Thank you all for the well wishes and interest in the trip. It certainly was a grand adventure and one I hope to somehow articulate--to the degree that I can--in a string of sentences. As this is really the only online site to which I post anything (canoeing to me involves so much more than whitewater, I am deeply appreciative of the sensibilities of this group and the way this site is run ad free), I am certain you will probably be plagued with a few infinitely long ramblings. My first attempts, which were, admittedly, late at night while my father shook the walls with his snoring in various hotel rooms across the country, is sort of coming out in the second person singular. We might have sort of a
Bright Lights, Big City version of a snapshot canoe trip through the canyon. We shall see how it all pans out.
Mr.(?) Muskrat: Unfortunately I'm not much of a videographer or photographer and in the end, after three failed attempts, the Colorado succeeded in claiming both my helmet and GoPro (they were one unit the entire trip). To be honest I often felt silly turning on the little GoPro device in the midst of all that grandeur. Those wide angle videos come out so flat. And I often had to remind myself to pull out the instant camera and snap a photo. Had I a nice camera, I probably wouldn't take it down below the rim. The Grand Canyon is incredibly hard on electronics. The sand is like flour and blows everywhere. Regardless, I was sort of lost in a kind of shock and awe (to borrow a phrase from America’s military history). Nonetheless I did manage to escape with two videos for your viewing pleasure (one of them a rather anti-climactic Lava Falls run, and the other one a no-name, beautiful, six minute, miles long rapid the likes of which were so common throughout the entire canyon), and I will post the missing gear on Mountainbuzz and perhaps some kind soul will recover them, if indeed they are recoverable. I believe I may have left them sitting below Killer Fangs (aka Mile 232 Rapid), when I scrambled up the bank below the rapid to investigate the dreaded fangs. (Yes, I often prefer to scout large rapids after I run them, especially when the rapid seems exceptionally tame and I am in the z o n e. I come away with the distinct impression that I’ve missed something important.)
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Mr. McGrady: I will of course bow to your wisdom (if not your elevated age) and allow you the pleasure of
“extremely foolish.” Not, mind you, because legions of great boaters have left such a venture alone (we would all be drawing in caves eating raw Wooly Mammoth had we stayed in uniform), or because Bob Foote and his awesome ponytail couldn’t shake his entourage of admiring students long enough to venture down the canyon solo (being a bald guy I have intense hair envy whenever I watch Bob Foote perform his amazing feats), but because you have shaken the hand of Nolan Whitesell, which to me is like unto shaking the hand of Fred Astaire. My mentor as well paddled with Mr. Whitesell (he was also recently (2016) on the San Juan with Mr. Deal), which gave me, once upon a time, the opportunity to join Mr. Whitesell on the Gauley in West VA. I particularly appreciated his sort of weird mustachio-hidden smile, which gives one the immediate sense that he is probably contemplating doing something
exceedingly foolish.
Of my completion of a self-supported, solo Grand Canyon run, my mentor (who is now 78 and riding around the country on one of those Spider vehicles due to problems with all of his joints) said this: "I'm proud of you, buddy, and a wee bit envious. The BIG problem with your having done a solo trip is the lack of witnesses; we may never hear the TRUE story." He may be right.
Mr. McCreary is also correct in his assertion that the canoe fool need not apply. The requirement checklist is indeed daunting. Upon receiving my application (and paddling resume) I received a call from Grand Canyon Park Service. They wanted to ask me some questions and speak to me personally before issuing my preliminary permit. I assume they can ferret out the dumb arse pretty quickly. Of course, once the permit is issued, it must also be signed by the ranger at the put-in. An unsigned permit is invalid. This requires an inspection of all pertinent gear and even an inspection of the boat, which must be in "good working order." The ranger who checked me in was concerned about the Gorilla Tape on the stern of my boat. (I was required to perform some last minute G-flex / fiberglass / Gorilla Tape / heat gun patching of an exterior tear in the vinyl due to an unfortunately careless thief.) I assured her that being paddled by a badass boater, said boat had quite naturally taken some dings…? She almost, but not quite, smiled. And then moved her attention to my firepan.
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Mr. McCreary: I am in awe that you were able to paddle upstream to Spencer Beach, mile 246, from Pearce Ferry, mile 280.5. I had 5 MPH current all the way. (The Hualapai now have a composting toilet at Spencer, apparently due to the high fecal content in the area. I don’t really know what this means, except that maybe people paddling upstream are not required to pack out their crap, so they are (were) instead using cat holes? Whatever the case, it was nice to sit on a toilet seat at Spencer Beach, even if the rain was dripping through the skylight onto my head and the mice were scurrying about my feet. I never did find Buzz Holmstrom’s inscription below the now buried Lava Cliff Rapid, though I looked and looked. You didn’t happen upon it, did you? B. Holmstrom is a personal hero of mine and I was so looking forward to finding that. I wasn’t even sure which side of the river it was on.) I’m assuming the lake was significantly higher when you accomplished said feat, but still. Wow. Impressive. (And nice write up.)
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As to the higher-than-average flow, it made almost no difference at all to me. Some rapids apparently get harder at higher flows; some get harder at lower flows. As this was my first trip through any of the Grand Canyon rapids, I didn't know which was which. I've run the New River Gorge in WV at 12' on the bridge and I've never seen anything like the Colorado through Grand Canyon. It was huge everyday all day. Not necessarily HARD, but HUGE. Due to the fact that the timing of the cycle is constantly changing as you move further downstream, I gave up trying to figure out whether water was going or coming. I always pulled my canoe way, waaayy up regardless of the direction the water because of an irrational paranoia that the Colorado would simply rise up from her banks, walk up the beach, untie my boat, and take it away. Oddly enough, this paranoia kept me from hiking too far away from the river as well: I would start to get itchy and concerned about my boat. Irrationally, of course, because it was ALWAYS tied with an impenetrable tangle of knots a half mile away from the Colorado, except that my boat was, for all intents and purpose, the only sane way out of the canyon. I wanted it always within sight.
Ms. Yellowcanoe: Being a land surveyor here in Virginia, I naturally suck at math. So the calculus I use involves a gigantic computer that I usually lug around in the stern of my boat. I pull out said computer whenever I need to plug in whatever factors I need to plug in in order to determine the wisdom of running some rapid, some river, some windy lake, or even marrying some girl, dating some wealthy old lady, investing in some Ponzi scheme, etc. If my computer isn't working due to, say, SAND or water, I then resort to other methods. So, for instance, at Granite Rapid, which to me was the most terrifying of all Grand Canyon scouts as the scout is on river left and the line is across the river on the right, I couldn't locate an outlet to plug in my TRS-80 Model III computer. So I studied the line, which appears (from 100 yards away) to be about 10 feet wide with a granite cliff to the right and two gigantic exploding type holes (Grand Canyon gigantic) on the left and, of course, a Grand Canyon size wave train that involves breaking lateral waves bouncing off the cliff. It doesn't look possible to stay on the wave train, which means you'll either fall over into one of those holes or crash into the wall.
And the stone wall seemed a slight part of death. I studied other lines through the boulders and holes closer to the left. Unfortunately those lines involved moving around in the rapid, which is not something you want to do much of in the Grand Canyon. You'll fail, miss your line, plow into whatever feature you're trying to avoid. Trust me. The water is moving way faster than you think, and however much time you THINK you have, you don't. I considered walking. I considered calling the park service for a helicopter shuttle. I considered calling my mother, who was visiting my wife and daughter and apparently watching YouTube videos of every rapid in the Grand Canyon and scaring herself silly. It simply didn't look possible to run the rapid in a fully loaded open canoe. A crash seemed probable, and, as I had already had a long swim at HANCE (which turned out to be the most terrifying of all Grand Canyon rapids because it required a MOVE in the midst of the rapid), I was trying like heck not to crash. It rained. I peered through my binoculars. And in the end I had to resort to the beer can calculus. This involves taking all the beer cans swirling around in the bottom of my boat and tossing them into the river at various entry points for the rapid. I then see which beer can makes it out the bottom of the rapid and run that line. If I lose sight of the cans in the rapid, I usually take whatever trash I've accumulated during the trip, light that bag on fire, and toss it into the river. In this way I can simply follow the flaming bag of trash (or poo, as the case might be) down through the rapid. If I haven't yet accumulated the appropriate number of beer cans for the selection of lines, I sit on the banks of the river and guzzle beer until I either have the appropriate number of cans or I pass out. Sometimes, after several hours of sleeping, I wake to find that it’s all been a bad dream.
When I finally ran the right side line at Granite, no more than five feet off that stone wall, it was by FAR the most thrilling rapid of the trip. Probably the most thrilling rapid I've yet run in an open canoe. Not simply because of the speed of the current or the crash of the waves or the boat packed with gear and full of water or the cliffs on one side and foaming holes on the other rushing by at 15 MPH, but because I scouted it alone for two hours in the rain, and then ran it, alone, in the bottom of a mile deep canyon. Lava Falls, which some week or so later I spent about 10 minutes scouting, had nothing on Granite. Nothing.
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When I'm solo in a scary place there is a focus to my attention that is like a repetition of unconscious things, there is an elevated sense of awareness, like I can see things I normally cannot see, like a bold colored emphasis causing all my nerve endings to tingle, and this tunnel vision of sorts is one of the best feelings in the world. Like some sort of universal natural high that exists only in the way your mind interacts with the earth. My father later admitted that he has never seen me in the state I was in on the drive out to the Grand Canyon, which is funny, because I have almost no memory of the drive. I was already disappearing below the rim, moving into that canyon in my mind that is far more special, far more precious, far deeper, than any canyon on earth. But you already know this, because this ain't your first rodeo.
