How do you put a subject as big as the Grand Canyon into a story that fits into a box like the one I am typing in. How do you put the grand vistas, the silence of quiet flat water, the thunder of rapids as you approach them or the ever changing beauty in this box.

Like building a McKenzie River drift boat I thought about the process for a long time. In the mid 1980's I was invited to Arizona to row a raft for my friend Dave taking groups of Air Force folks down the river. Financially I couldn't swing it. So I had to pass. By then I had been looking at pictures of huge rafts carrying many passengers all with smiles on their faces in Life magazine. Publicity created by the possibility of damming the Colorado River and flooding the canyon was rampant as Martin Litton, David Brower, the Sierra Club and many, many others worked to stop the event. Now for you younger boys and girls there was no Internet, You Tube or instant media. Coffee table books, not the size of said tables but books placed on tables where presumably you and your friends would sit, drink coffee and share conversations abounded. Now I don't remember the names of the books even though some of them are in my home library they shared the world of rivers and rapids. Obviously dramatic pictures often help sell books so big Grand Canyon rapids like Crystal and Lava got a lot of press. Stories abounded of the danger of these amazing sites and I studied them like I studied the Internet when I decided to build my drift boat. so as I learned more about GC and rowing down the Colorado my respect and in some ways my fear of the unknown grew.

My first foray into rafting resulted in a flipped boat, lost glasses and 125 mosquito bites. I had played as a child on a WWII surplus survival raft in the backyard. It was my treehouse, my fort, my vehicle to take me to far away places. It would sit there benignly and never flip me out. I could go anywhere I wanted in my mind until mom called for dinner. when we went fishing on "Fish Lake" in the Cascades it was a pleasant, safe ride.

I left Ellensburg to "professionalize" my search and rescue experiences, entering Eastern Washington University's Outdoor Recreation Education program. Soon after graduation I had an opportunity to participate in administering a "managing the Search Function Course for the National Park Service at Albright Training Center on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. I got to rub shoulders with the folks that conducted SAR operations throughout the the park service. Evenings spent in the bar at El Tovar Hotel were filled with many exciting stories of rescues and adventures, some of which took place far below in the Grand Canyon itself. I was getting first hand details at night and in the day time looking deep into the canyon at the mysteries, the river and rapids that were hidden below. well I never got to "professionalize" my search and rescue because while I was there I was offered a job to teach outdoor recreation at a community college in Spokane. My boss was a fly fisherman and had apparently always wanted to go rafting and fishing. When he asked if I would like to start a rafting program I immediately said yes. Planning, procurement and such followed and by spring trips had begun. While at Eastern I had taken classes in rafting had not only learned a great deal more about safe rafting but had overcome or forgotten the fear associated with flipping a raft. It was incredible to be out floating a real whitewater raft on real whitewater. Mom never called me back home from my explorations again. 

As time and river miles progressed we took on bigger challenges and bigger rapids. It was always possible to do "scouting" runs with the schools equipment on new rivers and before the season started so we got to experience big waves and fairly solitary trips. I say we because my friend Dave who eventually invited me to row the Grand canyon with him worked for me. We ranged about Idaho and Oregon floating many miles, often not knowing much about the rivers we were floating because there just wasn't much information available. It was an exquisite time of adventure for us. So we learned about rapids, ourselves and the people we shared the rivers with.

All good parties have to end sometime. A death in a non-related outdoor activity at the college changed their outlook on adventure and along with my desire to continue there. I spent several summers after that working as a guide for Eastern Washington Universities summer rafting program on the Lower Main Salmon River. More people, at times big rapids, lots of sun and fun. This takes us to the invitation to the Grand Canyon as Dave had now started his own program for the Airforce in Flagstaff, Arizona. I obviously turned down the opportunity but the desire and rowing the Canyon was still planted in my brain.

Job changes, kids, earning a living, blah, blah, blah all took about 25 years to accomplish. Now we are at 2013. Do you remember Dave? We are still friends, he spent many years working for a governmental agencies river rangering the Illinois and Owyhee Rivers when he wasn't in Africa delivering food to refugees. Anyway he invited me to to row the Grand Canyon with him on a trip he had been invited on. I said yes, scraped and saved, did odd jobs, cooked for archeologists and did what ever I could to raise the money. Unfortunately the dates of the put in and the 2014 Wooden Boat Festival coincided. The Grand Canyon won out.

The Internet provided my mind with new pictures and now videos of Crystal and Lava. I now had moving pictures of these wonderful, yet terrible rapids. Now I'm not the spring chicken I once was, I haven't rowed a heavily laden raft down big water in 20 plus years. A concern then became, can I still do it? I have been rowing drift boats for years, but a lightly loaded McKenzie River boat is like a Formula I race car is to a 30 foot long, heavily loaded work truck on a twisty, bumpy road. I knew I could row, but could I row the Grand canyon with a big, heavy raft?

Now, I could say, stand by for the next part but I won't. I could bore you with details of organizing, planning, purchasing more camera gear and replacing my old rafting gear that had shrunk while I stored it all these years. The drive from Spokane was very rainy and snowy, not what I expected of Utah in the spring. I had never met any of the people I would be spending the next 14 days with so it was with trepidation that we met in Flagstaff and made our way to Lee's Ferry to the put in. You want to see a picture of the group? didn't think so. By the way, Dropbox is great place to share a bunch of photos, we have 1500 plus stored there. Let me know if you want to see them all.

Back to rowing and floating the Colorado. Lee's Ferry doesn't have a ferry there anymore but it does have a huge parking area and a large ramp for unloading and assembling gear. Our group only needed a big truck, a trailer and bus to haul us. We had contracted a "complete" package from Moenkopi River Works. We worked with them to select our food, and they handled the logistics of buying food, packing all the gear a group of 14 or so people would need for a two week trip, paying for all the fees to the Park Service and the Hualapi Indians required. ($40 a person to set foot on their lads at the takeout) They had the blaster for heating water, the groover and the ammo cans to haul out our human waste, the umbrellas, the raft gear, the Paco Pads, and everything else we needed. Outfitting private river trips is quite a deal. We took a small mountain of gear and packed it on to our five rafts.

In the background you can see one of the commercial operations rafts waiting on shore for the passengers to arrive the next morning. These Death Stars, an oarboatmans name for one of these behemoths obviously came from Star Wars. Some thing else we wondered about was, were any of the scenes from Star Wars movies come from a screen writes trip down the Grand Canyon? Was this view upstream from the Navaho Canyon pedestrian bridge suggest a scene? Remember Luke Skywalker taking his Starfighter down those deep canyons in preparation for sending a bomb into the center of the Death Star?

Enough speculation, anticipation builds as we load our rafts, get to know each other and wait to see if the "Ranger" will soon be by to give us the "Talk." All private trips get to learn all about safe and clean camping methods to be used while in the canyon. Stings, bites, sharp thorns, sharp rocks, how to do your dishes, washing your hands, using the groover, river safety, etc. All good stuff to know. Time passes, the ranger doesn't show up so we jump in the boats and travel 200 yards downstream to unpack everything and setup camp for the night.

Morning approaches way too soon and we are greeted by the soon-to-be familiar "Blaster". To quickly boil water for coffee someone has invented a propane powered stove that while not quite as loud as a jet plane sure seems to sound like one at 5:30 AM. The oft repeated ritual of making coffee, breakfast, using and tearing down the groover, stuffing your dry bag and packing the rafts takes about two and half hours each morning. We get the lecture from the ranger, finish packing our rafts and now the trip begins.

We are finally on the river. For some of us like the "Coach" who was drawn for the permit to run the river well over a year before it has been a reasonably short wait. For me it was almost 50 years since I first looked at the pictures so long ago.

(To be continued.)

Rick Newman