The Truth (Sort of) About Rafting the Colorado

PHANTOM RANCH, Ariz. — It’s our 11th night in the Grand Canyon. The wind has been grinding us all day. On the rafts it was so bad that we had to hunker down, crowded together while an inch of chilly water sloshed on the rubber floor. You can never bail a boat quite dry.

Everybody except the oarsman kept a low profile as the gusts from the west tried to shove us back upriver. For long spells the boats would stall, hard rowing and the current managing only to hold us stationary as the wind forced whole deserts of sand into our eyes and ears and nostrils and in under every layer of clothing. Finally we gave up and sought refuge on shore.

I flopped my sleeping bag in the lee of a colossal boulder, hoping it might provide a windbreak. Seconds after I carefully positioned the ground cloth and weighted the corners with rocks, then did the same for the bag, the brown grains were drifting over everything.

The boulder created an eddy that threw sand at me from all directions. I couldn’t see, talk or think. Exhausted from fighting it, I lay down, groped for the plastic flask and had a ration of bourbon and grit. And began to laugh.

The Colorado River offers arguably the premier and most accessible wilderness trip in the United States. Other places need names. Talk about the canyon or the river, and everybody understands the reference.

Every year 20,000 people run the Colorado River through the canyon, by motor or oar, most on commercial trips that last a week or two and cost about $100 a day. By 11 days into my trip it was clear that many of us didn’t have the faintest what we were getting into.

The brochures are to blame.

Rafting company brochures are resplendent with color photographs of tourists happily crashing rapids or drifting serenely. They don’t show anybody eating sand or trying to remove it from the soap, the guacamole or the sleeping bag. They don’t show anybody bailing out the raft.

What you get is vivid portrayals of bighorn sheep and lunker trout, but nary a trace of the canyon’s most prevalent wildlife--clouds of annoying bats and hordes of biting red ants.

It’s as if the adventure-travel industry is afraid to admit that adventure is defined by adversity.

The industry has the wrong impression. Plenty of us want things to go very unsmoothly. That’s why we’re out here and not sitting at home. But we’d appreciate an up-front approach. So, as we proceeded downriver, each evening as the bats comb my hair I’ve been scrawling the first truly honest adventure-travel brochure.

TIP No. 1: Writing at night with a flashlight clenched between your teeth, saving grand thoughts in waterlogged journals like many river tourists do, you create your own little ecosystem. The light attracts insects that swarm around your head. The insects, in turn, attract a larger swarm of bats. Anybody who minds being repeatedly brushed by furry wings, be warned. Jot it down before dark or take a tape recorder so you can speak it instead of write it.

TRY TO BE HIP: To avoid coming off like a tenderfoot, study the vocabulary of the river before you go. Get used to calling the passengers “peeps”--an approximation, apparently, of the noise guides say we make incessantly and at the highest pitch in rapids. When a guide shouts, “photo opportunity!” realize that it means some peeps are about to be dumped overboard.

IT ISN’T WALDEN POND: You get surprisingly small opportunity for solitude and introspection. An average party of five rafts carries 16 peeps, four guides and two trainees. On whichever raft you choose to ride for the day (boat politics), you’re in close company with varying combinations of these strangers. Conversation, no matter how inane, is inescapable, and after the first hundred exclamations over sculpted red rock, it tends to dwell on more mundane matters such as dogs left back home, tax laws and golf handicaps.

YUPPIE ALERT: Likewise, while it might happen, don’t count on meeting peeps who are heavily into wilderness recreation. The river is a comfort-oriented trip that draws a clientele on the far end of the scale from, say, backpackers or other outdoor types. While there are some monster rapids, less than 10% of the river is white water.

For most of each day you sit like a bus passenger while the rock goes by, stopping to consume prepared feasts of stuffed pork chops and fresh melon salads, red wine and occasional champagne. Some of the women wonder which pair of earrings to wear to run Lava Falls. Businessmen have brought along their cards and are handing them out. One guy smells funny, and it turns out to be cologne.

THE BEST RIDE ON THE RIVER IS WITH THE WORST GUIDE: Face it, you run a river to get wet, seeking the thrill of white water. The most experienced guides know the river so well that they make treacherous rapids seem easy, flat and smooth, with no more kick than a carnival ride. Some of them don’t even like to get wet. Novice guides, on the other hand, can get into trouble on ripples. For a real rush, a sudden swamping and swim (you have a life jacket) or a tilting rebound off the rocks, ride with the youngster who’s nervous.

DON’T TRY TO BE HIP AROUND THE GUIDES: These river rats suffer bad backs and wear themselves out rowing thousands of miles over the years, and they live in a dilemma: They devote themselves to working in a wilderness hoping for peace, but have to be around one gaggle of peeps after another. So it’s understandable when they get a little, uh, surly.

DON’T PLAY HORSESHOES WITH THE GUIDES: They pound stakes into the beaches and go at it around sunset, just as the bats are taking wing. If you think you’re any good, remember this: They’ve had few distractions from perfecting their game, and are not averse to teaching peeps some humility. If you do play, don’t bet on the outcome.

SWITCH ON THE RIVER: For the best water, persuade friends around the West to use as much electrical power as they can, to keep their lights on day and night and run their air conditioners, garbage disposers, microwaves, VCRs and other electrical appliances continuously during your trip.

Since Glen Canyon Dam and its turbines just upstream of the Grand Canyon were built, river flow has been regulated by regional demand for power. On the mechanical river, water level fluctuates widely (10 feet or more) each day, peaking when electric demand is highest. At low water it takes a lot more rowing to get downriver, and every extra kilowatt being used quickens the flow and the rush over rapids.

A WILDERNESS OF ROCK AND ROLL: Some guides and peeps do the canyon while plugged in to Walkmans. That’s OK. Others take along boom boxes with extra speakers. That’s not. The racket resonates between canyon walls. Those not into man-made canyon rock, consider ear plugs.

“HAVING FUN YET?” is the river’s “howdy.” The guides hurl it at each other and the peeps at every opportunity, yukking it up. Sometimes it goes too far, even for them. On Day 9, a long haul on flat water against the wind after a morning of solid rapids, four of us and a guide are huddled on a raft, soaked and shivering in endless canyon shadow. As we lugged past a private raft group that was on a more leisurely schedule, some yahoo hollered over at us, “Havin’ fun yet?” We stared back, hollow-eyed, our guide grunting with each dig of his oars.

THE WIND IS ALWAYS AGAINST YOU. The guides attempt to explain it--something about hot air off the desert rushing uphill and upriver through the canyon. The phenomenon seems to be related to the rafts: As we got deeper into the canyon the wind started blowing as soon as we put the rafts on the river in the morning and stopped when we made camp, except for the evenings when it blew some more.

TAKE OUT DENTAL INSURANCE. The Ansazi Indians who populated the canyon a century ago had a life expectancy of maybe 30 years, probably because all the sand mixed in their food wore their teeth to nubbins. You’ll get a first-hand feel for what did them in.

THE CHOPPER RELEASE CLAUSE. With some relish, the guides tell stories about peeps feeling trapped by the rock walls or terrified by the rapids and freaking out. If you’re tempted, resist. The only escape once you’re on the river is a hike out at the halfway point, Phantom Ranch, up a steep nine-mile trail reeking of pack mule.

The guides can, however, invoke the chopper release clause--summoning a helicopter to pluck you back to the world of hot showers and comfortable beds. Remember, though, that you’ll lose face and shell out up to $500 on top of the couple of thousand you’re already in for.

NO CAMPFIRE STORIES: National Park Service regulations (most of the canyon is in the park) prohibit back-country campfires. The only flames you’ll see are on the gas cook stoves and from the burnable trash that’s ignited after dinner in a big cast-iron pan (so that the ashes can be packed out with the rest of the trash).

THE MOST COMMON SOUND: In this stretch of wilderness it’s not the whistle of the canyon wren or the invigorating roar of white water but the “tthhhpppp” of canyon goop. You’ll hear it all day long on the rafts, as everybody squeezes on layer upon layer of sun block that quickly get washed away by sweat and rapids. Even so, after weeks of being continually soaked by the high-salt river water and dried by the desert sun, your skin will look like the floor of Death Valley in August.

DON’T BE DISCOURAGED BY THIS BROCHURE: No words or photos adequately describe how the light plays on the rock--you have to come down here and see it. The red rock is stunning. All this water in the desert is magic. By the thousands, the trout are fat and gorgeous. Copper salts really do color two tributaries a stunning turquoise, the Little Colorado and Havasu Creek.

At night, gazing up at the slice of sky, you can’t go 10 minutes without seeing a shooting star. The side hikes explore canyons that are lush with springs and exotic greenery. You’ll probably see some very wild and reclusive bighorn sheep; they’ll let you get closer on a raft than you could ever get on foot.

Once you grow accustomed to it, no bed is more comfortable than sand. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a thunderstorm striking off the walls and creating countless waterfalls. The wind can be bad, and that’s good.

PREPARE FOR RE-ENTRY, OR DON’T: All it takes is a five-minute jolt back in civilization to make you realize what isn’t down on the river in the canyon: News, telephones, mail, carburetor trouble, TV, computers, alarm clocks, tail-gaters, fluorescent lights, roofs, walls, floors, windows that don’t open, the need for windows of any kind, or doors, locks, keys, money, credit cards, ID, politics, government, advertising and a very broad etcetera covering most of the unpleasant realities of 1990.

Don’t be surprised by the impulse to not leave, to follow the river down to the Gulf of California and mosey along in Mexico to who knows where. But that’s a whole other brochure.

Afloat in Grand Canyon

When to go: River-running companies generally offer Grand Canyon trips from late April into November. Summer is the busy but sunbaked season--daily high temperatures on the river often top 100 degrees. Cooling off is as easy as dunking yourself in the river, but milder weather (and less congestion on the river) make spring and fall the prime seasons.

How to go: Grand Canyon National Park can provide a list of more than a dozen river-running companies offering motor-powered trips, oar trips, or both.

Avoid the motor trips; if you’re seeking noise and exhaust fumes, stay home. Sure, oar trips take longer to cover the same territory. But if you don’t have two weeks to see the whole canyon, you can see the first half (the elegant, sculpted red rock of the Marble Canyon stretch) in five days, or the second half (including the turquoise waterfalls of Havasu Canyon) in a week or so.

Equipment: You can travel by inflatable raft or dory (a hard-hulled rowboat); the rafts ride a little smoother, while the dories bob and roll and give you a better feel for every nuance of current. Either way is fine.