During my two Hayduke hikes I had the opportunity to get a ferry ride across the Colorado from the right to the left bank just upstream of the confluence with the Little Colorado. Ever since I had been wondering what that would be like, to float down the rive some 200 miles. Would it be boring after a while?
Well, this summer I found out. I have not had that much fun on a daily basis in a long time. It's just absolutely thrilling! Every day there are several rapids to run and with an experienced paddle boat guide in the back, who knows where to go and what to avoid, you get to ride the wave trains surrounded by the froth and thunder of the moving water. What a blast!
The hike was advertised as hiking-intensive and consequently we got off the river at least once a day to see some geological feature or human artifact. The lead guide had been a geology minor in college and has been down the canyon so often that he "stopped counting after the hundredth time". And it showed.
It was a small group of clients, eight of us, and we had four guides plus two assistant guides who were working on getting in the required number of trips to become certifiable guides for the Grand Canyon. There was one paddle raft for up to six paddlers plus paddle raft guide, three gear rafts and two inflatable kayaks for those who wanted even more excitement than the paddle raft provided. The trip lasted for 16 days, the first and last being half days on the water and half days loading/unloading the rafts.
We started at Lees Ferry approximately 15 miles downstream of Glen Canyon Dam and ended at Diamond Creek on the Hualapai reservation 226 miles downstream.
On of the first stops for a hike was at North Canyon (around trip mile 21), North Canyon comes down from the North Rim plateau of Grand Canyon National Park (GRCANP). In the summer of '25 there had been a major fire on the North Rim, burning some 220 k acres. As we walked up North Canyon from the river we were confronted with a food-deep layer of black muck, soot and ash that had been washed down from the burned area during late summer/fall monsoons.
In Marble Canyon at the Eastern end of Grand Canyon NationalPark
Next we stopped at Stanton's cave and Vasey's Paradise followed by lunch at the Red Cavern. Stanton was a railroad entrepreneur and explorer of the canyon in the late 1880's, some 10+ years after the Powell expedition. Stanton wanted to see whether a railroad could be built through the canyon at river level to ship coal from Colorado to California. Imagine if he had succeeded! Vasey was the botanist of the Powell expedition and Powell named this verdant seep area in the canyon in his honor.
The Red Cavern is a giant undercut in a river bend, some 150 yds wide and 50 yds deep, a nice warm place to have lunch in Spring and Fall. I guess during summer trips one would appreciate the shade that the cavern provides.
Some two miles downstream of the the Red Cavern is the Nautiloid canyon where we stopped next. It's a bit of a scramble up a drainage to a 100 ft thick layer of silicate that had imbedded in it nautiloid fossils. These nautiloids are the ancestors of the contemporary Nautilus and of squids.
Next day we traveled along a stretch of the river that I was familiar with from my Hayduke hikes from Nankoweap canyon on to the Little Colorado. We hikes up to the granaries at the mouth of Nankoweap from where you have a great view over the river to the South.
The builders of the granaries made use of a natural alcove and walled it off with rocks and mud. There is a fairly sizeable flat area between the cliff and the river that was used as a garden. The harvest from the garden was preserved and stored in the granaries. Apparently the native peoples lit fires in the almost closes granaries and then sealed them in order to kill off any pests that might consume the stored harvest as well as to consume the oxygen inside the granaries to reduce spoilage.
Just downstream of the confluence of Colorado and Little Colorado is the site of a 1957 mid-air collision of two airliners, Crash Canyon. The two flights had taken off from LA to the east coast. Inb those days one did not have to post flight plans and some sightseeing above the Grand canyon was part of the trip. Onehundredandtwentyeight people lost their lives, no survivors. This was the incident that led to the institution of the FAA. Some of the debris of the airliners involved was relocated to a spot up stream of the confluence. There it was better hidden from view from above as there had been too many false reports of an airliner crash when the debris was located at the true crash site which was easily viewable from above by people riding in helicopters over the canyon
Just a little bit further downstream one of the geological wonders of the Grand Canyon, the Great Unconformity. Briefly, this is a side canyon formed through flash floods. As you walk into it what you see are sheer walls of layered Tapeats sandstone some 530 million years old. As you walk further up the canyon in some spots you can see metamorphic Schist-type rock that is 1.8 billion years old. This rock was formed at high temperatures and pressures deep below mountains that have been eroded away before the sandstone was deposited. The unconformity then sees two types of rock with entirely different histories of formation (sedimentary vs. metamorphic) as well as two types of rocks that differ vastly in terms of age.
Evidence for this unconformity can be seen all over Utah into Idaho. For those interested a link to a video of geologist Shawn Willsey that explains this is in more detail:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DGxbhnlkwQ
At Carbon Creek we made one of our longer hikes of the trip to the Butte Fault. At this fault one can see how the rock can "flow" under the immense pressures of primordial continents running into each other. Notice how the layers of the rock are tilted upwards.
We continued hiking southwards, parallel to but inland of the river to another geologic oddity, the stroboliths, petrified cyanobacterial colonies.
Strobolith near Lava canyon
We returned to the river at Lava/Chuar canyon rapids where the guide had floated the rafts from Carbon Creek. As we rafted on we called it an early day owing to strong winds which hindered our progress and camped at Cardenas beach. From there one can do a nice hike to a ridge on the left bank that provides a great view to the North. I was familiar with this stretch from my Hayduke hike which takes the same route. This time around the timing was better and I got to see the view in late afternoon, early evening when it is more spectacular than during the day. From this ridge you can also look down at the rather long Unkar rapids which we would be running the following morning.
The next morning we reached the Kaibab corridor where one client left the group because of work commitments and a new assistant guide joined the group. Continuing on yours truly took a bath. A lateral wave came out of left field washed my seat mate on the left side of the boat into the boat and yours truly out of the boat. It happened so fast that I did at first not at all realize what had happened. I was tumbling end over end in a washing machine until my life jacket pushed me up and I could gasp for a mixture of brown water and air. A few more gasps for air and few more waves crashing over my head later I entered calmer water and could line up for my raft mates to come for me and pull me in. I had managed to hold on to my paddle so that it was easy to pull me close. The guide pulled me up by the vest and I kicked with my feet to give me enough momentum to make into the raft. The whole thing took about two minutes.
Soon I was getting pretty cold, the water is about 50 F or 4 C, so no wonder. At lunch I changed into my second set of clothes and warmed myself up in the sun. Alas, during this little adventure my phone got wet and reached consciousness only shortly before the end of the trip.
More after my next trip!
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