Busting Rapids on the Rio Colorado

Challenging the

With clenched teeth, I managed a feeble 'Yahoo!' After all, we were supposed to be enjoying this

Our rafts were smaller, and you felt the wave action much more than in the larger motorized 'baloney boats' used on most commercial tours. Ours also were more likely to capsize in the big waves.

Hands gripped on the line at the front of the neoprene raft, I lowered my head and felt the icy water pour over me. I heard my wife, Judy, gasp, "Oh, gawd!" again and again as we plowed through Badger Creek Rapids. I remembered what we were supposed to do: lean forward to guide the boat directly into the waves so it would not turn sidewise or worse slide backward into a churning hole and flip over, leaving us to flounder and fight off hypothermia. With clenched teeth, I managed a feeble "Yahoo!" After all, we were supposed to be enjoying this. For seven years, our friends Curt and Betty Cureton of Pebble Beach, California, had applied for a permit to undertake a private raft trip on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, and when they got it, we were fortunate to be invited to go along. Fortunate, or crazy, depending on which way you viewed it, we were eager to go with them. Not that we hadn't been on rivers before. We had rafted several choppy streams in Canada, the Rogue in Oregon, the main Salmon and Middle Fork in Idaho, the Stanislaus in California, and, also in California, the gentle Carmel River, where partially submerged trees are known to trap the unwary. We had even run the Colorado once before, in 1967. But that was in August, when we purposely went swimming to cool off. This was May, 1991. A cold wind was blowing; it was starting to snow at the South Rim; and the water was about 43° F. I had never seen Judy look so cold, and I suspected I was close to hypothermia myself. "Don't worry," I reassured Judy, who was shaking like a leaf in a blizzard. "We'll make it through."

I needed reassuring myself. The polypropylene underwear that was intended to keep us warm didn't do a bit of good when it was soaking wet, and only the constant activity of bailing kept us from freezing. We had to make it through. There was no turning back. There was no walking out. The vertical red walls of Marble Canyon grew higher and more confining at every turn. Badger Creek Rapids were behind us, and then Soap Creek Rapids, and we had not upset. We were still alive when we pulled onto a beach in time to set up camp. Our group did not exactly fit the stereotypes of diehard survivalists or back-to-nature freaks. Curt and Betty were in their 60s, and several others of us were over 50. It was a family get-together for the Curetons. Their son, Russell (a dentist from Salinas, California), daughter Jeannie (a National Park Service seasonal ranger from Oregon), and another daughter, Kathy from Maryland, made the trip. Also included were Russell's wife, (PREVIOUS PANEL, PAGES 4 AND 5) Each year more than 22,000 recreationists run the Colorado River. Here boatman Kenton Grua, center, pilots a dory through Lava Falls Rapids, some of the roughest whitewater in North America.

Jan, and Jeannie's husband, Steven Rumrill, a marine biologist from Oregon. Steven's brother, Randy Rumrill, an experienced oarsman who had rowed through the Canyon 10 times previously, acted as our guide.

Randy had boundless energy and mus-cles developed from years of rowing. He never rested. When he wasn't rowing, he was climbing rocks bare-handed, or play-ing "golf" alongside the world's most haz-ardous water trap, or describing rapids with motions of his body that made you believe he was in some enormous curving waves and treacherous troughs. He had memorized every rapid except two that were close together. One requires scouting because there is a big rock in the middle, while the other you can just bounce through. He ran the one that should have been scouted and scouted the easier one.

Randy had brought his cousin, Erik Peterson, and two friends, Kent Reynolds and Ferron Mayfield, who were experi-enced river guides in Oregon and Cali-fornia, to row three of the four 18-foot oar-powered rafts. Kent is a sculptor, a powerfully built man with a calm dispo-sition who handled the most churning water with apparent ease. The only times he appeared nervous were when he let me row in rapids.

Also with us were Kent's friends: Madelene Coke, George Getty (who ne-gotiated most of the stretches in his own orange inflatable kayak), and Carolyn Wilson, our close friend and fellow musi-cian, who often performs on her fiddle or guitar with Judy and me.

The trip's first half involved 16 people, eight of whom would stay on the river 16 days for a total distance of 226 miles.

Eight of us would leave the trip at Bright Angel Trail Bridge and hike out the long steep trail, 9.5 miles to the South Rim, while eight others would hike down the trail the same day and join the party on the river for the remainder of the trip a total of 24 people in all. Our shift would spend six nights on the Colorado.

Unlike a commercial raft trip, for which all services are provided, our group had to cooperate in every respect, from loading and unloading boats to cooking and clean-ing up after meals to minding the "unit," a metal box with a toilet seat. Hygiene and regulations demanded that all human waste be carried out with us, and proper treatment of the unit was crucial. A far cry from the earlier trip when Judy and I had only a small shovel and a role of paper.

Erik was given the job of transporting the garbage and waste, which meant he usually got the three late risers for pas-sengers each morning. He identified himself with a T-shirt that said "SHIP OF STOOLS."

Sharing in the duties was a meaningful part of the experience, sort of a commu-nity effort in survival. What each of us did affected the well-being of all the others. Even the four boatmen were paying partici-pants. We pitched into our as-signed duties, which changed each day, and helped out wher-ever needed. I enjoyed rowing a boat through some of the rapids, too, although I gladly let the more experienced boatmen take us through the bigger ones.

Our rafts were smaller, and you felt the wave action much more than in the larger motor-ized "baloney boats" used on most commercial tours. Ours also were more likely to capsize in the big waves.

As we descended deeper into the Canyon, the weather warmed, and the water, too or else we didn't notice the cold so much. We began to forget about the outside world and immersed ourselves in the history and mystery and beauty of the surroundings.

As the Colorado River cuts through formation after formation,

The grandeur of the Canyon is hypnotic... deceptive. What appears from a distance to be a dent in a cliff turns out to be Redwall Cavern, a sandy cave as large as a football field, where we played with a frisbee in the sand.

Cinco de Mayo

was marked with huevos rancheros for breakfast and mariachi music - Carolyn, Judy, and I played two harmonicas and a plastic flutelike recorder while Erik and Randy demonstrated the Mexican Hat Dance.

Like slicing through a layer cake, a story of the Earth is revealed. Oceans, shallow seas, sandy deserts, and even mountain ranges had covered the area long before the river began its course, and their stories are told in fossils and minerals. The grandeur of the Canyon is hypnotic and deceptive. What appears from a distance to be a dent in a cliff turns out to be Redwall Cavern, a sandy cave as large as a football field, where we played with a Frisbee in the sand. A sudden flash of white in a red cliff is Vasey's Paradise, where a sparkling waterfall creates a garden of poison ivy, watercress, and red monkey flowers. Here we filled our canteens and water cans. Small dunes above the white sandy beaches where we camped were adorned with evening primroses in delicate translucent pinks and whites, while cerise-flowered prickly pear bloomed profusely on the rocks higher up, and large collared lizards approached, full of curiosity.

We modern river runners were not the only humans to have enjoyed this paradise, as we found old granaries and other structures built high in the cliffs by the Anasazi of centuries ago. Over all else the eternal walls towered, ever changing in shade and color with the movement of the sun, but always delighting us with tones of pinks, browns, and deep purples. For those in our group who enjoyed fishing, 16-inch lunkers willingly took the spinners, making fresh trout one of the enjoyable staples of more than one meal. When we reached the heart of the Grand Canyon, in the shiny black Vishnu schist of a mountain range of 2 billion years ago, we were sucked down a series of rapids into a forbidding domain so ancient that even fossils were lacking. Gone were the friendly pink walls of Marble Canyon, the friendly springs and wildflowers of Vasey's Paradise. Black rocks carved smooth by the river stood out like dragon's teeth, and I had the impression of gliding through the jaws of a monster into a dark unknown. Fear and uncertainty were tempered with humor and the wonderful feeling of sharing the experience with a great group of people. No one complained, and everyone helped whenever help was needed. Cinco de Mayo (a Mexican holiday celebrating the victory over the French at Puebla in 1862) was marked with buevos rancheros for breakfast and mariachi music Carolyn, Judy, and I played two harmonicas and a plastic flutelike recorder while Erik and Randy demonstrated the Mexican Hat Dance. Our final evening, before Judy and I disembarked at Phantom Ranch for the long hike to the South Rim, was spent on a lovely beach. The wind had died, and it was

Kent happened to awaken and warned us the river was rising. What had earlier been gentle riffles running past our campsite suddenly became a muddy, icy maelstrom of water.

warm and peaceful. A sunset played on the water against the dark cliffs. We had not only survived, we had enjoyed the experience thoroughly, and I found myself wishing it could go on forever. We retired on the sand full of contentment. But survival is a way of life in the Canyon, and being ready to act quickly is a necessity. We learned this that night when controllers at Glen Canyon Dam, as part of an experiment to determine the effect of sudden water-volume increases on siltation and beach erosion, decided to quadruple the release of water from 5,000 cubic feet per second to 20,000 cfs, and to do it a day earlier than we expected. At 3:30 in the morning, Kent, one of the boatmen, happened to awaken and warned us the river was rising. Indeed it was, and what had earlier been gentle riffles running past our campsite suddenly became a muddy, icy maelstrom of water. Instantly we began to move our gear from the beach to the rocks above. Carolyn had found herself a sheltered cove the previous evening a perfect place to set up camp. Little did she know that she would have to be rescued by boat in the morning when her cove disappeared completely. Fortunately there was moonlight; even so, while moving back and forth along the beach, I fell into a hole with water up to my waist and stumbled on rocks in my bare feet. Judy rescued my life jacket, which was floating away, and I rescued the unit, which was now almost completely submerged. Then I noticed that one of the rafts, Ferron's boat, appeared to be drifting into the restless current. You could always spot Ferron's boat because it was adorned with a wind sock or beach umbrella, depending on the weather, and a videocamera mounted on a tripod, which recorded the back of his head as he rowed. He had solar panels on the raft that operated a pump that drew water from inside the boat up into a black bag that made a solar-heated shower. By now it was getting light enough to see quite well, and I asked Ferron, "Is your boat floating away?" An aquatic biologist who seemed so much in tune with running water that he hardly ever struggled with the oars even in the strongest rapids, Ferron yawned and in his Alabama drawl said, "Well, it looks to me like maybe it is." Without hesitating, I jumped into the cold river, grabbed the bow line, and pulled the raft to shore. Ferron, who really knows his rivers, said, "Heck, the eddy would have brought it right back.' In the meantime, while our camp was being inundated, everybody was rescuing something. By daylight our beach was underwater completely, but all 16 of us were accounted for, and nobody had lost anything. We had even rescued a broken oar from a raft belonging to another group that had flipped in Hance Rapids. All in a day's work on the river. As we struggled up the Bright Angel Carolyn had found herself a sheltered cove the previous evening a perfect place to set up camp. Little did she know that she would have to be rescued by boat in the morning when her cove disappeared completely. Fortunately there was moonlight; even so, while moving back and forth along the beach, I fell into a hole with water up to my waist and stumbled on rocks in my bare feet. Judy rescued my life jacket, which was floating away, and I rescued the unit, which was now almost completely submerged. Then I noticed that one of the rafts, Ferron's boat, appeared to be drifting into the restless current. You could always spot Ferron's boat because it was adorned with a wind sock or beach umbrella, depending on the weather, and a videocamera mounted on a tripod, which recorded the back of his head as he rowed. He had solar panels on the raft that operated a pump that drew water from inside the boat up into a black bag that made a solar-heated shower. By now it was getting light enough to see quite well, and I asked Ferron, "Is your boat floating away?" An aquatic biologist who seemed so much in tune with running water that he hardly ever struggled with the oars even in the strongest rapids, Ferron yawned and in his Alabama drawl said, "Well, it looks to me like maybe it is." Without hesitating, I jumped into the cold river, grabbed the bow line, and pulled the raft to shore. Ferron, who really knows his rivers, said, "Heck, the eddy would have brought it right back.' In the meantime, while our camp was being inundated, everybody was rescuing something. By daylight our beach was underwater completely, but all 16 of us were accounted for, and nobody had lost anything. We had even rescued a broken oar from a raft belonging to another group that had flipped in Hance Rapids. All in a day's work on the river. As we struggled up the Bright Angel Trail later that morning, we wondered how the rest of the party would fare. Ahead of them were Horn Creek, Crystal, and Lava Falls rapids three much stronger rapids than anything we had run and in higher water, too. Later we'd learn the whole party made it through without mishap a commendable feat because two of our boatmen had never run the Colorado before.

Travel Video: Real-life adventurers as well as armchair travelers will enjoy The Grand Canyon, an Arizona Highways video ($29.95) that explores the geology of the Canyon, takes one of the famous mule trips down a breathtaking narrow trail, and shoots the rapids with a rafting expedition on the Colorado River. The hour-long video is narrated by the late actor Lorne Greene. For information or to order, telephone toll-free 1 (800) 543-5432. In the Phoenix area, call 258-1000.

WHEN YOU GO

Getting there: Do-it-yourself trips require a special permit and a $25 fee to put your name on a waiting list (names accepted only during February, and, barring cancellations, the wait may be as long as seven years). For information, write or call River Permits Office, Grand Canyon National Park, P.O. Box 129, Grand Canyon, AZ 86023-0129; telephone (602) 638-7843. An additional permit is needed to exit the river at Diamond Creek. For information, contact Hualapai Tribal River Running, P.O. Box 246, Peach Springs, AZ 86434; telephone (602) 769-2219 ог 1 (800) 622-4409.

Outfitters: For information on river outfitters, commercial raft trips, motels, campgrounds, contact Flagstaff Visitors Center, 101 W. Santa Fe Ave., Flagstaff, AZ 86001; telephone (602) 774-9541.

Park accommodations: Contact Grand Canyon National Park Lodges, P.O. Box 699, Grand Canyon, AZ 86023; telephone (602) 638-2401 or 638-2631. For camping reservations at the SouthRim and access information, contact the Back Country Office, Grand Canyon National Park, P.Ο. Box 129, Grand Canyon, AZ 86023-0129; telephone (602) 638-7888.