Well, we survived our rafting trip on the Colorado River through a portion of the Grand Canyon. All in all it was a great trip however the air temperature was 10-15 degrees cooler then ideal so if you ask Mary Lynn if she enjoyed the trip you might get a slightly different opinion. More on that later.Plus no one wore wetsuits for this trip. Everyone had on shorts, t-shirts, and life vests. A few had rain suits or ponchos.
The trip started Monday afternoon with a bus ride from Palm Creek in Casa Grande, AZ to Peach Springs, Arizona. Peach Springs is on the Hualapai Indian Reservation, which forms the southern border of the lower portion of the Grand Canyon. Peach Springs is the gateway to the Peach Springs Canyon, which contains the only road you can drive down to the Colorado River. All other access to the river in the Grand Canyon requires you to ride a burro, hike down, or take a helicopter.
The road to the river from Peach Springs is 22 miles long; the first half a mile is paved. The other 21 & 1/2 miles are not. We rode an old school bus over 21 & 1/2 miles of unpaved road. Maintained by a bulldozer it is frequently washed out by flooding as the canyon and surrounding land drains rain fall.
The trip down the river is about 40 miles long. All of the rapids are on the first third of the river journey, including the Travertine Falls rapids. After running these rapids we stopped and hiked up to the falls. This required climbing up several rope ladders where you get thoroughly soaked in the process however it was worth the climb. A spectacular 40 foot waterfall created a slot canyon and from there the water drops another 100 feet or so before flowing several hundred yards to the Colorado River.
A spectacular climb however through some unfortunate turn of events I ended up hiking to the falls without my camera. Really bummed as this was one of the best hikes & views of the day.
I have been on almost a dozen raft trips in the US on 6 different rivers before rafting the Colorado. The mighty Colorado definitely earns it's name: it is huge with lots of powerful rapids.
After the hike to Travertine Falls we did a few more rapids, all of which were bigger and tougher than the rapids from earlier in the morning. After getting thoroughly soaked in these rapids we stopped for lunch to warm up and get dried out.
The water temperature on the Colorado is 45 degrees when released from the dam and warms up to a 'toasty' 47 degrees in the canyon. Wow. We knew the river temperature would be brisk however we were not expecting the air temperature to be so cool. A large front blew Through Arizona over the weekend and cleared out the warm weather. Too bad; it made the 2nd half of the trip a little too cool.
Once we reached our take-out point we hiked up a short distance to the helipads. The wind had picked up but not so much that we couldn't fly out of the canyon. Mary Lynn and I ended up on the last helicopter ride (10th flight out) of the day and by then the wind was really gusting. The helicopter bounced around when he landed to take us out.
As we departed the wind blew us around and MLA started looking a little green. When the copter dropped 50 feet in a down draft she started looking for the airsick bags. The flight lasted about 5 minutes. If the flight had lasted six minutes I would still have MLA's fingernail pattern tattooed on my leg. Boy can she grip tight when she gets a little nervous.
In any case we landed hard, with the helicopter bouncing around on its skids for a few seconds. MLA was ready to yell at the pilot before I told her it wasn't his fault. They were stopping flights after ours due to the wind.
Before driving 2 & 1/2 hours back to the hotel we went on the new Skywalk. That's the walkway with a glass floor that extends over the Grand Canyon, giving you a look down ~4000 feet to the canyon below. I've never seen so many people nervous about walking on what is basically a sidewalk, albeit a sidewalk made of glass.
More later...
See Ya!
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