White water rafting down the Colorado

On Sunday we got up at 5:00 (Keith called it getting up at fishing time) to drive a few hours to Peach Springs, AZ. From there we got a bus to take us (and about 30 other people) 25 miles down this bumpy dirt road to the base of the Grand Canyon and launch place for our rafting trip. From there we boarded our inflatable boats in groups of 8-10 to start our adventure. It was the five of us, Keith, myself, his sister Jen, her husband Paul and Keith’s dad, a honeymooning couple and another couple from Europe. I don’t think any of us really knew what we were getting ourselves into.

They suggested we wear rain gear as we would get wet…but it was 80 and sunny and no one really wanted to put on rain gear…but we did anyways, well except Keith who wore his rain jacket and shorts and the European couple who wore tank tops, shorts & sandals. We were told that we would get class 3 rapids…but we also heard that the scale is 1-10 on the Colorado, so we figured a relaxing trip down the Colorado River, enjoying the scenery of the Grand Canyon….yeh well that lasted 2 minutes until we hit our first rapids and got totally soaked. I’m talking huge waves crashing over the boat, over your front, back, flooding the bottom of the boat. Not even rain gear could help you! Keith was sitting up front, me behind him, then Paul, and Jen & dad were on the back bench. After a few rapids, Paul wanted to be in the action so he and Jen switched seats with Keith and me. After 1 set of rapids, Jen couldn’t take the beating so she and I shuffled again. There were a few times that I was hanging on for dear life as the waves were so strong that I thought I was going to loose my grip and go overboard.

All 4 rafts in our party stopped after about 1 hour and hiked up to this awesome waterfall. We had to use rope ladders to climb up this rock face before we could get to the waterfall. It was awesome! Going down the rope ladders wasn’t so fun, but we all made it down safely. We had a while to dry off…lord knows we needed it…before we boarded the boats again. We hit some more rapids, a few of which we found out were class 5 or 6… and got totally drenched again. Around noon, we pulled up along this sandy beach for lunch. We all disrobed and laid our clothes out on the rocks to dry while we stretched out in the sun to warm up. That poor European couple was starting to turn blue.

After lunch the trip was very calm. We didn’t hit any more rapids and after a while we got rid of all the rain gear as we were getting warm in the afternoon Arizona sun. There were a couple more stops along the way, but mostly just to get up and stretch our legs, as we’d pretty much been sitting since we got in the car at 5:00 that morning. Our guide, Charles, would tell us little stories along the way of travelers before us that met their demise in the river or canyon or show us cool geologic features in the canyon.

At about 4:00, our river trip had ended for the day. But since the only road that goes into the canyon and down to the river was the one we took that morning the only way to get out of the canyon at our drop off was by helicopter. So our river trip ended in a helicopter ride over the west end of the Grand Canyon. There were high wind warnings that day so I was a bit nervous, but we landed safely.

Then we had a 2 hour bus ride back to Peach Springs…it was only about 60 miles, but all dirt roads again. I was beginning to think that no roads to the Grand Canyon were paved! All in all it was an awesome day! Our thanks to Keith’s dad for planning an unbelievable trip. (Pictures to come later as we used our underwater camera and not the digital)