Grand Canyon 2011 (First Half)

Hi Everyone,
Well, I have been pretty bad about keeping this up to date with my work travels.  I figured it would be fun to write about my Grand Canyon rafting trip.  It's so hard to wrap up the trip in a paragraph or two so I figured I'd let the words fly and you could read as much (or as little) as you want.  :-)

The pre-planning: our very good friends (Candy and Dolores) decided last year to celebrate their 20th anniversary by getting together a group of women to raft the Grand Canyon.  We made our reservations last summer and have been preparing for it ever since.

Sunday 5/29/11
We decided to drive to Flagstaff since it would be cheaper than flying and a fun road trip.  From our house to the hotel in Flagstaff is 766 miles.  We left about 10:30am and had a quick stop for coffee in Half Moon Bay and hit the road.  Oh, and then, uh, we made another "quick" stop at an REI about an hour away to pick up a few "last minute" things.   We made it to Needles, CA at about 10pm and stayed at a hotel for the night.

Monday 5/30/11
We got up pretty early and headed back out for the rest of our drive after we stopped at Juicy's Diner for a super yummy breakfast!  We made it to the hotel in Flagstaff about 1pm and met up with all our friends that had flown in.  At 5:30pm we had our pre-trip orientation!  There were 21 women on the first half of the trip, friends or friends of friends - pretty awesome!  And, of those 21, 3 were to leave at the "half-way" point and hike out while 3 new people (2 guys and 1 woman) were hiking in.  Our orientation answered a lot of questions that we all had and helped us prep our final packing list for the trip.  And, this is when we learned that we will be peeing in the river. The environment is so dry that peeing on the ground is actually bad for the earth and it's better to dilute it right in the river.  And, that we will be pooping in something they call the "groover."  It's a large ammo can that now has a toilet seat on it, previously it did not and you would "sit" on the ammo can itself - hence the name "groover" since you would get grooves on your butt from sitting on it!  After the orientation about 12 of us went out for Thai dinner.  :-)

Tuesday 5/31/11 Day 1

Navajo Bridge

We had to be down at the bus at 5:20am to drop off our going to the river gear and staying at the hotel bags.  The hotel had an ok buffet so we ate there for breakfast before getting on the bus and leaving at 6am.  I took some Dramamine (buses not being my favorite mode of transportation) and slept a good chunk of the 2 1/2 hour drive up to Lee's Ferry, our put-in.  We stopped at the Navajo Bridge (Route 89A) where we were able to walk across the Colorado River and get our first glimpse of what we were getting ourselves into.  The excitement level once we arrived at Lee's Ferry was pretty amazing.  We were all excited and a little nervous.

We met our 6 guides.  Tracy - trip leader and been doing this for 14 years; Win - honorary lesbian, guide for 10 years; Kristin - bird expert and 31 year veteran; Jayne - mother of earth goddess, can't recall how long but maybe 20?; Kleo - traveler of many countries including India and 4 year "newbie"; and Kent - paddle boat guide and therefore we didn't get to know him very well.

We also got to meet the boats.  We had 5 oar boats which means the guide did the oaring and we sat on our butts.  And, 1 paddle boat - which means the guide steers and the 6 paddlers do whatever Kent tells them to do and "hang on" by sticking their feet in little feet cup things.

We chose Jayne's boat the first day.  And, it was just us with her that day.  We took off about an hour after getting there.  I purposefully did not bring my watch so at this point forward, I have no idea how long anything took and what time of day it was!  :-)  Most things will be in river mile instead of time.

Jayne was very nice to us when we came across our first "riffle" and both Rachel and I were like "Oh my God, is that a RAPID!?  What do we DO?!"  HAHA  Jayne was very kind and gave us advice on how to sit on the boat and when and how to hang on when coming up and going through rapids.  Best advice - duck your head into them, like when you are swimming out in the ocean and a wave comes up on you, don't broad side it, dive into it.  And, of course - HANG ON!  :-)

The beginning of the river was pretty mild.  We floated for a while and then floated beneath the Navajo Bridges that we had just walked over. Wow!  What a change in perspective!  All the boats came together and floated as one unit while we all introduced ourselves and gave a little "who we are" so the guides could meet us.  And, that's when we had our first "swimmer"!  Laura C. was reclined back enjoying herself when her boat bumped into a rock and she went BOING into the water!  We hadn't even had our safety talk yet!  Apparently that was a first!  Laura handled it well and Kleo got her back in the boat safely.

We had lunch that day at about river mile 6.  And, stopped for the day at 19.4 mile campsite.  This was our first time opening up our bed bags - we each had a sleeping bag, thermorest pad, tarp and sheet liner for the bags.  We had access to a tent but all but 2 nights we just slept "under the stars."  A first for both of us!  All of our campsites were beach (i.e. sand) and usually pretty soft sand but sometimes a bit on the hard site.  We sent up our first little "bedroom" in a little cove between some bushes and close to the water in case we had to pee in the night.  Neither of us slept very well, even though we were really tired - getting used to sleeping outside I guess.

Wednesday 6/2/11 Day 2
We picked Tracy's boat this day.  and only went about a mile and 1/2 before we made our first stop at the first "side canyon" hike.  North Canyon. Everybody went in for the hike besides Rachel and I.  It was pretty overwhelming being with so many people so we opted for some quiet time instead.  We bathed, read, watched the lizards running around and had about 2 hours of nice kick back time.  When the crew come back we had lunch there as well.  Then, back on the boats.  Today was our first big rapids - the roaring twenties - a series of rapids between river mile 20 and 30.  It was pretty fun and we found out that they are quite fun!  We also would sing going into most of them.  And, I will admit, I mostly sang "Defying Gravity" from Wicked.  :-)  We stopped at river mile 32, South Canyon.

Up on the "cliff" overlooking the river

There was a little "stroll" up on to the layer above the river level where there were some ruins so I went on this hike.  There was a techinical spot where you had to put your foot about waist level and then pull yourself up by hanging onto other rock.  Yikes!  I did ok going up.  I had one person pushing me up and one person pulling me up so I made it.  The view was pretty cool and the ruins were also very cool.  The climb back down scared the crap out of me though.  I have an odd fear of heights.  I do ok going up but freeze on the way back down.  I walked ahead of the group with 2 of the guides so that I could do it without everyone watching.  And, I told them it was really scary to me. They helped me every step, literally, of the way and I made it safely right before my eyes teared up.  Phew.  Scary stuff for me.

pulled into Redwall Cavern

We didn't sleep well that night either.  We had a windstorm come through that night and we got sand BLASTED all night!  We couldn't escape it - it was coming from all directions.  The best quote of the trip came from that night "I was so mad at the sand I rolled over and showed it my ass!" by Carol.

Thursday Day 3
We chose to give the paddle boat a try today.  and, we went about 1 1/2 miles before our first stop at Redwall Cavern - gorgeous!  It's estimated that 50,000 people could fit in it!  And, we realized that the paddle boat wasn't for us.  It was very hard on Rachel's ankle and I just didn't have the upper body strength or oomph to paddle for long periods of time.  So, we switched over to Win's boat for the day.  We boated down to about mile 41 and stopped at Buck Farm Canyon for lunch.  We ended our day at mile 44 at the President Harding campsite.

Friday Day 4

Saddle Canyon, almost all the way out, on the way back

We chose Kristin's boat this day.  And, after just about 3.5 miles on the river we pulled over for a side canyon hike. This is the first one I decided to part-take in.  It was still pretty early in the morning so I figured it would still be cool.  HA!  I was wrong.  I went super slow and drank lots of water and Tracy (the guide who was blessed with being "sweeper" that day) kept me entertained so before I knew it, I was at the end.  :-)  She dirty tricked me and kept asking me deep, personal questions and when we got to the end I said "how'd that happen" and she laughed.  :-)  There was a gorgeous stream at the mouth of Saddle Canyon that I got to wade in.  Everyone opted to climb up a rock thing, again, put your foot up by your wais and lift yourself up kind of deal.  I opted to pass on this one and didn't succumb to the peer pressure.  :-)  Apparently there was a pretty waterfall up there but I was really happy with how far I got.  And, on the way back, Candy kept me company and shared her water with me when I ran out.  :-)

Lunch that day was our "Adventure Lunch".  The beach that we stopped at used to be just that, a beach. But, since the water is at it's highest in 15 years, the beached was washed out and there was just a big dune we all had to scramble up.  It was quite the team building exercise! Everyone helping everyone up the dune.

We ended our day about mile 56.5 at a campsite called "Kwagunt".  And, we finally got a really got a good night sleep there!  Yay!

Saturday Day 5

Look close, that's me in the front! (Thanks Nancy for pic!)

We chose Kleo's boat today.  And, this was MY MOST FUN DAY!  We stopped at the confluence of the Little Colorado River which is a gorgeous blue pristine water that flows into the Colorado.  It's also a sacred site, further up, to the Native Americans that lived in this area and I could see why!  It was magical!  And, best of all, we walked just a little ways up the water and got to PLAY in it!  We took off our life jackets and put them on like diapers (to protect our butts from the rocks) and floated down through some "rapids"!  It truly was the first time I just had a blast on the trip.  The water was warm and so fun to play in.  The Colorado is cold water (fed in from the bottom of the Dam at Lake Powell.)

We had lunch at Crash Canyon at mile 63.  It's named such because in 1956 two huge airplanes crashed over the canyon near this spot. In fact, you can even still see wreckage up on the cliffs (Rachel's eye-spyed it!) shining in the sunlight.   We stopped at Carbon Creek where most folks got out to do a loop hike down to Lava Canyon.  We paddled the paddle boat down about a mile and then 2 guides hiked the loop backwards so they could get the remaining boats.  This time was more enjoyable in the paddle boat and we were both glad to get a quick chance to kind of redeem ourselves.  :-)  We camped at Lava Canyon (mile 66) for the night.

Sunday Day 6

Sunrise

We chose Kristin's boat again today.  We were told that we were going to be getting into some pretty big rapids today so we were a little anxious.  We got a few "warm-up" rapids before we got to Hance Rapid at mile 77 which has a 30 foot drop!  And, is rated 7-8 (out of 10) on the big river rapid scale.  It was pretty intense and also very exhilerating!  (we heard - after our trip was over -  that shortly after we went through it, a 39 year old man died after his boat flipped in this rapid and he likely drowned - very sad.)  We had a few more good rapids for the day - Sockdolager was fun too!  We stopped at Grapevine campsite for lunch before dropping people off at Clear Creek for another side canyon hike. The non-hikers for the day went to a shady spot across the river to chill out.  Once the hikers returned we went just a little ways down the river to Zoraster to camp for the night, river mile 85.

Monday Day 7

The uh, "restroom"  :-)

We chose Kleo's boat today.  And, this was a really big day for all of us.  We were at the half way point and we had the "interchange" today.  We had 2 people leaving the trip and 3 people joining.  We boated down to Pipe Creek Beach where the people leaving starting hiking UP 7.5 miles to the South Rim and where we waited for the 3 new people to hike DOWN to join us.  The trip dynamic really changed today.  We had been an all women's group up to this point - not including the two male guides - and we had a hetero couple and a single man joining us.  One of the men has a gay son and they had all been told that it was group mostly of lesbians so that wasn't too shocking.  However, having that male energy in the group was really quite a shock to our system.  We had all gotten so comfortable with each other, bathing and peeing around each other and now we felt that we needed to become more mindful of where we did what.

The change-out went pretty smoothly.  And, after we settled back in our boats we hit some major head winds!  It was like running on a treadmill.  Poor Kleo was rowing SO HARD and we weren't going anywhere.  We got to our lunch spot at mile 94, Granite campsite at Monument Creek and the guides decided to call it a day.  We stayed there for the night.  Wise decision, I think.

Part 2 will cover days 8-15 and I will hopefully have it posted in the next day or two........