2018 Grand Canyon

Launch Day! Per usual, our group was the last to show and was late for orientation at the ramp. After a quick lecture from Ranger Peggy, we filled every extra square inch of space in our boats with scalding hot cans of PBR. My boat is designed to carry 300+ lbs and I was barely above the water for the first day. 21 miles, and one dangerously left line at House Rock Rapid (the biggest of the day, ranked a 7 out of 10 on the difficulty scale), we hiked North Canyon and camped at Below North Canyon campsite.

In 1869, John Wesley Powell (the first white man to explore the river) said that Redwall Cavern could potentially hold 50,000 people. He also said that it would probably make a badass place to play ultimate frisbie. He was right. We kayaked 24 miles this day, and spent the worst night of the trip in a sandstorm and monsoon. We pretty much had to give up on setting up a shelter, so we just closed our eyes and #tookitintheface.

Day 3! We made it 21 miles this day after spending the morning recovering our gear that had blown away and cleaning sand out of our boats from the previous night's storm. We hiked up to these thousand year old Anasazi granaries. Bonus- this is also the furthest view of the river in the whole canyon. Additional bonus - this is day 3 out of 3 that rafters took pity on us and gave us beer.

Day 4. It was a 24 mile day. Our longest so far. Before we got on the river, it hadn't rained in 8 months, but it rained the first night we were there and every single day of the trip. Fortunately, it stormed about the same time every day so we were able to learn our lesson and prepare....for the most part. It rained so hard this day that it was just easier to keep paddling than to stop for lunch or set up camp. It made for some awesome rainbows and waterfalls off of the rim though! We hit our first big rapid (Hance class 8) this day. It was a beater fest trying to make sure to connect the lines through such a long rapid with such heavy boats. Before the rain, we went on a hike through an archeological area with thousands of pottery shards laying everywhere. When we got back, someone had put beers on all of our kayaks. Rafters are awesome! 4 days for 4 on beer handouts!

Day 5. The 25 miles we paddled today may have been the best day of whitewater ever. We hit Horn Creek, Hermit, Granite (all class 7-8), and the legendary Crystal (class 8-9). We watched a raft flip at Hermit, and have no idea how they would have flipped it back over if our crew hadn’t done it for them. They offered us lunch though, but we continued on, focused. After running the big stuff, it was time to relax. We hiked up Shinamu Creek and cliff jumped from behind a waterfall. Later in the day we coincidentally ran into some guides I had been down the river with in the past, and you guessed it- they gave us beer!! However, the highlight of the day was that we found our hidden treasure. An awesome friend and fan of our cause had hidden a cache of beer and candy for us 108 miles into the canyon. During the weeks it was hidden, the ants got the jerky, but it was the best Blue Moon I have ever had in my life.

Day 6. We paddled 19 miles this day. After our big day of whitewater, it was all about the side hikes this day besides a couple class 6 rapids and a class 7. After an awesome waterfall-jumping session at Elves Chasm, we leapfrogged the guides from Tour West again. They waved us in and fed us the best lunch of the trip. I never thought I'd be grateful for vegetables! It was awesome to chat with those guys, and their guests were equally as welcoming. Everyone had questions about how we were able to make a self-support work. Of course we didn't mind when they took pictures of us in our boats as we paddled on. While we were stopped for a break, we snuck some big rocks in David's boat. He paddled all day with about 30 extra pounds. Hence the awesome hashtag, #whoputrocksinmyboat ?! Later that afternoon we did some rope-less canyoneering that probably should have required ropes. After some scrambling, Scott and I ended up in this slot in Black Tail Canyon with a giant boulder wedged the top of the canyon.

Day 7. Past the halfway point. 😔 We started the day at 134.5 miles away from where we launched almost a week ago. We stopped at Deer Creek and played in the waterfall. We also hiked up and around to the top of the falls where we could see where the Anasazi had made handprints on the canyon walls. We each took our own time to appreciate this awesome place. My time was spent napping before lunch. The block of cheese I brought on this trip was well past its prime, but I couldn't help myself and had one more meal of it. Turns out that cheese doesn't keep so well in river water/extreme heat. After an amazing hike at Matkat, we returned to the boats just in time to see Scott's paddle had started to float away with the rising water. Then we bumped into a commercial trip. They loaded us up with beer and licorice! Also, for some reason, a bottle of mayonnaise that we're pretty sure they just wanted to see if we would take. We DID look pretty desperate. We ran Upset Rapid (another big one) and camped at mile 156.5.

Day 8. Lava Falls is the biggest rapid in the canyon and classified as a 10 of 10 for difficulty. The heavy rains had created flash floods everywhere. These “flashes” detoured us from a couple hikes and prime campsites. They also raised the water level in the canyon much higher than expected, and turned it to solid brown muck. On the way, we ran into some other folks that were excited about our trip. One awesome lady gave us a few beers and an entire bottle of whiskey! Turns out, it was Julie Munger, a world champion whitewater rafter and the first person to navigate the entire canyon on a self-support RIVER BOARD! #legend. After a couple hike attempts that included a step too close to a Grand Canyon Pink Rattlesnake, we plowed forward for 13 miles in silence, growing more nervous every mile. From a couple miles away we heard the roar…. I got first go at her. #lavafalls drops 37 feet in gradient over a couple hundred yards. It starts with a huge boily eddy line and a giant ledge hole on the left before everything feeds down into a tremendous “V-wave” where everything from each side of the river crashes together in two opposite lateral waves. This is all above a giant wave that wants to toss you into the giant "cheese grater" boulder on river right. After a successful run, we stopped at the appropriately named Tequila Beach to celebrate with another party that had made it through hours earlier. They made sure we had tequila shots before we even got out of the water!

The big stuff is behind us. Now that we've successfully navigated all the most memorable rapids, we were starting to grow more and more sick of dehydrated food. Even more tired of sandy, dehydrated food. All food in the canyon has a good crunch to it. There's no escaping the sand. I started to eat less and less just because I was bored of the same old thing. We only had a couple beers left and the candy from our cache was dwindling. 90 percent of the people that float the canyon do so on commercial raft trips. Most of them fly out via helicopter near our camp. The realization that we still had over a hundred miles to go sunk in as the distance between rapids grew longer and longer. To keep it entertaining, we punched a few recirculating holes to see what would happen...it went about as well as one could expect. We camped at Pumpkin Springs, a place with special meaning for those of us from Cody WY, who lost a paddle buddy there a few years ago. We were caught in yet another vicious rain that created the most awesome waterfalls to come raging off the rim. We even had a mini flash flood right through our camp that prompted us to tie the boats up for fear of losing them. At one point, we were all huddled under a rock ledge to escape the sand-blasting wind. It was too wet and windy to set up tents...so there we sat. After a bit I noticed that Destin was gone. We found him taking a soak in Pumpkin Springs and drinking a beer. Pumpkin is the most disgusting springs I've ever seen, but hell, it was warmer than the rock ledge so we joined him to wait out the storm.

Day 10. Mile 213.3. I boated to the other side of the river to check out a chimney made of stone from an old miner’s camp. Continuing uphill, I scrambled into a cave we had seen from below. Once inside, it was pretty tough to get out, and obvious why there was an old canyoneering anchor left behind. From there I could see a big motorized commercial raft approach our camp. They let their new guests (flown in on a helicopter the previous day) take a break and see the springs. When I returned, they had finished up and offered to take our trash for us, which was awesome! We continued along and stopped for a hike to some pictographs. When we stopped for lunch, I realized that a few of the guys were drinking a beer- I thought we were out of beer. As I was thinking that either I was going crazy or that they had hoarded some, they burst out laughing and let me in on the joke. Before I had joined them at camp, the commercial crew had given them all of the leftover beer from their last crew of passengers! We continued on past Diamond Creek where nearly all of the private trips take out as you can pay the Hualapai tribe to drive down a dry creek bed to the river. There are few rapids past here that warrant going all the way to Lake Mead, where we were headed. We had planned that if we were gonna do this thing, we were gonna do the WHOLE thing. As we floated past a group on a layover day, they waved us in for a beer. It was pretty obvious that by this point in their trip, they didn't mind strangers seeing them naked. Next, we stopped and hiked Travertine Falls, where they filmed a scene of “Into the Wild” and enjoyed a relaxing shower. If anyone is wondering- we DID drink more than just beer on the trip. The water was like mud, before it was filtered, of course. The settlers used to say it was too thick to drink and too thin to plow. Well, we drank it!

Day 11. Our longest day of the trip. 33 miles! Foolishly, we let our guard down thinking that the hard rapids were over. Mile 232 rapid rolled me twice and we all almost nailed the “fang” rock in Killer Fang Rapid. We hiked to a plaque honoring the explorer John Wesley Powell and his crew at Separation Canyon. The rest of the day varied back and forth between paddling hard, and lazily floating with our feet out and on top of our boats. It was beautiful day and perfect for the flatter water without wind. Scott had a scorpion on his backpack today and I had one under my boat the day before. It’s rare to see them during the day, but we did plenty of late-night “scorp hunts” with a black light as they are luminescent. They look little glowing lights in the rocks and bushes. We also had to watch for Ringtail Cats raiding our gear. They were persistent little guys that look a lot like a small raccoon with long tails. We caught them red-handed a few times and often had sandy tracks all over our gear in the mornings. Bugs weren’t a huge concern down there, but with it so hot at night, it made it impossible to sleep with any covers. There were quite a few little beetles and other crawlies at night. Every couple hours, I’d feel something crawling on me and reach up and squash it before going right back to sleep. That became my nightly ritual. I tried not to look at what made the “crunch” so I didn’t need to freak out if it was huge or extra creepy. I hate bugs...

Day 12 was our earliest by far, as we wanted to be at the truck before the heat of the Mojave Desert caught us. I packed up my bed (my sleeping pad on top of my kayak), and we paddled in the dawn light past the Grand Wash Cliffs that mark the end of the Grand Canyon. As the sun rose, we could see the outline of a giant bat cave in the distance that had been mined of nearly 100,000 tons of guano. That’s a lot of poop. Speaking of poop, I was NOT excited about putting 5 canisters full of 12 days of adult man poop into the back of my truck (Regs dictate the removal of ALL waste). We paddled in silence, reflecting on our amazing trip- How I lost the map with months of notes and research on day 2 and David found it floating 100 yds. away, how Scott almost fell in one night when he got way too excited about the Humpback Chubs (an endangered fish), or how David jumped off a waterfall straight into Jerod’s butt crack. We rounded the last corner and saw the takeout. We all had mixed feelings as the trip had come to an end. We were gross and tired, but as you can see in the before and after- still all smiles. Stinky, sunburnt, blistered, dehydrated, and as it would turn out- I had Giardia. Maybe from the watery, week-old cheese, or the stagnant water in Pumpkin Springs? We’ll never know. We rinsed off and loaded up for the drive back to civilization. Our first stop- The gas station for ice cream and energy drinks. 20 min later we were at Burger King, then straight to the casino in Vegas. No discussion. We were all on the exact same page. These guys are like brothers, and this trip brought us even closer together. It was hard to readjust to sitting in chairs, using toilets, and eating non-dehydrated food (I maybe thought this was the digestive issue, but nope- definitely Giardia), but I still have to wonder, where to next?!

- Taylishous