Tuesday May 22, 2018

After Elves Chasm (mile 117.5) we loaded back into the rafts for a short ride through a couple smaller rapids to our lunch stop at Below Blacktail (mile 121).

The view upriver from Below Blacktail:





And downriver:



Lunch was tuna salad on pita pucks. I don’t think any of us grabbed a pic but one of our crew accidentally dropped a load of tuna into the oreo cookies. The oreos still got eaten. Lunch spread in the background:



Fellow rafters chilling on the beach or enjoying shade up by the rock face. The guides did a great job on planning stops with shade. I have an allergy to the sun so stuck to the shade and stayed covered up quite a bit.



Before we packed up and left the main guide, Rich, read us a short story about a river guide who decided to baa at a Big Horn Sheep during mating season. The guide got chased. It is a much better story when Rich reads it.

Back into the rafts we went and went down 122 mile, Forster, Fossil, 127 mile, 128 mile, Specter and Bedrock rapids before stopping to camp at Below Bedrock (just past mile 131.5). Huge storm clouds had been chasing us down the river and the storm hit just as we were unloading the boats. It was both fierce and beautiful and unfortunately no one got any pics of it. The storm passed quickly and things dried off in no time.

I bunked with Mr. Hobbles again that night. Our cots were surrounded by thorny bushes which made middle of the night trips to the River very entertaining. Our camp that night:



Burritos and Enchilada Lasagna were on the menu for that night and it appears as though none of us got any pics. It was another night of getting to bed around 8:30pm and falling asleep instantly, waking up in the middle of the night and marveling at the night sky and struggling to get back to sleep.

If my only legacy on this website (likely) is changing the tradition to this instead of dirty shoes...awesome. Well done.

Looking forward to reading.

Awesome TR with Pics of Grand Canyon.

Couple of things: 1. Way back as a youth, my family did the top half of the canyon raft trip, and hiked out Bright Angel. Your way sounds better. That 12th mile out of the canyon really sucked. Also, the lower half of the river has the better (??) rapids.
2. My daughter and her BF and family, including his 45 yo dad, and 65 yo grandfather, do Rim 2 Rim every year, stay two nights on the north rim, then about half of them do Rim 2 Rim back! They may have been on the trail the same time as you this year.

Pretty cool to see those pics of the canyon and rafts, etc. Brought me back to that trip when I was a teenager.

That would be a worthy legacy! Enjoyed your recent TR.
And Thanks!!

nwolfe will help out later in this TR.

Cool, thanks. Glad to bring back some good memories!

1 - I think any way you do the Grand Canyon and the River is bound to be awesome. The lower half does have bigger rapids generally and means you hike down instead of up. But seeing the upper Canyon and doing the hike up and out would be pretty cool too. Though I bet that hike is a real asskicker. I hope to do it one day. As much as I did love the hike in I really loved being on the river so my first choice if I were to do it again would probably be to raft the whole river from Lees Ferry on down.

I was a bit lucky in that my only decision was to go or not to go. One of my buddies was doing this trip regardless to celebrate his 50th and he had picked the type of trip, the specific guide company, the timing, etc. and threw it out there to a bunch of us to see who was up for it. He had actually emailed a large group of us a year prior and I was a hard no at that time. In the end I looked past some artificial barriers, the timing worked out and I couldn't be happier that I went for it. I am looking forward to his 60th.

2 - That sounds like a pretty wicked hike. Rim to rim to rim would be savage. We passed a ton of super friendly people on the trail. At a minimum we would be greeted with a hearty good morning for the most part. Several people would stop and just start chatting about where they had been, where they were going and were curious about where we were headed. Everyone unanimously agreed that we were in for an awesome time when they heard we were on a rafting trip.

This is very cool. Thanks for posting tons of pictures.

Nice reading so far, your floppiness....

Tuesday May 22, 2018

That last picture (eta: the one above the bewbs) contains one of the handier things I brought on the trip with me. The black bag on the ground near the middle of the shot at the right side of the rock is a solar shower. I would fill it a bit at lunch and attach it to the raft and just let it bake in the sun for the day. After my ice bath on Monday night I used the Solar Shower Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings. Even with filling it only a quarter to a third of the way there was enough water for 3 or 4 of us to use each night. A couple nights I got distracted helping unload the rafts, setting up camp and drinking beer and didn’t get around to using the shower until it had cooled substantially but it was still a godsend compared to the frigid water in the river.


DSLR friend caught a few shots during the night. Tuesday night had a wicked bright moon early in the evening until it moved on and left another star filled night. This is the kind of thing that kept me up when I woke up during the night:



A shot from Monday night that didn’t turn out quite as well but gives the general idea:



Nothing really compares to the live view unfortunately.

Glad you think so, enjoy!

Heya mag, thanks for saying so!

This is probably my favorite TR ever on LVL. sorry laon

I need to get in better shape and do this.

Thanks! High praise Canoe but Laon, Slim, TF, you and countless others win.

Health and Fitness forum is that way ----->. I had to head there after my last Vegas TR to try and work off some of my extra fat. The forum was very helpful!

I think I like this one so much because it’s something I’d never do. No disrespect to be TR greats, I’ve just done a lot of the gambling, drinking, fine dining, etc. this **** is gangster

Makes sense. I am probably drawn to the big degen, gambling, drinking TR's because I do so little of it myself.

Wednesday May 23, 2018

I was wide awake at 4am again and watched the sky slowly brighten again. Coffee was ready to go at 5:30am and breakfast was ready shortly afterwards.

The lone swamper, Chris, treated us to Chris McMuffins for breakfast. I was already getting tired of going back for seconds at every meal and stuffing my face so I doubled up on the sausage patty and the eggs on my breakfast sandwich. It is clearly superior to stuff your face with only one trip.

Downriver view from camp that morning:




Upriver view from my urinal:




The Guides, Rich, Chris and Jenny finishing up breakfast with mostly loaded rafts in the background:



We broke camp and loaded the rafts up to head down the river further. Loading and unloading was quite the ordeal every day. We likely don’t have any pics because we were too busy during those times. Everyone, or as many people as were needed, would form a long fireline and we would all pass the bags, ammo cans, kitchen gear, buckets, cots, camp chairs and anything else that was required up or down the line onto the rafts each morning and into the camp each evening. The guides were short-handed on this trip as they would usually have two per raft but they were missing one of their crew for some reason (probably died on the last trip or something). The two couples who were on the raft for the whole trip from Lee’s Ferry did way more than their fair share which helped the rest of us figure out what we could be doing to help as well. Our group of rafters was pretty awesome at helping out and we were out of camp quite early every morning as a result which gave us extra time on the river or for side hikes each day. It often got us to popular stopping points and camps ahead of other groups as well which allowed us to spend more time enjoying sights.

I was all set to ride up front in the bath tub to start the morning. In the end someone else wanted a crack at the fun seats and I was able to dress a little less extreme. Oh my God, they killed Kenny! You Bastards!



As it turned out, we started at mile 131.5 and made it all the way down to mile 132.5 where we made our first stop to take a short hike to see a waterfall at Stone Creek. Here is a shot looking back at Deubendorff Rapid that we had to run through just before making this stop.



A short hike up Stone Creek:



Takes us to a little waterfall:

Wednesday May 23, 2018

We jumped back on the boats and rolled through Tapeats, Bonita Creek and 135 mile rapids and then make a stop at Deer Creek Falls just before mile 137. Here we would take another hike to another couple waterfalls. The guides warned that the hike was a bit steep in places and there was one little section that we had to cross a ledge that gets a bit narrow next to a little drop off. Should you ever find yourself on a river rafting trip and the guides warn you about anything, you can multiply their warning by a factor of about 10. “These rapids are just a little riffle” = you are all going to get soaked. “You best be hanging on tight for this one” = haha, someone is going for a swim. This ledge turned out to be about 4 or 5 inches wide and the little drop went on forever. I am really puzzled how they haven’t lost people on that hike. Maybe they have and they just play it off. Then again, on the way back out I found it much easier and the guides did the hike in flip flops, so I am very likely exaggerating. The German kid did the entire hike in his bare feet. But all of us, including the guides, agreed that he was insane and super human.

The pics won’t do it justice but a couple of the hike up:





Some shots looking back at the river and a couple rafts floating by:







The view across the canyon:





A bit of an oasis in the middle of a bunch of rock:





We took a bit of a break and had some snacks up there and then some scruffy dude with a full backpack and hiking poles came wandering out from deeper in the canyon. I got a chance to talk to him a bit when we all got back to the bottom near the river. He had been out there on his own for 60 days doing the Hayduke trail which runs over 800 miles across Southern Utah and Northern Arizona. Crazy.

A hidden gem was just minutes away from the boats back at the bottom of the trail and the cold air coming off of it was impressive:

Wednesday May 23, 2018

From Deer Creek we went through one rapid and down the river less than a mile to a nice shaded beach called Pancho’s Kitchen at mile 137.5 where we had chicken Caesar wraps for lunch.

Washing up with soap and bleach water and digging in:




We got another lunch time story read to us by Guide Rich:




Just about everyone fell asleep after lunch, complete with snoring:



Downriver view from Pancho’s Kitchen with a couple laying out in the sun on the left side of the pic. She was in a bathing suit and he was covered from head to toe. I never determined if he also had issues with the sun or if he was still recovering from hypothermia complements of riding in the bath tub on day 1:



A cool crevice just around the corner going upriver:



Some wildlife along the way:



After lunch we made our way through Doris, Fishtail, Kanab and a couple unnamed rapids. I was sitting near the back of the boat for this run and was enjoying listening to Jenny talk to Chris about the river, how to navigate certain rapids and just general chat. Either up front with the action or near the back where you could hear all the river related chatter were the best seats in my opinion.

Fish Tail rapid was one of the most fun rapids we went through all week as it completely soaked every one of us no matter where we were sitting despite only being a class 5 rapid. Kanab was one of the most beautiful rapids being quite long and a bit of a figure S. We camped at a beach they called Corn Dog Hill which was a cozy camp across from Below Kanab camp at mile 144.5. Corn Dog Hill had a very steep hill down from the beach camp to the waters edge and kids like to roll down the hill getting covered in so much sand that they look like big corn dogs by the end.

One of the rapids we went through that afternoon:



We still hadn’t learned our lesson about grabbing a prime camp fast and ended up on center stage at the edge of the hill down to the water with no privacy at all. For the first time on this trip all five of us were camping all together though. I couldn’t figure out how to change into a bathing suit to get washed up that night and eventually just gave up and bathed in my underwear which were pretty damned close enough to a bathing suit anyway. If I can poop in a bucket and walk death ledges I suppose I can stow away body issues for a couple days as well.



They fed us massive and delicious cheeseburgers in addition to sausages, salad and brownies that night. I was in bed sometime near 8:30pm again but I struggled to fall asleep for a good 6 minutes or so on this night. I would wake up again and enjoy the stars during the night but I think my bladder gave me a rare break that night which was well timed seeing as though we had a steep stumble to the river that would have been tricky in the dark. A shot from that night complements of Captain DSLR:

Thursday May 24, 2018

Once again I woke up shortly after 4am and just hung out watching the sky slowly brighten. They fed us pancakes, ham and fruit for breakfast that morning.

The view upriver with some people loading one of the rafts:



The view downriver from the camp:



Overlooking the camp from one of the crappers:



I had been up there shortly after 4am to take care of some business and that same shot would have made a great pic as the entire camp lay sleeping and perfectly still at that time.

There was a man-made half wall built for this particular bathroom:



Before we got going we received a bit of a talk about our next stop, Havasu Creek, which happens to be the emergency evacuation capital of the Grand Canyon. They have to dock the boats in the middle of a rapid as well which takes a lot of coordinating and is quite a bit more difficult when they are missing one of their staff. We set off and went through Matkatamiba, Upset and Sinyella rapids before stopping at Havasu Creek just past mile 157.

We got pretty close to some walls that morning:





Parked in a rapid:



Many of us were thankful to be out of the boat again and gave back to the river:



Looking back upriver:



A huge school of fish or more likely suckers at the mouth of the Creek:

Thursday May 24, 2018

After walking a fair distance up the ledges we removed our lifejackets and tied them all together. Then we set off on another hike to another water feature:








The pay off this time was a swimming hole instead of a waterfall. To get there we had to scramble up a steep rock face and then walk through a cave-like hole in the rocks:






Looking back into the Canyon:



We had gotten there early and had the place to ourselves for quite a while and then headed out when another group rolled in. We got stuck in a traffic jam on the way out with two more groups coming in at the same time. We got to see an interesting contrast between our group and some others. At one particularly steep portion where the people hiking in had to slide down a rock face on their butts for a short drop, several rafters from one of the other groups turned back to go wait by their boats. I overheard our guides talking to other guides about how good our group had been – up early, helpful, able to handle any terrain they threw at us, etc. The guides have no say in who goes on these trips and they feel that some people should stick to something a little bit less active. That said, we had a couple pushing towards their eighties with us and they handled everything no problem at all. They were super fit for any age let alone theirs though.

When we got back to our boats it looked like a raft parking lot. I can’t remember if there were 6 or 8 rafts tied up and I can’t find any pics that help make that determination. Here is a shot of our other raft as we got ready to pull out with some of the other companies rafts in the background:



The guy waving at the camera and the guy next to him closer to the center of the shot were both in their 60's and could run laps around all of us in our late 40's/just pushing 50.

Thursday May 24, 2018

We made it out of Havasu Creek with no serious injuries. One lady injured her shoulder coming back down the rock face from the swimming hole. Us Canucks bring along a Shoulder Surgeon with us when we travel and he checked her out but without an xray not much could be determined. Early diagnosis was just a strain. One of the rafters was obviously a sweet harmless looking drug dealer and hooked her up with some vicodin.

The biggest cause of injuries in there relate to people overestimating the depth of the pools and jumping in from the rocks resulting in nasty broken ankles and legs followed by fun helicopter rides out from several miles downriver. On one of the last trips one of the guides was on, someone with a shy bladder wandered too far from the group to relieve himself and fell off the rocks and broke his fall with his face splitting his jaw in two. He also got a fun helicopter ride out. No one cares about anyone else relieving themselves and it is not like anyone would be a big enough ******* to take pics of someone peeing and post them on a poker forum, so best not to worry about that stuff.

We went just a bit down the river after finishing up Havasu Rapid and stopped for lunch across the river from a camp named Second Chance just past mile 159. The guides found another shady beach and fed us bean salad wraps:



The view downriver from our lunch stop:



Then we had a long hot stretch on mostly flatwater. We broke out the squirt guns to provide some relief and went through National, Fern and Gateway rapids all of which were quite small and tame.

Along the way they let our Birthday Boy trip organizer pilot the boat for a bit:



He managed not to kill us. Hard to tell with the clothing on but Guide Jenny is ripped. She hasn’t competed yet but she did talk a bit about her husband (Guide Rich) trying to convince her to take part in a bodybuilding/bikini competition.

We saw lots of views like this as we made our way down the river and spotted more Big Horn Sheep along the shore and up on ledges that looked impossible to get to:



Somewhere along the way we made another stop and the Surgeon and I ended up in the bath tub seats for the final stretch which would include Lava Falls which is the biggest class 10 rapid on the river and one of the top 5 navigable rapids in the world. We got submerged like we were strapped to the front of a submarine three or four times on our way through. We are working on getting a gopro video which was strapped to his chest together but we are suffering technical difficulties.

Vulcan’s Anvil jutting out of the river just past mile 178 and about a mile before Lava Falls:

Thursday May 24, 2018

We went through one more small rapid and then pulled into our last camp at Lower 185 Mile which was just past 185 Mile Rapid and oddly almost exactly at mile 186. This was a pretty big sprawling camp especially compared to Corn Dog Hill and we all managed to stake out spots fairly close together with prime access to the World’s longest urinal.

A shot from above the camp:



They fed us spaghetti, meat sauce, garlic bread and salads for our last meal as well as some sort of vanilla pudding custard concoction that was pretty tasty in addition to the remaining brownies.

We were up a bit later this night and the river guides gave each of us an authentic 24 karat gold River Rat pin. Mine didn’t turn green until two days later. I still had three-quarters of a bottle of Scotch left heading into this evening but the German helped solve the problem of whether I would lug it back to Vegas with me. He turned a little green the very next morning.

The guides read us a top ten list of ways to prepare for a Grand Canyon River Rafting Trip and though some of it sounds a bit spotty, it would all actually help quite a bit:

#10 – One week before the trip, have a yard of sand delivered to your home. Sprinkle liberally in your bed, dresser drawers and on kitchen and bathroom counters. Fill your salt shaker, sugar bowl and cereal boxes with sand and then use as normal. Put out garbage can lids full of sand in front of fans and run them continuously at maximum speed.

#9 – After renting a projection TV, illuminate the walls and ceiling of your bedroom with old Dracula movies, especially the snake, spider, lizard and bat infested scenes

#8 – Have your friends over for a long fire line and then systematically pass the entire contents of your home out through the front door and into the back door of your house

#7 – With an industrial size brush and bottle of bleach: wash, rinse and sterilize the hubcaps of your car 30 minutes after sunrise and immediately after sunset every day for 6 days

#6 – Get a meat tenderizer and practice beating beer cans down to the diameter of a hockey puck

#5 – Sit on the hood of your car and go through the car wash – best to do this after your car has been sitting out in the hot sun all day

#4 – Line your sandals with sandpaper and spend two hours per day on a stair master

#3 – Drape the clothes from your dresser and closet on the bushes, rocks and trees in your backyard. Twice a day with the use of a sheet, practice changing your clothes while your neighbors watch

#2 – With 27 friends standing in the shallow end of your swimming pool, practice looking nonchalant as you carry on a conversation and pee simultaneously

#1 – Take a dump in your upstairs waste paper basket, then with your pants still around your ankles, run downstairs and pee in the bathtub

I was up super late and didn’t get to bed until a sliver past 9:30pm for one last night of falling asleep instantly and then waking in the middle of the night to admire the stars.

Friday May 25, 2018

After being up so late the night before I slept in until 4:45am on the last morning out there but was still one of the first ones up.

One last shot of the rafts before they got broken down to streamline them for the 10 hour ride down the river the guides still had to do after dropping us off:



A shot upriver of 185 Mile Rapid:



Looking downriver through the camp kitchen:



Breaking down and rolling up the outer pontoons of the rafts:



I was less than helpful that morning as my body was busy rejecting all the food I had stuffed into it over the past several days. My buddies more than made up for my laziness.

Awesome TR. I did a similar 9-day rafting trip two summers ago and it was such an incredible experience. I wish I had documented it in the same amount of detail that you did so I could go back and relive it.

Would highly recommend to anybody looking at it to just pick some dates and go. It's an incredible trip.

Very awesome. Was it mentioned how much the entire thing cost?

Thanks Zimmer. 9 days must have been amazing! Documenting it all is a big pain but I know that I will appreciate it down the road.

I couldn't agree more about just picking some dates and going. It really is an incredible trip and in my case I wanted nothing to do with it initially. Very glad I went.

Thanks! The amount paid to Wilderness River Adventures through Grand Canyon Advantage outfitters was only $2k US which was a discounted non-refundable non-transferable price well out in advance of the trip (even when booking i figured the percentage chance of me trying to back out was pretty high and non-refundable would help get me there). I tipped $300 at the end of the trip and stopped counting what I spent on gear pretty early in the process. It was a substantial sum relative to the fee paid to the outfitter. The fee paid to the outfitter was ridiculously good value. I had received my monies worth and then some only a day or two into the trip. Getting yourself to the Grand Canyon is an additional expense as was the stay on the Rim the night before the hike in but the return trip from the River to Vegas was included in the outfitter fee.

Friday May 25, 2018

Our camp on the last night was assigned based on helicopter departure times and we were the third group out on Friday morning. The plan had been to head over to group #2’s beach to break down the pontoons as there was much more room to do so over there but they were moving so slow we took care of everything on our sliver of a beach.

We had a short hop to the helicopter pad at mile 188 with the two rafts now lashed together. One last view of the river:



We rocked out to Barry Manilow’s Looks Like We Made It for the last few minutes of the raft ride:




The helicotper pad beach was very busy with groups departing and other groups arriving. Helicopters were bombing in and out every 5 or 6 minutes.







We got one final group shot before we all got broken up into smaller groups for the short flight out: