s whitewater, Hell’s Canyon is deeper. Mexico’s Copper Canyon is longer. Still, canyon country scribe Edward Abbey found those who love the Grand Canyon address it as “… the canyon—as if there were no other topographic feature on the face of the earth.”
Signing on with the late Norm Nevill’s Canyoneers, Inc., my husband Earle and I boarded a pontoon raft at Lees Ferry with three seasoned canyoneers and fifteen fellow adventurers, aged twenty-nine to seventy-four.
Over seven days in early September 2010, we would raft 279 Colorado River miles to Lake Mead, soaked en route by 162 major rapids and countless lesser ones. The difficulty of running the Grand Canyon’s rapids is rated on a scale of 1 to 10 (extreme), and many are named for those who died in their turbulence.
Crafts plying canyon waters range from dories to kayaks. We plumb our thrills on Canyoneers’ thirty-seven-foot watercraft—and, without packing in our own tents and Calphalon, sleep like indulged epicures.
River travel is rationed. Sometimes hopefuls apply for several years before securing a launch date—a truth one appreciates on-river when rafting stretches seemingly solo, camping on untrammeled beaches, and seeing others primarily when scouting extreme rapids.
America’s West attracts free-thinking adventurers. Like archetypal cowboys described by trail boss Charles Goodnight, today’s canyon runners remain “. . . free and full of the zest of darers.” We hear about every Colorado-runner from Major John Wesley Powell to those intelligent, rugged, and handsome guides who captain today’s commercial trips. Our trip leader, Marc Perkins, animates canyon river history. The rakish raconteur’s first rafting trip was an excursion as a teenager down the Salmon River’s Middle Fork. Ours is his 101st Canyoneers trip.
Crewing is Cliff Ghiglieri, a sandstone redhead born to guide. His dad, internationally renowned wilderness river guide Michael Ghiglieri, bequeathed a mighty legacy to his kids. Cliff wears the mantle comfortably.
Amity Collins joins us midway, hiking to Phantom Ranch after guiding another raft party. She tells her five-year canyoneering experiences between “fish eyeing” rapids—greeting whitewater lying belly-down and face-forward on a pontoon.
These three set our trip’s timbre, but we determine its rhythm. Everyone rises at 5 a.m., banking time for resplendent hikes into slot canyons—vertical rock scrambles to heaven. Bracing waterfalls become our shower rooms; their pools, our soaking tubs.
Life vests are distributed, handholds located. “Down and under!” alerts us to brace for big water on the raft’s floor. At Lees Ferry, cliffs loom 500 feet above us; by day’s end, 2,000 feet.
Camera shutters click endlessly: red rock spires piercing unbroken blue skies; fanned greens of juniper, pinion, and tamarisk. Even when tsunami-like rapids fold our raft’s flex-joint, jackknifing its front half skyward and back—even as we cringe, retracting our heads like turtles—we drenched photographers thrust camera hands into the air, snapping shots of whatever.
Days are punctuated by sightings of desert bighorn sheep, mule deer, and beaver; our progress is monitored by ducks and herons, peregrine falcons, and red-tailed hawks. Campsites are charmed by yellow-breasted warblers; scavenged by obsidian-black ravens. We see raccoon and ringtail tracks; dislodge scorpions from cast-off sandals. Nights, pirouetting bats play tag under supersized stars.
On day two we view geological marvels like Vasey’s Paradise and Redwall Canyon, and make a steep talus scramble to Nonkoweap Creek’s ancestral Puebloan granaries.
Day three boasts 39 rapids. Hance Rapid is a “10+” at Mile 76.6; old-timers claimed this channel was choked “by every rock left over when the world was created.” At Mile 90.2, Horn Creek Rapid, passage is ill-advised in flows less than 10,000 cubic feet of water per second (more by some than when we pass). Three miles downriver, we squeeze past Granite Rapid, a rodeo ride followed a mile later by a roller-coaster run through Hermit Rapid. Vee-waves. Suckholes. By now, I ride rapids cowboy-style. Knee-hugging the side, I can see what’s coming; sway with the raft’s bucking.
Mile 98.2, Crystal Rapid, has claimed more gear and more lives than all other canyon rapids combined. Avoid boulders. Miss slamming the left wall. As Crystal unravels, we claim The Gems, seven rapid-born jewels. Ten miles beyond, Shinumo Creek’s waterfall displaces our adrenaline. Marc cuts the motor for a “Moment of Silence.” Floating flat water open-hearted, wonder and reverence surface.
Day four: In a slot canyon studded with quartz, narrowly sunlit from overhead, our canyon troubadour strums his guitar, channeling fluvial siren songs. Cliff points out rock layers behind him, exposing 1.7 billion years of geologic history: “Dinosaurs died out sixty-five million years ago. The youngest rocks in the canyon are older than dinosaurs.”
Identifying each stratum, Cliff points out “The Great Unconformity”—the gap in Earth’s history between Cambrian and pre-Cambrian times, a layer somehow uncharted in the canyon’s rock of ages.
At Mile 130.5, the Canyon is at its narrowest—seventy-six feet wide, ninety-six feet deep—and Bedrock Rapid houses a Titanic boulder. Eighty percent of its troubled water flows to its right; our large raft can only pass to its left.
When we stop midday, pinpoint-sized humans move along the monumental ridge opposite us. After lunch, cooled by Deer Creek Falls’ sky-high outpouring, we head ridgetop, seeking the little people. A hike resembling a climb accesses “The Patio.” Bellies pressed against rock, noses grazing a petroglyph, we inch along a narrow, final ledge toward Eden-esque waterfalls and vegetation. Lupine-blue dragonflies stipple pooled waters. Sinuous canyons snake far below.
The following day—Kanab Rapid, the canyon’s longest; wild-river currents introducing the Havasupai (“People of the Blue-Green Water”) Indian Reservation; supernal waterfalls. Inside Havasu Canyon, we swim milky-turquoise waters framed by maidenhair fern, scarlet lobelia, cardinal flowers, and yellow-gold ocotillo.
On day six comes Lava Falls, second in intensity to Crystal. The columnar basalt sandwiching it is polished ebony, like flint-knapped arrowheads. Braving Travertine Canyon’s water-slick rock, we earn visual gold via fixed ropes and dangling ladders.
Day seven, we raft beneath the Hualapai Indians’ Skywalk, flinching at the sightseeing helicopters’ intrusion overhead. Marc counters, retelling our river stories—definitely, The Duke. Going downriver, Canyoneers reports, the late John Wayne protested the calling of the portable toilet “John.”
At 12:30 p.m., Lake Mead. The autumnal blush of bigtooth maples in the uplands ignited while we were upriver. Driving home, I use their fiery flash—and the mustard-saturation of rogue daisies, blossoming sneeze-weed, and rabbitbrush—to block out the impinging, stifling congestion of people, traffic, Walmarts.
My swift journey through the canyon is over. Already I long for the mighty Colorado’s wild solace and joy. Its power, if I may paraphrase Abbey once more, lies in the canyon’s exhilarating suggestiveness. Like poetry and music, all that’s written about experiencing it implies more than words can make explicit.
