Back in the fall I called Heath and said I didn't wan to go rafting anymore...not kidding. It sounds insane now, but back then we really had no idea what this trip would be about. I kept picturing us wet and cold for over two weeks straight and it didn't sound like an ounce of…
THE GRAND CANYON
Nailed it!
Here's a sequence of John and I pretending like we ran this rapid perfectly on purpose.
Messing Around
After Lava Falls, everything was a breeze, literally. After we drank the lone soldier (Tecate) in celebration of making it past Lava falls in one piece, we met up with an old friend of ours...the wind. The wind was howling at times up the river so hard that we paddled just to stay in one…
Big Day! Big Day! Big day!
It's one thing to sit in a bar and casually talk about how rad a rafting trip would be in Grand Canyon. You could go on and on and hypothetically run the toughest rapids in your head while you sip on cold beer in a nice warm jacket and plug money into the jukebox. But…
Lava Falls
People talk about lots of different rapids when they talk about the Grand Canyon, but there really is only one that everybody talks about: Lava Falls. About a year ago I sent Heath this video: He sent me this back to my email titled "Is this where we die?": Since Lava falls is toward the…
Camping and Cooking
You know what's rad about camping? Exploring and camp food. The last part of this whole wild ride had a whole lot of both. When I was planning out the food for the trip, I really wanted to cook in the dutch oven for some reason. The very first night I had some cornbread mix…
The People of the Blue Water
If for some reason the power of the scenery in the canyon starts to wear off on you and it just doesn't have the same impact that it used to, then Havasupaii Creek will snap you right our of your ungrateful funk. The creek is famous for it's blue-green waters and the waterfalls that are…
John Swims the Colorado Channel
On one of our days off John decided that he'd check off one thing on his "must do" list, he'd swim across the river without a dry suit. At first you think, ya, this sounds rad, totally doable. Let's state for the record that the water temperature is around 46 degrees F. I surfed…
And We’re Back
It didn't take us long to realize that we were pretty much guaranteed to run into another group sometime in the next day or so. Since the park service issues one permit per day of the year, we were going to catch up to another group soon since we were on a 16 day pace…
Worst Throw Ever
Every day and every night we scrutinize the map and try and plan our day as well as mentally prepare ourselves for things that may bring on the nerves. It's safe to say that you would be a very strange kind of lost without the map because you wouldn't know 1) where the rapids were…
WE'RE REALLY DOING IT 