Rafting the Colorado River Through the Grand Canyon With Arizona Raft Adventures (AZRa)
Introduction
In 1999, I got on the waiting list to run a private trip down the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon. I have no memory for dates, but I know that one because I found an email from 2001 saying that the Park Service was “… pleased to announce an experimental River Permits Office initiative to use Email to help waiting-list participants keep informed of deadlines and important opportunities.“ That’s how long I’ve been thinking about running this river—since before email was in widespread use. This all seemed like a good idea back then because a few years before, in 1996, I did a 12-day NOLS wilderness course canoeing and kayaking a river in Alaska above the arctic circle. And my friend Mark was the impetus for the Grand Canyon trip idea: he had run the river a couple times with his sister Denise, a river guide, and raved about it. But by 2001 my waiting list number was 5616. By 2005 I was all the way up to 3650. In 2006, they transitioned to a weighted lottery, and gave anyone on the waiting list extra chances to apply based on the number of years on the waiting list (seven for me). I entered the lottery a couple times over the years, but didn’t get through. And then in 2018, after being on the list for almost 20 years, I became eligible for “special assistance” to schedule a trip. And so, in December 2018 I got a launch date of July 6, 2021 and put down my $400 non-refundable deposit. I had a group of people with a lot of water and camping and expedition experience interested, and I was doing a lot of sea and whitewater kayaking in those intervening years (in 2011 I completed a five year kayak circumnavigation of Long Island), and we had local Grand Canyon connections. The pieces were all coming together.
Of course the world changed in 2020, and the park service allowed a one-time deferment, and so I pushed the trip to July 6, 2023. And then, due to various issues, all of the experienced river people I had in my group dropped out. I soldiered on for while with a core group of friends with less river experience, and I’m confident that we could have pulled off the trip with an immense amount of work and preparation and training. But (unbeknownst to me when I signed up in in 2018) things at school got really broken and overwhelming, and I eventually scheduled my early retirement for summer 2023. In 2021 I was stressing about all this and how much work the trip would be, and I remember being out mountain biking one day on a beautiful Fall day in Minnewaska when the idea came to me: abandon the private trip and instead sign up with a commercial outfitter.
I contacted my friend who had done the trip twice (including the entire river in a kayak) and he recommended Arizona Raft Adventures. (AzRA); his recommendation was all I needed. And so, in November 2021, a group of five friends and I scheduled the “Full Canyon 14-Day Classic Adventure” with AzRA, launching June 17, 2023. The idea of booking a trip a year and a half in advance is really bizarre for me; when I’m storm chasing I often don’t even think about booking a hotel room until 6pm the same day. But the number of spots on the river is very limited, and we wanted to make sure all our group members were able to get on the trip. I gave up my private permit (permits can only be transferred to alternates you sign up with initially, and none of mine were interested in taking it on). Sadly, by this summer, due to unfortunate medical issues, three of our group had to drop out. In the end our group was me and my friends Jim and Emily.
I write all this history to put the whole thing in context for myself, and to figure out why it felt like I was thinking about this trip for so long (again, my memory for dates is terrible); in the end it was an almost 25 year process. And by this summer, my 1990s passion for the trip had waned considerably, and parts of the trip ended up being really grueling for me. But I’m really glad I finally was able to run this river, and while I’m going to write about the negatives here so I have an honest record for myself, I really hope none of this comes off as whining. It was truly an amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I know how privileged and fortunate I am to have been able to visit this incredible and truly awesome place with a great group of people.
With that background sorted, onto the trip. I storm chased my way out from NYC to Flagstaff and back to NYC; I have a writeup of that trip here.
The Trip
Preparing
Since a lot of my gear was old and this would be my first off-grid trip with some electronic stuff (on my 1996 NOLS course all I had was a simple film camera with a single battery), I was shopping for or testing or prepping or breaking in something just about every day for several months leading up to heading out on May 29. On June 14, after coming out of storm chase mode in Texas, I drove 600 miles to get to Jim and Emily’s fantastic Airbnb in Sedona. It took me nearly all day on the 15th to unpack, repack and wash everything and run last minute errands for the trip. On the Friday the 16th, we headed up to the Little America Hotel in Flagstaff for the pre-trip meeting. It’s always so interesting at these things, meeting people for the first time with whom you will spend a lot of intense time. There were 18 guests on the trip; the guides were already at the put in putting the boats together, but our orientation host said (correctly) that our group included some real veterans, and we would come to find out that some of them had run the river hundreds of times.
Note: Click on any photo to enlarge
Day 1: Saturday June 17
We met at the crack of dawn to load our stuff on the bus, and then grabbed a quick bite at the Little America hotel truck stop. As the bus headed to the put in, my phone literally disappeared off my Google timeline somewhere as I tried to catch up last minute stuff before being off the grid for two weeks. We crossed the Navajo bridge over the Colorado river (second photo above) got our first view of the river, and stopped and saw a couple California condors hanging out below.
Our trip was made up of six boats; four oar rafts, rowed by John O, Kevin, Matt and Ryann, one paddle raft guided by Leonard, and then an aluminum (!) dory rowed by trip leader Steve. There were two assistants on the trip, Howie, who had guided the river for decades, and Karen from Chile who was running the river her first time. Our group of 18 guests included me and Jim and Emily, a few families/parents with children of various ages (12 is the minimum age on this trip for good reason, and what an awesome experience this would be to have at that age!), a couple, and a couple other solo travelers.
We got some orientations, picked life jackets (each is named, mine was “Monarch Butterfly”) and then ran down the river about 16 miles and camped above House Rock rapid. At camp each day the group would help unload everything and then each would pick a camp site and set up. I have done enough camping in my life to know that I don’t enjoy it. But I know how to do it, and will camp when necessary to get access to amazing places; the Grand Canyon most certainly qualifies for that. But this was my first time camping without a tent; in most places I’ve been, you need a tent to keep dew/rain off and bugs out; in the desert, as we were to discover, neither of those is really a problem, at least at this time of year. I woke up a couple times on the trip with bugs on my face and would often see critter tracks right around my tarp, but otherwise it really wasn’t a problem. I did bring my sleeping mask which was great and allowed me to sleep through those early sunrises. I’m also the lightest sleeper in the world and wore earplugs mostly to suppress the snoring from adjacent camps. Most days on the trip I crashed just after sunset at the the same time at home in NYC I go out. You can see my camp setup in a photo below.
For this day my Fitbit logged 19,328 steps, 2807 Calories, 8.97 miles, and 84 active minutes
Day 2: Sunday June 18
Most days started at sunrise around 5am with a guide bellowing “Coffee” and then a little while later, “Breakfast”. After breakfast and an orientation for the day, we packed up everything, loaded the boats and headed down the river. On this day we (intentionally) swam a rapid to see what it was like; the river is cold and while the cold didn’t bother me when it was just my legs in the water, being submersed in it took my breath away. I think good training for this dam-fed river would be to swim with my friends in the Coney Island Polar Bear club in the ocean in the winter!
The level of the river, controlled by the upstream Glen Canyon dam, and subject to some incredibly complicated politics, was relatively high (compared to recent years) due to all the snow this winter. It was interesting that the river could drop significantly over night while we were at camp (we wouldn’t have been able to see a level change, of course, while on the river). They would vary the output each day due to the hydropower needs. Also, this past spring the river had a “High-Flow Experiment” (details here), which pushes silt up out of the river and onto the banks where we camped. This meant we had a lot of fresh sand in the camps.
On this day I rode on Kevin’s boat; he had along Howie who also had rowed for decades. These guys are both true characters but immensely competent. We visited the beautiful Redwall canyon, and camped near Redbud canyon around mile 39. The food was excellent and plentiful throughout the trip; early on we had more fresh stuff.
15,466 steps, 4773 calories, 7.19 miles (active minutes didn’t log for some reason)
Day 3: Monday June 19
I rode Ryann’s boat on this day; she let me row for a little while, which was a great experience and gave me a sense of what the guides were going through on these days where we had very high winds (I measured gusts close to 30—and you can see some lenticular clouds in the photos which you usually see around mountains and high winds). For some reason the wind always seems to blow up river. It felt weird to just sit and have the guides do all the work for us, but there wasn’t really any way to help.
We hiked up beautiful Saddle canyon which had a very cool waterfall, and I was surprised to see Canada geese with goslings on the river. Apparently they are a relatively new addition to the canyon.
At home, once in a while at night I get leg cramps, and I just get up and walk around for a few seconds and then go back to sleep. But by this third day of the trip in the desert I started getting really bad leg cramps even during the day. I was drinking liters of water every day, adding in electrolyte replacement and eating all the things you’re supposed to, but even with all that I got one daytime cramp so bad that it actually pulled a big muscle in my leg. For this reason, I mostly stayed out of the paddle raft, because I was terrified my whole leg would cramp up in the middle of a big rapid. The heat, which was consistently over 100 degrees F (being a storm chaser, I measured) in the afternoon with humidity around 11 or 12 %, was probably the biggest challenge for me, and my energy would really sag once the temperature max and the sun hit at mid day.
We camped near Saddle canyon around Mile 47. Star gazing was incredible throughout the trip, although most nights I was too tired to spend much time doing it, and for some reason I couldn’t get my phone to go into astro photography mode. The moon was down for the first part of the trip so when I woke up in the middle of the night I would put on my glasses for a minute to take in the milky way, which would occasionally align with the slot of the canyon. Also, at nearly every camp site there were bats and they could be seen from just before sunset to just after dawn.
23,134 steps, 6277 calories, 10.75 miles (active minutes didn’t log for some reason)
Day 4: Tuesday June 20
I rode in the dory with Steve on this day. The dory is unlike the rafts since it’s super tippy and just moves with the water, while the rafts really flex, especially in the bigger rapids. We hiked up to the Nankoweap Granaries, where natives used to store grain high above the river. Once the heat came on around mid day I would really start losing energy, but I love a view and so drank a lot of water and went slowly and I’m glad I made it.
We camped just north of the little Colorado river around mile 61, and had a great steak dinner.
19,188 steps, 5378 calories, 8.91 miles, 341 active minutes
Day 5: Wednesday June 21
This was the summer solstice, with the most sunlight of the year. I’m energized by cool weather, but have never been great with heat, and by this point in the trip I was really dragging (and we were lucky, the heat the week after we got out of the canyon was 10-15 degrees hotter). So it was a relief to swim the crazily blue Little Colorado river. We even did a little train down it. The foot in the little blue rapid is me (photo by Jim).
One interesting thing about this trip; even though we were were off the grid for two weeks in a truly remote wilderness area, it didn’t feel like it in many ways. Of course we ourselves were a group of more than 20, so you’re always in that bubble; but when I did my NOLS course we saw only one other group of people in 12 days. In the Canyon, power boat groups come through every day or so; they run the canyon in about a week while we were doing it in two, and they would often be sharing some of these amazing spots. We also saw some other private raft groups.
We did a long and very hot hike up Carbon Canyon which was spectacular. Guide John O was incredibly knowledgeable about geology, and told us the whole history of it. And then at the back end of the canyon we emerged into what felt like a completely different world (see photos), and then hiked back down to the river. We Camped above Lava Canyon rapid, around mile 66.
28,952 steps, 6390 calories, 13.28 miles, 582 active minutes
Day 6: Thursday June 22
Being a solo traveler, each day I would wait until everyone else was in a boat and then just jump on wherever was open. While each guide had a different style, I felt that all were highly competent and I was comfortable on any of the boats. On this day, I ended up in Matt’s boat, and he has a great way of explaining the rapids and generally got a clean line through the big water. We went through Hance rapid, one of three rapids on the river serious enough for the guides to stop and scout. One of the strange things about this trip for me was being a passenger; in the rapids, you’re basically a rider on a roller coaster where you might get thrown out unexpectedly. I shot video of this part of the trip, but unfortunately my little DJI Osmo action cam somehow got crushed a couple days later, and water got in and corrupted the SD card. The recovery place wanted $1300 to recover the video so I guess it really got messed up (I didn’t pay).
We stopped at Phantom Ranch, which is only accessible via the river or a hiking trail. It was a bit surreal getting some cold lemonade with ice (I got two). I mailed out some postcards (which are carried out by mule) and we camped at Trinity creek around mile 92. I got a camp site right adjacent to the river whenever possible; this was the first day on the trip I really got to sit and read one of the (too many!) books I had brought. As exciting as the trip was, moving every day was kind of relentless.
(Cooler photo by Jim)
18937 steps, 4710 calories, 8.8 miles, 260 active minutes
Day 7: Friday June 23
On this day we ran Crystal rapid (the second of three that the guides scouted); I ended up on John O’s boat, and he has a very calm style that I appreciate. Sadly I have very few photos of any of the rapids, since my plan was to use my little DJI camera on the river and I didn’t want to risk losing my phone and all the pictures on it, so I packed that away when we got in big water. We swam in Shinumo falls, which was cool, and camped near Garnet canyon around mile 115.
One bizarre thing that happened around this point on the trip (and not just to me) is that my feet, ankles, and calves started swelling up. I’ve never had this in my life, but apparently this is also some kind of electrolyte thing, and in hindsight probably related to the (ongoing) cramps. The swelling didn’t hurt, but because I had a couple cuts on my legs, the swelling delayed them healing up.
On the trip, each person is allowed to bring a certain number of drinks (beer/wine/soda) per day. I brought a bunch of Diet Pepsi (I don’t drink coffee and didn’t want to undergo caffeine withdrawals on the trip), but it turns out even cooling those in the river they aren’t very good at 50 or 60 degrees. I also brought two 3 liter bags of wine. and drank all of that; one of the guests ended up using the first empty bag as a camp pillow, and even took it along for his next trip. I think it probably would be easier to bring canned wine instead of the bags.
15542 Steps, 4296 calories, 7.22 miles, 197 active minutes
Day 8: Saturday June 24
On the 23rd, I was standing in some loose sand unloading one of the boats, and when I went to go back to shore my left Teva strap ripped right out of the sole. It turns out that Tevas these days are not well made; the strap was apparently simply glued and pressed into the sole. I borrowed a knife from the kitchen and poked a hole through the sole and cut up a sunglasses retainer and tied the shoe back together (see photo). This improvised repair held up through the rest of the trip, but it really limited me, since I had no lateral support and we often were wearing our river shoes going up creek beds and stuff like that. Lesson learned; I’ve ordered Chaco sandals (which have a superior design) now and have sent back the Tevas in hope of a refund.
I was on Kevin’s boat this day, and we had a large grasshopper ride all the way down with us, and through some pretty sizable rapids. I wonder what he thought emerging into his new home. We hiked up to Elves chasm which had a fun little waterfall/creek that people jumped off (I was too wobbly on my broken sandal to climb up).
While I’m typically on my phone constantly, one thing I wrote in my notes on this day is that I was surprised that I hadn’t missed the internet/connection at all. I found out after the trip that a couple guests had satellite communicators to check in with loved ones back home; they were (as AzRA had requested) very discrete about this and I didn’t even know until the last day. We camped near Galoway Canyon around mile 132.
13102 steps, 4472 calories, 6.09 miles, 278 active minutes
Day 9: Sunday June 25
On the advice of one of the guides, I slept with my feet elevated on my life jacket, and the swelling went down a little by morning which was great. My feet and hands were getting crusty so I slathered the AzRA-sold “Super Salve” on my feet and legs and hands every night and even with that I ended up with some incredible dry spots.
I ended up back on the dory with Steve on this day, and we hiked up via a very narrow ledge to Deer Creek to an amazing oasis-like place. Once a group of the power boaters left, we had it all to ourselves and while a bunch of people hiked up further, I napped by the creek. The falls at the bottom were cool, and I wish I had my anemometer to measure the wind generated by the falling water. We camped near the Granaries around mile 137.
18984 steps, 4575 calories, 8.82 Miles, 273 active minutes
Day 10: Monday June 26
We ran some rapids on this day and one of the guests rode the bow of the dory (see photo). I did this later in the trip and it was a lot of fun. This day featured a long hike up Kanab creek. I was once again struggling when the heat came on mid day, so I took my time and turned around when I got to the bottom of the water in my Camelback. I took a wrong turn through a cactus area on the way back, but because of this stumbled across a group of big horn sheep (wisely) hanging out in the shade. When I opened the water bottle I had left back on the boat, it was so hot that it started spraying water. Camp sites on the river are first come, first served, and it worked out that a bunch of the ones downstream were full, and we ended up with a pretty late camp just downstream of Upset rapid around mile 151.
30165 steps, 5870 calories, 14.02 miles, 473 active minutes
Day 11: Tuesday June 27
This was a fun day I think in part because I was able to manage the heat by being in the water a lot. We swam up the amazingly blue Havasu creek, and ended up at a great camp at National Canyon, around mile 167. This was the second day I really had time to read one of the too many books I brought.
14438 steps, 4292 calories, 6.71 miles, 229 active minutes
Day 12: Wednesday June 28
This was the day of Lava Falls, the scariest rapid and the third and last that the guides scouted before running. I rode with Matt. We were the first boat, and Matt had a very clean run. Jim and Emily were in the front and I was in the back on the right; in the big wave in the middle I was thrown to the bottom of the raft. I weigh 220+ and I was holding on tight and that should give you an idea of the forces at play here. Matt put us in an eddy at the bottom of the rapid and we were watching everyone else come through and I was shooting some photos with the super zoom on the phone. I watched in horror as one of the rafts flipped, but I didn’t get shots of it because I was putting my camera away because we were going to go and try and grab the swimmer (there was only one guest on that boat). The guide from the flipped boat was back on the inverted raft probably in 20 seconds. Unfortunately, our eddy proved to be very sticky and we couldn’t get to the swimmer, but the paddle raft and a private trip kayaker got to the boat and there was a nice big eddy downstream to recover. Fortunately the swimmer was OK, and I think the only thing lost off the raft was a mallet used to hammer in the sand stakes. The group helped flip it back over and we continued down stream. We hiked up to some more native markings, I saw a merganser with babies, and we camped at Whitmore Wash around mile 188
13270 steps, 4549 calories, 6.17 miles, 245 active minutes
Day 13: Thursday June 29
This was our last full day on the river, and I ended up back on the dory and rode the bow through 205 mile rapid. After paddling various things for 25 years, this was a pretty wild experience, because you have nothing between you and the river, and you’re up high with a great view. And then when you think a wave is going to break over the bow as it would on a raft, it doesn’t because it’s a dory. I jumped off Pumpkin rock with the group, and we camped at Three Springs Rapid around mile 216.
14104 steps, 3923 calories, 6.55 miles, 166 active minutes
Day 14: Friday June 30
This was the final day on the river, and a short run down to the take out at Diamond Creek at mile 226 We unloaded all the stuff off the boats, and helped carry them to the truck. Then we rode on the bus through the incredibly bumpy creek wash (those busses must not last very long under those conditions), and emerged into a highway rest stop. It was a bit surreal being back in a tourist zone, but mostly I wondered how bad we smelled to the regular people at the station. Back at the hotel I unpacked, cleaned up a bunch of stuff and took a long shower. We then we got together at the bar for dinner and drinks to wrap things up.
20079 steps, 4624 calories, 9.34 miles, 260 active minutes
Afterwards
Despite the long distance from home, it was really nice having my car out there because it meant I was able to stay really flexible. The morning after we got off the river, I said “see you on down the road” (what my circus friends say instead of goodbye) to Jim and Emily, and then was able to help an amazing new friend from the trip get back to her truck, which had been left up at Lees Ferry. We visited the south rim of the canyon (which I hadn’t visited since the ‘90s) where we looked back onto the river we had just run, so tiny in the distance (the photo above is zoomed in). When you’re in the canyon you get a narrow slice of the sky and it feels incredible but very limiting; only with this kind of vista can I comprehend in any tiny way the magnitude of this awesome place. I remember seeing the canyon for the first time in the early 1990s after a run over from Vegas after a conference; my brain just couldn’t comprehend the sight in many ways; I’ve had similar mind-boggling experiences seeing tornadoes and also lava spurting out of a volcano.
She also introduced me to amazing roadside Navajo fry bread, and we had a late lunch at a cool favorite place of hers where I also learned about Avocado Key Lime pie (not sure how I had missed that so long, but it’s also a new favorite). Then she headed north towards home, and as I headed east, that’s when the trip really, for the first time, felt over. It was a lonely and somewhat sad drive, but as I stopped to take a picture of the moon over Shiprock in New Mexico (see below), I was able to think about a few more days of storm chasing towards home and whatever my new post early-retirement reality will be. This has been a year of many significant transitions for me.
That night I did a couple loads of laundry at the hotel to get the sweat and the sand out of everything, and a couple days later on a down day storm chasing, I stopped at a car wash to power wash off all the sand off everything else. Sure enough, the bizarre leg swelling and most of the cramps went away a couple days after getting out of the canyon, and the rashes and dry skin all mostly cleared up in about a week. I’m left now only with a few small scabs that are slowly healing up. And back here in NYC, somehow the hot (and humid) days haven’t felt as oppressive as they usually do. So maybe I got a little acclimated to heat? In reality, I’m already looking forward to Fall weather.
Thoughts on Prep
While I could always be in better physical shape, I’m not sure I could have prepared for the impacts of the heat without moving to the desert for a month or something. I think I’m just not cut out for that kind of climate. But, in the end, I never got dehydrated and I didn’t even get sunburned, but I most definitely failed at self care for my feet, and left the canyon beat up. But that for me was a fair price to pay for experiencing this truly awesome place with a great group of people.
Tech Notes
As a geek I should write about some of the technology issues. I decided to primarily use my phone (Google Pixel 7 Pro) as camera, and got a waterproof case for it that mostly worked (it got some condensation when I really put it underwater swimming up one of the rivers). But because I was planning to use my “indestructible” action cam on the river, I didn’t plan for a solution to keep the phone secure on the boat in rapids, so I don’t have any photos/videos of the most intense parts of the trip. And whatever I did to my action cam, a shout out to DJI; they repaired the camera for free even though it was out of warranty.
I did bring my big brand new Nikon Z8 camera and fitted out a Pelican case which kept it secure and dry even though it rode in the bow of the dory for two weeks and thereby took an incredible pounding. Like many things, to really focus on photography really means focusing on photography, and that’s hard to do on a group trip. So I figured I wouldn’t want to use that camera much, but really only brought it (and my lightning trigger) just in case there was a thunderstorm while we were in the canyon. I’ve seen a bunch of great shots of lightning hitting the canyon, but have never seen a shot from inside. But we didn’t even have a day of rain on the trip, which certainly was fortuitous in other ways. So I shot only a couple shots with my real camera and mostly just relied on the phone. I was terrified the last half of the trip to lose the phone in the river, because with no removable media all my photos would have been lost if my phone ended up in the river. If I wasn’t planning to rely on the action cam for on-river shots, I could have gotten an off-phone backup solution and then I could taken a few more risks with the phone. Also while the phone is a pretty remarkable camera, it still just has a tiny sensor that can only do so much, and I missed a lot of stuff because it overheated, or I had to enter my thumbprint or whatever. Real cameras have real benefits.
I normally wear a Pixel watch, but it barely makes it through a day without a charge. So I got a Fitbit which runs almost a week on a charge. I thought I could sync the data to the phone to store it; however, in researching, it turns out that the phone just relays the Fitbit sync the cloud, although the Fitbit itself stores the most recent week of details and a summary of the previous week. That covered the 14 days of this trip, and I synced it when I got back online. It only seemed to lose some of the “Active minutes” for some reason.
I bought a Goal Zero Venture 75 Power Bank and Nomad 20 Solar Panel for charging the phone, action cam, Fitbit, and even my big camera if necessary. I did charge the Osmo once before it died, and the Fitbit once halfway through the trip. I had done some testing with the panel and power bank on my terrace and discovered pre-trip that it really needs direct sunlight to charge, and really takes a couple days to fully charge. The camps (fortunately) are mostly selected because they are in shade in the afternoon, and so about half way through the trip I started packing the panel and power bank in my day bag and setting it up at lunch for an hour or so. But in the end it was a struggle to keep the power bank charged, and I ended up running my phone on “Extreme Battery Saver” mode, which then shut off the GPS a lot, and that resulted in the last half of my trip photos not being geotagged. A better strategy would have been to bring a bunch of fully charged power banks and use the solar panel only in an emergency.
Gear Notes
AzRA has some excellent guidelines online, but I still ended up bringing too many clothes, and too many books. Those get heavy when your campsite is 100 yards from the boat and you have to hump your gear bag. And as I wrote before, do NOT buy Teva’s. Also I brought a pair of Oofos sandals for camp, and it turns out they are completely useless when they get wet (they would actually flip upside down on my feet), and then when my feet swelled up I couldn’t even fit into them. They also somehow in the heat got deformed, and I had to replace them after the trip. Right before the trip, I bought one of those lightweight desert hoodies and that was amazing and became a staple. Not having done a lot of desert travel before, I didn’t know those existed and would probably buy one of the bamboo ones if I was going to do another trip like this. Also I hate wearing long pants in the heat, but that was important to keep from getting sun burned. My goto combination ended up being either the desert hoody, or a lightweight poly short sleeve rash guard for when I got cold from the river, with a cotton $5 goodwill dress shirt on top, and then long pants. The recommended sarong was useful for a variety of things, from covering my legs from the sun to using it as a beach towel. I bought a “buff” but didn’t really use it. I had too many hats with me, but having seen a couple of the guides’ hats get lost during the trip I don’t regret having extras.
Afterwards
I think with the relentless nature of the trip, and the issues I related above, I was so often struggling to just take care of the basics (even with the guides doing so much) that I never really got to any point of transcendence or even a “flow” state in the canyon, which is what I usually strive for in these kinds of experiences (I was in a flow state on a couple big storm chases even on the way home). But in the end, spending two weeks on the river through the Grand Canyon was a profound and amazing experience. The guide John O did a great reading on the last day about how little things can trigger memories of incredible experiences. That’s happened to me a bunch of times since getting home, and I think those memories will be triggered for a long time to come. From Phantom Ranch, I sent a few post cards made by the wonderful guide Howie, including one to myself, and that was a nice physical reminder of the trip. Of course it still had sand on it even after navigating the postal service.
