The Grand Canyon is the United States’ 15th national park and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is also considered one of the Great Wonders of the World. Ontario-based climber Mike Grainger talks about his experience whitewater rafting on the Colorado River. He also gets to hike on the trip, and shares how a hybrid trip allows for couples and families to participate in the same adventure at their own skill and comfort level. He says this trip is worth every penny as your adrenalin is sure to be racing going through the rapids.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Multi-day Whitewater Raft through Grand Canyon National Park
The Grand Canyon, one of the US’ most popular national park, is beyond description, but I’ll try. Â MASSIVE: the canyon can be as tall as a mile...STUNNING: the red rock formations delight with each twist and turn and glow like fire at dusk and dawn…CHALLENGING: you can observe the canyon from up above, but to really appreciate its nuances requires paddling and hiking and that’s what we are going to do today. Â Everyone should SEE the Grand Canyon, but NOT everyone should raft it. Â Check out the podcast episode (click the player button above) and read below to see whether this trip is suitable for you.
The Colorado River, over billions of years, has carved this amazing canyon that runs 277 miles (446 km) through the state of Arizona in the Grand Canyon National Park. Â The river can be 4 -18 miles wide (6.5 – 29 km) and the canyon walls almost 6100′ (857 m) high. Â You can raft the entire length on a 14-16 day rafting trip, or do either the Upper or Lower canyon sections (the Lower section being more, shall we say, challenging!), but to do the sections, you will need to hike in or out on Bright Angel trail, which is a challenging hike. Â The Upper Canyon trip takes 6-7 days and the Lower Canyon trip takes 9-10. Â You can also opt for motorized boat rides if you don’t have the time, money or inclination for one of these longer adventures.
April:  High 80-85F (26-29C)  Low in mid 50’s  Often windy but rain is unlikely.
May: Â High mid-80’s – mid 90’sF (29-32C) Â Low mid 60′ (18-20C) Change of season so can be transitional: Â cold and rainy OR warm and dry
June: Â High 110-115F(37-46C) Â Lows mid 80’s (23-29) Â Hot and dry with some chance of rain. Â Hottest month.
July: High 100-115F(37-46C) Â Lows mid-70’s -mid-80’s (23-29C) Â Monsoon season so rains offer a reprieve from the heat.
August: High upper 90’s – 100F (35-43C)  Lows mid-70’s -mid-80’s (23-29C)  Monsoon season so rains offer a reprieve from the heat.
September: Â High 95-105F (35-40C) Â Lows upper 60’s (18-20C). Â Monsoon begins to taper and ends clear and comfortable.
October: Â High 80’s (26-29C) Â Lows mid 50’s (10C). Â Rains and wind plus shorter daylight.
Prefer to Hike the Grand Canyon?
Consider a guided hiking tour of the Grand Canyon with my affiliate Wildland Trekking! They take care of all the logistics, so all you need to do is train and hike!
If you go the entire length, you don’t have to be in strong physical shape if you ride in one of the oar boats or in a dory boat. Â You still need endurance for sitting half a day and for the heat and sun. Â If you are in a paddle boat, you’ll need good core strength and upper body strength as well. Â If you do the partial rafting trip, you will need to hike the Bright Angel Trail which is quite difficult. Â It takes around seven hours and there is a 4400′ elevation change with an average 10% grade. Â Remember you HAVE to bring all of your clothes and gear, plus the day’s food and most of your water, so this is a challenging hike, especially in the heat.
Usually the minimum age is 12.  Usually NO EXPERIENCE IS REQUIRED but check with your outfitter.  Here are the National Park Service approved outfitters.
This is a trip of a lifetime and is VERY popular! Â Plan well in advance: a year or two is NOT too early! Â Be sure to pick up a copy of the FREE Travel Planner which can help you with the logistics of planning your trip with lots of active links to save you TIME!
Many people form their own private group. Â Adventure travel in and of itself is quite a bonding experience. Â It is not uncommon for strangers who meet while on an adventure trip to form lifelong friendships.
You can reinvigorate your own relationships by forming a private CUSTOM group where you do something like whitewater rafting the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. Â This adventure is perfect is you have mixed physical/mental abilities because each person can adapt his or her trip according to their own comfort levels. Â Some can paddle the whole trip, some can just take a thrill ride for the whole trip and others can mix it up!
15:24 Â Mike describes Upper and Lower canyons
17:28 Mike flips out of the raft on the Horn Creek rapid!
20:26 Lava Creek rapids
24:16 Grand Canyon rapid ranking scale
26:25 The physical and mental requirements for this adventure
28:15 A typical day
30:25 What are the people like on this trip?
31:41 Rafter’s duties and chores
33:46 Camping
34:32 Concerning wildlife, bugs and the sun
36:16 Safety
38:29 Was it worth it?
Grand Canyon: Whitewater Raft The Colorado River with Mike Grainger
What can be eighteen miles wide, up to a mile high and 277 miles long? I will give you a hint. A river carved down the sides exposing two billion years’ worth of geological history. We’re going to the Grand Canyon. We’re going to whitewater raft the entire length plus take some day hikes when we are not out in the water. We have Mike Grainger teaching us all about whitewater rafting, the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon.
In 1903, when President Theodore Roosevelt visited the Grand Canyon, he said, “The Grand Canyon fills me with awe. It is beyond comparison, beyond description, absolutely unparalleled throughout the wide world. Let this great wonder of nature remain as it is now. Do nothing to mar its grandeur, sublimity and loveliness. You cannot improve upon it but what you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children and all who come after you as the one great sight which every American should see.†Well said, Teddy.
Located in the great state of Arizona, the Grand Canyon is the United States’ 15th national park. The Grand Canyon is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is considered as one of the Great Wonders of the World. The mighty Colorado River, over billions of years, little by little, carved away the rocks, the soil and the sediment to create this magnificent gorge that should be on everybody’s bucket list to see. Mike, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and a little overview of the trip?
My name is Mike Grainger. I live in Waterloo, Ontario Canada. I’m 64 years old and I did the full rafting trip of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 2011. I had a bit of whitewater rafting experience prior to that. Nothing too extreme but I enjoyed it and I was able to talk my wife into coming along. We did this quite late in the season. The last trip of the season started in mid-October and ran through the 1st of November. One of the reasons we’re doing it at that time was that we got a discount. I’m always interested in discounts. There were other good things about it too because it’s quite a bit cooler at that time of year, which makes it much more pleasant for the hiking aspects of the trip.
On most adventures, I generally recommend that you do not bring any cotton. However, this trip is an exception. Because of the heat and the chance of heat, particularly in the summertime, I would recommend bringing long-sleeved cotton shirts and lightweight pants. That way it will help keep the sun off of you. It holds the moisture and coolness a little bit better and you would be a little bit more comfortable. You’re not just whitewater rafting, you’re also getting to hike. Is that correct?
Generally speaking, at least with the commercial trips, they’re not going to have you in the boat all day. You’re looking at an average of about four hours a day in the boat and the rest of the time you’re going to be getting out and preparing and consuming meals. Other than that, you’re going to be doing a bit of hiking. Some of it is going to be close to the river level and other times, you can get up thousands of feet above the river level. Those longer hikes, you do not want to be doing that during the hotter times of the year. You’re not going to be able to take the heat.
What kind of heat were you getting in October?
When we were there, the temperatures as you can imagine fluctuate quite a bit through the day. Overnight, we’re getting down near freezing at that time of year. In the daytime, the temperatures might get up 60 to 70. On the river level, you’re not going to get above that. As you go up above the river, temperatures climb. Even when we’re getting up higher on hikes, we weren’t getting anything higher than the 80s. Whereas if you were doing that in June, July or August, you’d be looking at temperatures over 100 degrees.
I want to point out something about what Mike has just said. If you travel in the shoulder season, in early Spring or late Fall, you will get the savings on the adventure itself. However, if you don’t already own the gear, the heavier duty sleeping bag, puffy jackets and all that, your savings might be eaten up in buying the supplies. Keep that in mind when you’re planning your trip. Remember there are no Holiday Inns along the river. You will be camping. What kind of water temperatures were you looking at Mike, at that time of year?
It’s cold water. One of the things that we did prior to going on the trip is we went with a company called Arizona Rafting Trips. They’re a well-established company that’s been doing it for a long time. One of the things that they give us is a kit list. A couple of pieces of equipment that we didn’t have previously that we bought were neoprene booties and neoprene gloves. They came in quite handy when you deal with that cold water. You want to bring lots of layers. You want to have a river bag with a dry set of clothes in so that if you do upset into that cold water, you can quickly get changed out of your wet clothes and back into dry. On the river itself, most days it’s pretty nice but some days if you were picking up a stiff wind, it could get quite cold. There are people who are sitting in the other boats who are not being physically active. They get pretty uncomfortable if they didn’t have enough warm clothes on. I was usually in the paddle boat paddling and there, staying warm is not so much of an issue.
I understand there are lots of ways to get down the river. You can oar boat it, raft it, use the dory boat, and even a motorboat. You use the raft, is that correct?
We were on what they called a hybrid trip. We had a number of standard oar boats. I can’t remember whether it was three or four or something like that. We had one dory boat and a paddle boat. In the paddle boat, we had six paddlers on them and people rotated in and out of the paddle boat. The keener you were to paddle, the better you were at weaseling your way in, the more often you got to be in the paddle boat. Some people never went in the paddle boat. Some people went one time to have the experience and some of us were in it as often as we could get there.
The dory boat was another interesting alternative that everybody wants to have a chance in. You’re not paddling in that but it’s a much smaller and more agile craft. It’s an aluminum boat that originally was modeled on Portuguese fishing boats and over the years has been modified for running the rapids in the Grand Canyon. It’s been made wider and lower. They’re excellent because they have a lot of storage capacity on them and they are a more exciting ride than the bigger rafts. When you are a passenger in that, you’re getting a bit of a thrill ride without having to do the paddling yourself.
Can you tell us a little bit about the different vessels so that we understand what the different options are there?
An oar boat is going to be a fairly large inflatable raft. You have one of the boatmen, the professionals, manning two large sweep-oars, one in each hand and they do all the steering of the boat. They might tell the passengers or warn them, “Get down†to make sure that you’ve got a good center of gravity that’s low. They might direct them to lean one way or another in the boat. In terms of navigation and propulsion of the boat, that’s all up to the boatman and the passengers are along for the ride. Besides the passengers, they are carrying a lot of gear. You have to be entirely self-sufficient on these trips. They’re going to be carrying all the food and everything has to be packed out. Food gets consumed but there’s still garbage and human waste to be packed out of there. They have a lot of compartments there. You’ve got all your camping gear, sleeping bags, tents, etc. All that has to go somewhere, drinking water and all that thing. That’s your oar boat.
In our last adventure to Cassis, I reminded folks that they need to bring a baggie to pack out their used toilet paper. When you do this Grand Canyon adventure, you’re not just packing out your toilet paper, you’re also packing out your human waste. If you’re a bit squeamish about that this may not be the adventure for you.
Those rafts can be motorized so that you can go down the canyon faster. Fewer days makes for a less expensive trip which is going to be more popular with some folks. The dory boats are made out of aluminum. They have a boat shape as opposed to the round raft shape. You have a single boatman who is running that. You will have room for maybe four passengers on it. The paddle boat is a smaller inflatable raft. You don’t have any cargo on it. A captain is at the back of the boat and six paddlers on each side. The captain is responsible for the navigation of the boat and he’s reading the river. When you’re approaching rapids, he gives commands to the paddlers to position the boat where he wants to enter the rapid. He gives commands to maneuver the boat as required going through the rapids to avoid big holes, standing waves, and things like that. He will shout out a command. It might be, “Paddle forward,†“Paddle back†or he will say “Right forward†or “Left forward.â€
The paddlers on each side have to understand what to do based on the command that’s been given. You may have something where the paddler who’s closest to the captain will shout the command or repeat the command so all the paddlers can hear it clearly. When you’re in heavy rapids, it can be very noisy and it would be easy to have the captain’s voice drowned out to a certain extent and the command not clearly heard by everybody. It’s important that the paddlers understand what the commands mean and they react to the commands instantly if possible because the captain sees, “If we don’t change direction quickly, we’re going to be upset by the river feature that we’re coming into.†Another command that he might give is “High side†which means that there’s a danger of the boat flipping. He wants everybody to get the weight shifted over to the side that’s about to be flipped up over to keep it down if possible.
The cooler time of year makes hiking much more pleasant. Share on XThat gives you an idea of the differences between the boats when you go on that hybrid trip. You can be someone like me who is looking for as much paddling action as possible or you can be someone like my wife who had no previous whitewater experience whatsoever. She’d never been in a raft before and she had a good time going down the river in the oar boats primarily. Although she did ride in the dory a couple of times, she never went into a paddle boat. She’s not interested in doing the paddling herself.
I love how on this hybrid trip you’re able to choose that day what kind of ride you feel like doing. Whether you want some excitement or you’d rather sit back and let the captain do all the work. Doing a hybrid trip allows for couples and families with different activity and adventure levels to participate in the same adventure but at their own skill and comfort level.
You mentioned safety. You are given a pretty good briefing about what to do if your raft is upset. The basic idea is don’t panic. Understand that the staff or the boatmen are professionals. They understand how to do a rescue if necessary. Most of the time all that’s going to happen is you’re going to go in the water and you’re going to come out. You’re going to see where your boat is and you’re going to come towards it and they’re going to come towards you. If it’s necessary, they will throw you a line. One of the things that they did say was that as you’re coming up, you should have your hands up above your head. If for some reason you have to come up right underneath the raft, you simply walk your hands out in any direction so that you come up from under the boat. That was the instructions we were given.
Were you or your fellow passengers ever thrown from the raft?
I had an interesting experience. Just to give you some background on what the whole overview of the trip is. You’re going for 226 miles on the river through the Grand Canyon and that’s called the Full Canyon Trip. At the time we did it, it was a sixteen-day trip. Apparently, at other seasons with longer days, maybe different water flow, it can be done in fourteen-days. Ours was sixteen. During that time, you’re going to go through roughly 50 significant rapids and maybe half a dozen pretty serious rapids, Class IV or Class IV+. There’s also an option to do just the first half of the canyon or just the second half of the canyon. For the people who want that option, they hike down the Bright Angel Trail to Phantom Ranch and that’s where the switch is made.
If you don’t have time to do the entire length of the trail, one option is to do a two to five-day excursion. However, this does require a very difficult hike on the Bright Angel Trail. This trail runs about four to five hours with 4,400 vertical change of elevation and it’s over seven and a half miles. There is the possibility of a mule to either pack your stuff or to pack you. However, those get booked up a year in advance. You can’t necessarily count on that. If you choose to do the Upper Canyon which would be an 88-mile rafting trip, you will have to hike up the trail. If you do the Lower Canyon which has that more aggressive rapids and 192 miles, you hike down the trail. Don’t forget for each, you have to carry your water, food, and your belongings. This is not a good option for somebody that’s not in pretty good physical shape. Rafting the entire canyon is not an option for people that are not quite as fit.
When we had gotten through the first half of the canyon and did the changeover, we had a number of new people join us there. Our boat captain, Brad Dimock, an extremely experienced boatman. He’d been on the river for 35 years and in that time, he’d never had an inflatable boat or a raft flip on him. It never happened. Maybe that gave him quite a bit of confidence probably rightly so. He took on the paddleboat after the changeover, three new people who had never been in the boat before and there were three of us who had been in quite a bit up to that point. He went over the paddling commands with the newcomers. They did a little bit of practicing and then we headed off down the river.
In a fairly short distance, seven miles or so, you come to one of the major rapids called the Horn Creek Rapid. It’s one of the trickier ones to navigate. In some of the rapids, you enter them in the right place and you’d take the ride. There’s not a need to do much maneuvering while you’re in the rapid. In the Horn Creek Rapid, there are a couple of obstacles that you have to actively avoid. Brad gave us the commands. Our team did not respond fast and strongly enough. He didn’t get the movement out of that paddleboat that he needed and we high-sided. I was on the high side and I got driven down into the river. I’m off the boat, down the river and it’s pretty much completely black. I couldn’t see any light at that point. I put my hand up above my head and wait to surface. I waited and waited a bit more, then I start to think to myself, “I got to have to breathe again sometime.†Screw this putting my arm up in the air and I start pulling for the surface as hard as I could. I was a very happy man when I broke the surface of the water.
Once that happened, the drama was pretty much over. I’ve got back into the boat relatively easily and we got off on the shore, we change our clothes and dry out. The only long-term casualty was my waterproof camera, which waterproof or not, I was down deep enough that it forced some water in. It worked but there was condensation in it so most the pictures from then on weren’t that great. I don’t know how deep I was. I’m guessing I was probably somewhere between 20 and 30 feet deep. That was exciting enough.
I’m sure your adrenaline was racing. Tell us what it feels like to go through the rapids.
We went through a big rapid. When you hit a standing wave and the frontend of the raft goes up in the air, that’s exciting. There’s a lot of whooping and hollering going on. When you’re in the regular oar boat or the dory boat, you’re just along for the ride. It’s a thrill ride like a roller coaster. When you’re in the paddle boat, you’re having also the thrill of the ride. There’s also all the tension and excitement. You don’t want to screw up. You want to make sure that you’re on the ball and that you’re listening to your captain, that you interpret what the captain is saying correctly and that you respond immediately. One little added ripple I had when I was in the paddle boat was that one of the guys in the boat was pretty deaf. He would sit right up next to the captain but even then, I wasn’t sure he was always getting the command. Even though I was sitting furthest away from the captain, I would immediately bellow the command as loud as I could just to be sure that this guy got it. He was a good guy, but the slight hearing loss sometimes is a bit of an impediment.
The other exciting thing is that there is the most famous and intimidating of the rapids on the river, the Lava Creek Falls. It doesn’t happen until about Mile 179. For much of the time you’re on the river you know that you’ve got that ahead of you. That was exciting because before you get there, you pull off to the side. In our case, it was Brad Dimock, the paddle boat captain. He got out and had his boat crew with him. You hike along and you get up and hike over sets of lava warmed rocks. You get up on the big rock that overlooks the river. He scouts the river and takes a look at it. He makes judgments about where he thinks are the best place to enter it and where is the best part of the channel to be in as you’re going through.
You have to be entirely self-sufficient on trips. You've got to have your camping gear, sleeping bags, food, drinking water, tents, etc. Share on XHe’s got a walkie-talkie and he goes back. The most experienced and confident of the other boatman will take the raft through and see whether Brad’s reading of the river made sense. You watch them go through and get bounced around pretty good if they get through all right. You have the other raft go through and so on and so on. Finally, we in the paddle boat went through last. We did have one of the rafts that flipped going through there but it wasn’t us this time. We had no difficulty rescuing the people. We’ve had lines set up along there so that we were able to get a line out to the people in the water and get them into shore pretty readily.
That rapid sounds are super exciting. About how long is it?
I don’t remember how long it is in distance. It is pretty long but you go through it so fast, it’s only about twenty seconds.
When they say falls, are we talking a big drop? What are we talking about?
They call it falls because first of all, you have to understand that the Colorado River going through the Grand Canyon is almost a flat water river. There is very little actual elevation change compared to most whitewater rivers. Maybe about a quarter of what it is on many whitewater rivers. It isn’t any steeper than the river like in Missouri which most people don’t consider to be a river that you would do any rafting on at all. What makes the rapids is where you’ve had side streams that empty into Colorado. At certain stages of the year, they have extremely high flow rates and they wash huge amounts of debris into the Colorado which has the effect of narrowing the channel at that point. That’s what increases your river speed and that’s when also these various huge beds of boulders that are washed in provide some of the obstacles that create your holes and your standing waves. There will be a place like Lava Falls. There will be an actual drop in the elevation that is more than you typically get and the channel has been narrowed by debris. You’ve got both of those things operating. It’s not like a waterfall. It is more like a series of rapids that you’re going through.
Most whitewater rapids are rated on a grade of one to six with six being impassable. The Grand Canyon has a unique rating system of one to ten and you will hit most of those on this adventure. Do you consider the second half of the river the more challenging half?
Lava Falls is in the second half and so is Horn Creek Rapid. They are two of the worst of them. If you did the first half, you would avoid those but you’re still going to hit some Class IV rapids. If you’re in the oar boat, the chances of you coming out of that oar boat are very small.
I’ve been to the Grand Canyon, but I’ve only seen it from the top. Can you describe what it’s like when you’re down below looking up? What does the landscape look like?
It’s fantastic. When you’re going through some of the narrower parts of the canyon, just looking and seeing how the river is framed by the rocks and points. There are some areas where the rocks are cool to look at. You can see the different layers of rock, the color of the rock, the directions, whether it’s horizontal or vertical, whether there are fault lines, those change in layers. It’s always changing and it’s always exciting and interesting. Some of these side canyons, you go for little hikes up. Sometimes you walk on trails beside the canyon. Sometimes you’re walking up the little streams. Some of it will be water in the side canyons of little pools where the water’s a bit warmer and you can soak your feet in them for a while.
What kind of physical shape do you need to be to do this trip and do you need to train for it?
If all you want to do is go down the canyon in the boat, you don’t need to be particularly physically fit. You have to have reasonably fit but nothing that’s dramatic, nothing that’s out of the way. If you want to do the hiking, you need to have good health and fitness because you’re dealing with a situation where you’re going to, at some point, reach a fair amount of elevation. These are not constructed trails. There’s going to be a certain amount of walking over rough uneven terrain. You don’t want to hold the group up. The group wants to move at a fairly good clip. Depending on what time of year you go, you might be dealing with quite a bit of heat and dehydration. Some general hiking fitness is probably worthwhile.
If you’re wanting to be in the paddle boat and paddle, you need to have quite a bit more upper body fitness. It helps if you have the experience, the better. You need good core strength. You don’t want to be straining back muscle and abdominal muscles, etc. You need more fitness to be doing that. If you’re going in one of the motorized rafts, you’re not going to be out there as long either. Besides physical fitness, there’s a certain amount of mental fitness required because you’re potentially sixteen days on the river and that’s what there is.
'High side' means that there's a danger of the boat flipping. Share on XThere’s the river, the canyon, the other people in your group and not a whole lot of outside distraction.
You start the day by getting up and helping make breakfast, eat breakfast and take down your tent. Every day you load the boats up. You do a couple of hours, maybe two to three hours on the river, stop and you get out the table and equipment you need to prepare lunch, make lunch, do some activity, maybe go for a hike. Another hour or two on the river. You go out to unload the boats and put up your tents and then prepare the meal, clean up after the meal. You got whatever ways you have of amusing yourself, playing cards, telling stories, someone gets out a guitar, go for a singalong and all sorts of things. For the most part, it’s quite pleasant but for any small group travel situation, there is going to be some people who will enjoy and some not so much. You’ve got to navigate that as you go along.
Mike’s description of the idle times reminds me of a bit of backpacking. I’d wondered before I first started backpacking, “What am I going to do in my downtime?†I’m hiking anywhere between six to ten, twelve hours a day, depending on the day. You’ve got all this leftover time. You don’t have any electronic devices. You’re out in the middle of nowhere. I was shocked to find I was not once bored. Mike is saying the same thing here in the Grand Canyon, that for some reason when you’re out in the wilderness, everything fascinates you and relaxes you. It’s not like anything I’ve ever experienced but I was never ever bored in the wild. That being said, you need to seriously consider your ability to be out on the river this length of time. There are very few options to getting off the river, outside of emergencies. Once you’re on, you’re pretty much committed for the route except for one or two exit points. Speaking about the people in the group, can you tell us a little bit about them?
First of all, you’re not going to be doing this trip unless you can afford certain financial investments. I know you don’t want to hear dollar figures because it dates it. It’s not huge, but it’s not insignificant either. Right away that puts a certain limit on who’s going to be doing it. You’re going to have more professionals, etc. than the general population. They tend to be people who are interested in life, looking to challenge themselves and looking for new experiences. People of both sexes and all ages. I was practically the oldest person on that trip. At that time, I would have been late 50’s. There were people I’d say into the early 70s on that trip. People from North America but also people from Europe. As I say, generally speaking, they were nice people. There is always going to be some people who are maybe a little bit too Type A, too focused on their experience and not focused enough on how their actions impact the group.
It is always interesting to note that after a day or two you can identify who’s who in those different categories. This was a trip where you can’t expect the boatman to do everything. There are works to be done. There are gears to be loaded and unloaded. There are foods to prepare. There are cleanups to be done. It was interesting to see how there are some people who are always right at the front of the line to pitch in. There are some people who for some reason or another, always seem to have something else they’re engaged in at the time and missed the opportunity to help. I’m sure they would have helped if they were there in the right place at the right time, but it didn’t happen that often.
How about the night sky? There must be very little light pollution.
I have to admit I’m by no means an astronomer, but if that was your thing it would be a great place to be. The nice sky was fantastic. Some of the boatmen knew quite a bit about it and were able to identify all the different constellations, planets and stars. It’s a great place to view them. It’s a beautiful place to be on those beaches as you’re going down there. It’s great. It’s interesting too that each year some beaches and campsites get washed away and some new ones formed. For the trip operators, there’s always a fair amount of adaptability, flexibility and planning required to make things go smoothly.
Speaking of outfitters, the National Park Service has a list of pre-approved quality concessionaires that have permits to run commercial river rafting and boating trips down Colorado. Do all the outfitters camp at the same campsite so at night all the different rafting companies are all camping in the same area or do you split up?
I think they try to avoid that. These beaches are not very big and they try to keep the impact as low as possible. I don’t know for sure because I don’t think there were any other commercial groups on the river at the time of year that we were there, the last half of October. It’s possible that at other times of the year and more peak periods that you end up sharing. Generally speaking, they would prefer to give you an experience where you’re the only group on that particular campsite.
Were you able to see much wildlife while you’re out there?
There are birds but to tell you the truth I didn’t see a whole lot of critters. That was not something that made a big impact on me.
How about bugs?
People who are interested in life are looking to challenge themselves and looking for new experiences. Share on XBugs were not an issue.
What do you have to be concerned with?
You have to worry about sun exposure and temperature regulation. That is mostly what your issues were.
Did going on this trip change you and if so, how?
I will be honest here. I don’t think it changed me a whole lot. I’ve already had a propensity for pushing myself physically and for taking on new experiences and taking on a certain amount of risk and this was in that vein. At the same time, it is a highlight of things I’ve done. For someone who had maybe this was their first step into something with this much commitment, this much isolation, I can see where they might see it more of a life-changing event.
Were most of the people on this trip experienced rafters or were they first timers?
They’re all over the place. Some of them were considerably more experienced than I was. Some of them have no experience. That was a very broad spectrum as far as experience goes. Whitewater rafting experience is not required at all to go down Colorado through the Grand Canyon.
Let’s talk again about safety and what kind of risk there are with different vessels.
When you’re in the full-sized inflatable rafts with a boatman, that the risk level is pretty low. It’s never going to be risk-free though because the river changes. The flow rate level changes quite a bit. Rapids can change from year to year based on new debris brought into them by the side streams that bleed into it. Even professional boatmen are human, they could make a mistake. You could be someone in all of those rafts and flip. If everything went wrong, you could die. It’s not risk-free. On the other hand, I would put the risk level being pretty low.
Let’s review again the safety and the risk involved depending on which kind of boat you’re on.
I don’t see it as being a particularly risky activity. If you’re in the dory it’s probably a little bit riskier, just because the dory is more easily upset. Probably if you’re in the dory, the boatman in charge of it is highly skilled and is not going to do anything stupid and you’re probably going to be fine. A paddleboat is riskier because the captain is only giving instructions. He can’t carry out the instructions. He’s got amateurs and the amateurs are much more likely to make a mistake. It’s a smaller craft and it’s more easily flipped. The risk of getting in the water is considerably higher, but even if you’re flipped, things would have to go pretty wrong. You’d have to somehow be knocked unconscious. Because you’re going to come to the surface and there’s going to be someone there to help you when you come to the surface. There’s a level of risk there and definitely higher than a water raft but I don’t think it’s outrageous.
You mentioned before that this is an expensive trip. Looking back, was it worth every penny?
Yes, definitely. You’re talking sixteen days here. All meals and accommodation. I don’t think it was out of the way at all for what you get.
Would you say you’d have to be in sharp physical condition to do this trip?
No. I didn’t think that it’s something that is well worth doing and it’s very accessible. If you think that you would like to do it and you can afford to do it, go do it.
Our thanks to Mike Grainger for sharing his experiences in whitewater rafting the Colorado River to the Grand Canyon. You can see his photos and get more information about this epic adventure on the ActiveTravelAdventures.com website. On that page too, you can click on to get the free Travel Planner that will help you plan this trip for yourself or that comes automatically if you sign up for the newsletter. I would like to ask you all favor on both this episode’s website and the podcast directory page, I’ve got a short quiz that takes less than a minute. It’s completely anonymous but it helps you to get a little bit more information. I’m giving you the kinds of trips that you want to learn about. It takes an awful lot of time to put these programs together so if I’m going to do it, I want to make sure I’m giving you what you want. If you could please show me a little love and take a minute or two to fill that out and let me know what you want to hear. Until next time, adventure on.
Important Links:
- National Park Service – National Park Service list of pre-approved quality concessionaires
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