RIDING THE RAPIDS TO PEARCE FERRY

Diamond Creek Rapids churned and swirled

Like a thousand circular saws melting into liquid steel. At 8:15 A.M. I had been in the raft less than five minutes when suddenly the chilly waters of the Colorado River slammed against my face and left me drenched from head to foot. The raft pitched forward into a wave and rapidly swung into the air then flopped down like a rhino dropped from a waterfall. "Hold on! Hold on!" shouted Drake Havatone, the Hualapai Indian who was operating the motorized raft. "If you're wearing false eyelashes, hold on to 'em now!" About an hour earlier, I stood at Peach Springs, headquarters of the Hualapai Indian Reservation, part of a group waiting for a van to take us down to Diamond Creek. This June morning came on warm and dry, and we set out for a day on the river that would carry us through nine rapids and 64 miles of the Colorado River through the west end of the Grand Canyon to Lake Mead. After the van arrived, we began snaking our way along the dirt road that descends 21 miles to the belly of the Canyon. Knowing the river was below us, cold and hidden, we were eager and slightly jumpy. What had we let ourselves in for? Chiseled cliffs, fractured limestone and sandstone formed before the first mammals appeared on the planet, towered on both sides of the road like granite bookends for a world where only giants can read. Before we reached the river, we ran out of road. Diamond Creek suddenly slithered toward us, and if there was an actual road under the tires it concealed itself below several inches of

Grand Canyon West SOMEHOW IT DOES SOMETHING FOR THEM SPIRITUALLY, AND THEY GO BACK FEELING RENEWED AND READY TO START OVER.

running water and smooth stones reflecting the early morning sunlight. As a group, we were not a sampling of anything resembling physical fitness, but we lurched through the creek in good spirits. Our group included three young adults who were speaking Russian, two retired farmers from Pennsylvania, a couple of lovebirds from Florida, and a retired lawyer from San Francisco who was wearing operating room scrubs.

I got my first glimpse of the river and began thinking about my aversion to anything cold. The June air covered us like a warm coat, but that cozy feeling would prove misleading. The water, I knew, would be anything but warm. The last time I made this raft trip it was October, but the water temperature doesn't change much year-round. Water in the Colorado River comes from the bottom of Lake Powell, above Glen Canyon Dam, and doesn't see much sunlight. As a result, it never gets much warmer than 45° F.

At 8:10 A.M., with our life preservers snapped in place, we launched our rafts. Harley Spitler, the retired lawyer, was making the trip for the fifth year and knew that a frigid wake-up call was just around the corner. Havatone, one of two boatmen on board our craft, pushed us off the red mud bank at the bottom of Diamond Creek, and a hundred feet ahead we saw the alarm clock: the first of the white water we would splash through on the trip.

Within a few minutes we had slammed into Diamond Creek Rapids, twisting into a swell. A wave washed over the corner of the raft and tumbled over my shoulder. I ducked, thinking I could protect myself. But one of the holes in the deck was right next to my foot, and as I leaned forward, water gushed up from below and drenched everything that hadn't been soaked by the water coming from above. Later in the day, I learned these rafts are self-baling, and that's why there are holes in the deck. Great idea, I thought, but I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and sneakers, all of which were drenched in frigid water, and the breeze through that rocky defile turned my outfit into an evaporative cooler. About the only smart thing I'd done was to wear a river hat made of an oily material. Water rolled off the brim, and my head stayed dry. Spitler knew the thin scrubs he wore would dry quickly in the dry air and sunshine. Boyd and Peggy Wolff, the Pennsylvania farmers, were a lot more practical. They had bought some inexpensive plastic rain gear and slipped the pants and hooded jackets over their outer clothing before we hit the first rapids. Spitler thought this was practical but somehow not in the spirit of the thing and gave the couple some good-natured ribbing.

Soon after leaving Diamond Creek Rapids, we pitched through Travertine Rapids and came to a stop at the bottom of Travertine Canyon. About 50 feet off the bank and behind some tall boulders, a warm water creek tumbled off the cliffs. On the cliffside 30 feet above the creek, the mouth of a cave yawned, and pale blue water cascaded over a natural stone trough below it. Havatone climbed the rocks alongside the creek, anchored a heavy rope to a boulder, and tossed the other end to the bottom of the stone sluice. Cole Powskey, the second Hualapai boatman on our craft, caught the rope at the bottom. With the rope anchored top and bottom, each of us was told to climb the smooth rock toward the cave, planting one foot on each side of the small waterfall. The entrance to the cave was about six feet above us, and after climbing to a flat spot, the boatmen helped each hiker scale the rock wall into the capacious cavern.

"Put your left foot there," Havatone said, pointing to a granite toehold, "and grab that rock just above your head in front of you." I did as I was told. Havatone had made this trip for 16 years, and he knew each crevice in that particular wall as though he had a map of it in his brain. After the icy waters of the Colorado River, the soothing warmth of the water on the floor of the cave surprised us. But where was it coming from? The cave itself was remarkable, high walls stippled and cracked and sanded by wind and age, and in the light of the morning, bathed in a harvest gold.

The best, however, was yet to come. I walked back some 40 feet to where the cave jogged to the left, and there before me a bluish-white waterfall tumbled from a wide skylight in the rocks above. Dropping some 20 feet, it emitted a steamy roar that echoed off the walls where the gold light deepened to honey. After about 45 minutes in this balmy Shangri-la, we reluctantly descended the rope and returned to the beach where the rafts waited. Before noon we had covered 10 river miles and nine rapids. Somehow, even Rapid No. 234, the most turbulent of the ones we rode, seemed less intense than I remembered from an earlier trip. I asked Havatone if it was just my imagination.

"No," he said. "The river is high right now, and we're at least 14 feet above the big rocks. When you went through the last time, the river was probably lower and closer to the rocks. The closer the water is to the rocks, the stronger the rapids are."

Rapids are described on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the strongest. They're formed by rocks washed into the river from side canyon creeks and by jagged fingers or ledges extending into the water from the bottom of the vertical cliffs. Rapid No. 234 was somewhere between a five and a six that day, which meant it was turbulent but not the maelstrom it might have been had the water been lower.

Fortunately the Hualapais know the rap-ids the way most people know the way around their kitchens. We tumbled through the chaotic waves of 234 like a beach ball in a hurricane and, because photographer Randy Prentice wanted to take more photos, Havatone swung the raft and gunned the outboard, sawing the flashing waves upriver so that we could run the rapids again.

By the time we left 234, we had crushed through the same rapids three times, and only the snacks and drinks in a picnic cooler and gear stored in waterproof bags remained dry. However, because of the ex-tremely low humidity, we didn't stay wet for long. By the time we ambled through Separation Rapids, the last of the white water above Lake Mead, we were practical-ly dry and ready for lunch.

I hadn't seen a table on either of the rafts, but as soon as we berthed on the sandy beach at Separation Canyon, a folding table emerged, and our guides set about mixing tuna fish salad and laying out cold cuts, fresh fruit, cookies, and soft drinks.

A bronze plaque embedded in a rock wall above the beach explained that Separation Canyon was the spot where brothers Oramel and Seneca Howland, and Bill Dunn, all members of Maj. John Wesley Powell's first expedition down the Colorado in 1869, had separated from the rest of the party and climbed out of the canyon to the Grand Wash Cliffs. At that time no one knew what lay below Separation Canyon, but the Howlands and Dunn were convinced the rapids would swallow them whole if they continued. Powell thought otherwise and tried unsuccessfully to convince them to remain. According to one version of the story, the men struggled out of the canyon only to be killed by Shivwits Indians who mistook them for three prospectors who had abused one of their women.

After lunch, we boarded the rafts for the leisurely second half of our journey, a time for relaxing and enjoying a light and refreshing spray as the river flattened out. Later we made our final stop for the afternoon at Spencer Canyon, a place the Hualapais consider sacred because it's where their ancestors lived. The Hualapai creation story says their gods came down from Spirit Mountain (known now as New-berry Mountain, 10 miles east of Laugh-lin, Nevada) and created the Hualapais from reeds placed in the river. They lived in Madwika Canyon just above Spencer. Traditional Hualapai boatmen tell visitors they can walk in Spencer, but they must not remove any stones or plants. Everything there is holy, they say, because it's all connected to Madwika Canyon above.

As we left Spencer; Drake Havatone and I talked about the journey we had just made.

"I've been a boatmen on these trips for 16 years," he said, "and I never get tired of seeing this country. It does something for me inside. For some people who make this trip, this is a spiritual experience, and I can sure understand that. They may come down here feeling depressed or just feeling bad from being in a city, and they have no idea something this wild still exists in the world. Somehow it does something for them spiritually, and they go back feeling renewed and ready to start over." I couldn't agree more.