Grand Canyon -- Day 3

27 September -- The Roaring Twenties

Today was a day of Kayak Carnage!
We started at the 18.5 mile ledges, a great camp site with entertaining interplay of the moonlight playing on the cliffs above. Floating through the boulder narrows was interesting, seeing the > 40 year-old driftwood at the top of the large rock gave me a respect for the amount of water that flowed here when the river was wild.

From Grand Canyon Day 3

First on the agenda of the day was North Canyon Rapid. We got backed up behind the private group from Oregon and a commercial trip so we had to wait our turn. It was a fun run with a nice long wave train. The camp in the eddy below would be a really nice spot. Next was 21 Mile, my log says I can't remember...must not have been notable. Indian Dick Rapid (23 -), well marked by the phallic pinnacle on river right, had pour-overs left and right with large lateral waves. 23.5 - rapid, my notes say run the right channel. We ended up not scouting 24-mile rapid, bigger than expected, Michael flipped and rolled back up.

From Grand Canyon Day 3

We stopped for lunch at 24.5-mile r. Dan caught a trout here. We scouted the rapid and were awed by how tight and sharp the turn is. While setting up to run I watched Tim ride the crest of the guard wave above the big hole at the base of the rapid. He seemed like he was on the skyline for a long time. Everyone got through this just fine. In short order we were at 25-mile rapid, big waves, hole in this rapid was pretty easy to miss. Big Eddy below, it took me three tries to break free and get back into current.

Since we are now in the Redwall Limestone, caves, alcoves, and springs are starting to appear. Some larger cave were explored by some of the Kayakers on river left at 26 0r 26.5 mile. Tiger Wash Rapid (27 mile)was straight forward at the beginning, with huge waves, but the hydraulics below on river right are tremendous. I had a tube of the raft sucked almost under, and tried to wave the kayakers behind to go left, but it was too late. Dan M., Erin, and David all had long scary swims. It took awhile to sort out all the boats, boaters, and paddles.

From Grand Canyon Day 3

29-mile rapid was easy. We camped at Shinumo Wash, a large camp with the kitchen area on a ledge of sand just below a cliff of Redwall Limestone. While writing in my journal a golf-ball sized chunk of limestone bounced off of an un-occupied chair next to Sam, and hit my headlamp and head, knocking off my glasses, and kind of surprising me! Initially I had though that Sam had tossed a rock at me to look at without warning, but then after recovering from our shock we figured out what had happened. It was a good thing that the chair had been unoccupied!

Time and distance are starting to make our exchange at Phantom Ranch look tight.