IT WAS one of the most challenging rapids in America, and Rats got it wrong.
He steered a fraction too far to the left. His fully loaded, half-ton raft
was sucked into a giant “hole” and flipped in a second, casting him, his
teenage son and two other passengers into the boiling maelstrom. All four
were swept down through the rapids’ infamous “rock garden” by a torrent
whose roar drowned out their cries.
They were lucky. Our expedition’s four other rafts had successfully negotiated
Crystal Rapid, and were able to pluck the battered survivors from the water.
We towed the capsized raft into the calm of a large side eddy. An hour later
we had it righted, and resumed our 16-day, 226-mile (364km) journey through
the Grand Canyon having suffered nothing more than a few bruises.
We teased Rats, of course, but gently. After all, the 51- year-old
construction manager from Phoenix was the man who had made the expedition
possible by securing our coveted permit to run the Colorado River after 13
years on a waiting list, now 7,300 names long.
Thanks to Rats we were seeing some of the world’s most epic scenery, and not
by peeking briefly over the rim from a couple of crowded viewpoints, as most
of the Grand Canyon’s five million annual visitors do.
Nor were we seeing it from one of the four trips a day that whisk wealthy
tourists down the river in motorised mega-rafts. The National Park Service
allows one private trip a day to leave Lee’s Ferry — the last road access to
the Colorado River above the Grand Canyon — and to stop wherever it wants
provided it completes the journey in 18 days.
These oared, DIY expeditions are not without risk; three people died on the
river last year and 70 were rescued by the Park Service. But they are
unforgettable. They carry you through a landscape of cathedral gorges,
magical side canyons, miraculous waterfalls, sunsets that set the canyon’s
walls ablaze, a world of rock sculpted by wind and water into fantastic
forms over millions of years. They can wreak havoc with your concepts of
space and time.
I had managed to miss my British Airways flight to Phoenix. The only way to
reach Arizona in time was to pay £2,700 for a Delta business-class seat. My
wife was appalled, and even I had doubts when I landed in Phoenix to find
the temperature was 48C (118F ), but it was worth every penny.
Late that afternoon I reached Lee’s Ferry and met the curious 16-man crew that
Rats had assembled — construction workers and a salesman from Phoenix, two
ageing hippies, two foresters, two students, an accountant, a teacher, a
government official from Washington (the only woman) and a spaced-out dude
from Salt Lake City called Cody Byron Stout with a fine line in whoops and
hollers.
They were strapping a mountain of provisions on to the rafts, including giant
coolers packed with ice and a forklift-load of beer. The heat was like a
furnace. Hands were burnt by metal surfaces. T-shirts dunked in the river
were dry within minutes.
Next morning a park ranger inspected our rafts, then delivered a 90-minute
lecture on the dangers ahead — drowning, heatstroke, dehydration,
rattlesnakes, flash floods, deadly viruses and abandoned asbestos mines. He
explained how to use a ground-to-air radio — or even a mirror — to summon
help from aircraft.
Above all, he insisted that everything we took in had to leave with us,
including our excrement. Even dishwater had to be sieved.
Then, suddenly, we were off, floating down the green river beneath a blazing
blue sky. For the next two weeks the only way we could leave the canyon
would be by helicopter. The only other humans we would see would be fellow
rafters. We were entering a world enclosed by ramparts of rock.
That first day we stopped for lunch — sandwiches and water melon — on a sandy
beach and plunged into the icy waters drawn from the depths of Lake Powell
20 miles upstream. We caught trout. We spotted bighorn sheep on the banks.
We dined off fresh salmon and cheesecake, savouring the evening shade.
Someone strummed a guitar. When darkness fell we lay mats on the hot sand
and slept beneath a firmament of stars and a halogen moon. “Hey dude. This
is livin’,” declared Cody.
There were many ways of measuring our progress — the lengthening stubble on
our chins, the increasing filth of our clothes, the gradual filling of the
“groover” — the steel can we used as a lavatory.
There was the natural division of our group into burly westerners and East
Coast liberals — and the ensuing water fights between the rafts. There were
the inscriptions carved on rocks marking where 19th-century pioneers had
drowned. There was the gradual rising of the canyon walls until our rafts
were mere specks at their bases. At its extremes the Canyon is ten miles
wide and a mile deep.
As the river cut deeper ever more strata were laid bare — Kaibab, Toroweap,
Coconino, Supai, Tapeats — each an ancient seabed and each a different
colour — red, pink, rust, ochre, green. We stared up from the depths at all
manner of caverns, arches, columns, spires, chimneys and buttresses. We
watched waterfalls plunging hundreds of feet from holes in the rockface.
“Awesome, man,” cried Cody.
Mostly we let the current carry us gently down the river, the only sounds the
whistles of canyon wrens and buzzing of cicadas. But soon we would hear the
roar of an approaching rapid and spot a dancing ribbon of white across the
water’s placid surface. Minutes later our rafts would be bucking and rearing
in a cauldron of whirlpools as a river flowing at 14,000 cubic feet a second
waged its eternal battle with the vast boulders in its bed.
“Ride ’em,” Cody would shout as his raft vanished into the foam.
“Outstanding,” he would declare when it reappeared. In all we ran 89 major
rapids, capsized two rafts and tipped several people overboard. At Tiger
Wash rapids one of our number was sucked under for several seconds. But we
escaped any serious loss.
Mercifully, too, the temperatures cooled. It was monsoon season, and most
afternoons we watched thunderheads building over distant peaks. We camped by
“washes” that were bone dry at sunset but running dark red from some distant
rainstorm by dawn. One night we huddled beneath our drenched tarpaulins as
God unleashed an almighty son-et-lumière right overhead.
Most magical of all were the side canyons. Some tapered away into deep
labyrinthine passages, others opened into vast amphitheatres. In some we
bathed in pools or frolicked beneath waterfalls. In others we clambered up
sinuous channels carved in the soft rock, our feet on one wall and hands on
the other. Sometimes giant boulders hung where — millennia ago — flash
floods had left them suspended between the walls of narrow canyons.
We luxuriated in the warm, turquoise waters of the Little Colorado just before
it joined the main river. At Kanab Creek we smeared ourselves head-to-toe in
rich red mud carried down from Utah, let it dry, then peeled it off — a
treatment that would have cost hundreds of dollars in a spa. Beneath an
overhang at Whitmore Canyon we found petroglyphs — handprints, strange
figures and sun symbols.
The first successful boat trip down the Grand Canyon was that of John Wesley
Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran, in 1869. The first Europeans —
Spanish explorers — discovered the canyon in 1540. Humans have lived in the
canyon for 4,000 years, and the canyon itself is a mere five million years
old. At its deepest point you see an ebony-black rock called Vishnu Schist
that is 1.7 billion years old.
The attractions of the wilderness do have limits. By the end we were filthy,
bearded and covered in sores. We were eating tinned sardines, and drinking
water filtered from liquid mud. We dreamt of steaks and milkshakes, but
arrived at Diamond Creek, the take-out point, to find that flash floods had
rendered the 30-mile track to the nearest highway impassable. We had to wait
five hours in temperatures of 40C before a bulldozer scraped through.
That night, in Flagstaff, we said our goodbyes. It was surprisingly touching.
United by adventure, humbled by nature’s majesty, our differences had simply
melted away.
Page 2: Need to know ()
Need to know
Getting on a rafting trip: The waiting list for private
rafting licences is so long that the National Park Service
(www.nps.gov/grca) is no longer accepting applications and is considering
alternative ways of allocating permits. However, it is possible to find
places on raft trips with vacancies through the internet (try the Grand
Canyon Private Boaters Association: www.gcpba.org).
Getting equipped: Canyon River Equipment Outfitters of
Flagstaff, Arizona (001 928 774 3377, www.canyonreo.com) provided the rafts,
food, equipment and transport for Martin Fletcher’s trip for £440pp, plus
£54pp for the permit.
Getting there: British Airways (0870 8509850, www.ba.com)
flies daily (except Wed) to Phoenix from Heathrow from £460.
