Grand Canyon (Day 14?)

8 October,

River level continuing to drop, but counter-intuitively is it getting muddier?!

Doris, One Hundred Thirty-Eight and a half, and Fishtail rapids all fairly straightforward. Favor the debris fan side of the of the tongue a smoother, dryer run. Lots of morning shade, chilly, we wanted to miss waves to stay dry and warm. We had one kayaker swim in Doris. Group stopped at Kanab Creek for leg stretch and bio break. There was lots of fresh sticky, slimy mud; probably from recent flash floods. River current is fast, maybe making 10 mph?

We stopped for lunch and hike at spot below Matkatambia Canyon. A commercial trip was in the pull-in at MatKat Creek mouth leaving no room for us. Had a nice but challenging spot for lunch and hike start on little ledge just below MatKat Creek. The other private group stopped at our pull-in and tried to hike over us...they were rude in how they walked over the top of our gear and over the top of one of our crew who was feeling very poorly at the time...they ended up not being able to negotiate the cliff and traverse to the canyon. Our group went fairly far up the canyon, Michael took some great photos with my camera. We re-launched at 4:20. A commercial trip was camped at Mat Kat Hotel.

We ended up getting to Upset Rapid at 5:00. Yeesch!!! What a rapid! The big hole(s) were 2/3 of the way down the rapid, each were about 1/2 the river wide. Rocks on the right occupied most of the right side and current across the fan and rocks pushed into the holes. Enormous laterals guarded the the cliff wall on the left. Tyler hit this wall with enough force to break his spare oar in 2009, there was no way in the conditions we had to do that! Michael ran with me in the raft, I tried really hard to punch the first left lateral wave, but surfed back into the tongue, I tried to push into the second left lateral, but had lost too much momentum. So I tried to square up and add down stream power for the inevitable. We hit both holes, clawed to stay straight and moving downstream. The video shows how wet we got and how close we were to making "Upset" literally true to it's name. In the end we easily made the second eddy on the right. The self bailer was not dry until we made the eddy; there was a lot of water in the boat! Everyone else survived the run as well, bit none of the runs were "text-book examples".

Below Upset on the right is a possible camp, there was clear water in pools in the side creek, plenty of room for tents, but active rocky eddy and lots of rapid noise. Tim found a duckie paddle lodged in the rocks in the eddy below the rapid. It turned out to be from the other private group that had proceeded us by just a little bit.

We ended up at Upset Hotel camp for the night. The 2nd pull-in was the better spot, a bit of a climb up the bank, but a really cool ledge camp, with an over hanging cliff of Redwall Limestone and a narrow crack of sky for star gazing. Great acoustics off the canyon wall for a resonating morning call for breakfast!