Wild River with Wayne Ranney

Behind the Scenery

What’s it like to ride the rapids of the Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park? Join noted geologist, book author, lecturer and guide Wayne Ranney, a veteran of over 100 Grand Canyon river trips, as he is interviewed on all-things Grand Canyon river rafting related.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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♫ Soft guitar and singing: Wild River (Just Float me away Wild, wild, river I’ll ride you some day Sleeping on sandbars)

Wayne Ranney: Every time I think about a Grand Canyon River trip, what I think about is how wonderful it is to fall asleep on those sandy beaches, looking up at the darkest sky you've ever seen, pockmarked with 4000 stars visible to you. It's just an incredible experience, I hope, if your finances allow your bucket list sometime down the line allows that you will put a Grand Canyon River trip on your list. It's really one of the most incredible trips a human being can take on this planet.

♫ Stars fill the sky The thrilling white water A Grand Canyon prize …

Grand Canyon. Where hidden forces shape our ideas, beliefs, and experiences. Join us as we uncover the stories between the canyon’s colorful walls. Probe the depths and add your voice for what happens next at Grand Canyon. Hello and welcome. This is Jesse. This is Emily. And this is: Behind the Scenery.

Ranger Doug: Hello folks. My name is Ranger Doug from the North Rim, bringing you another Behind the Scenery / Grand Canyon National Park podcast. The title is: Wild River, with Wayne Ranney.

Have you ever contemplated taking a river trip on the Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park? How long does it take? How much does it cost? How dangerous is it?

These questions and more, will be answered by today’s very special guest. His name is Wayne Ranney.

Wayne wrote a popular book on Grand Canyon geology titled: Carving Grand Canyon: Evidence, Theories and Mysteries. He also co-authored another awesome book, titled: Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau.

He is a noted geologist, lecturer and river tour guide.

I sat down to interview Wayne in June of 2023, to learn about all things Grand-Canyon-river-running related.

The podcast title, Wild River with Wayne Ranney, implies that the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon is wild. It is indeed a wild ride, and the river and its many camps are in wilderness settings.

But technically, the river is no longer wild. Wayne will talk about two dams and reservoirs, one upstream, and one downstream from the park. And some of the rafts in the Grand Canyon are actually motor-powered.

Nevertheless, it is a very special treat to ride the rapids at Grand Canyon National Park.

So, strap on your life vest. Let’s jump into that river raft now. And hang on tight, as we ride the Wild River with Wayne Ranney.

Wayne: Hello listeners. My name is Wayne Ranney and I’m a geologist living in Flagstaff, Arizona. But I first got my introduction to Grand Canyon in the mid-nineteen seventies when I worked as a backcountry ranger at Phantom Ranch, Cottonwood Camp, and down in the lower gorge of the Grand Canyon. And after my backcountry ranger experience with the National Park Service, I went to Northern Arizona University and got a bachelor’s and master’s degree in geology. And I supported myself in graduate school by being a river guide in the Grand Canyon. And that’s how I became enamored with running the river and the Grand Canyon. And I’m happy to share my experiences with listeners out there.

I've been lucky enough to do more than 100 river trips through the Grand Canyon. I can't believe it myself, that it's been that many. My first 33 river trips were oar powered trips where I rowed a boat down the Grand Canyon. And I became a geologic educator on the river using motorboats. They tend to be better for educational trips through the Grand Canyon. And I lost count of how many exact river trips I did, but I know that it's more than 100.

Doug: Wow, that's pretty good. How many river miles is the Grand Canyon trip? And how long does it take?

Wayne: Well, between Lee's Ferry, where river trips begin and Pearce Ferry down at the other end, the Grand Canyon is 278 miles long. And the takeout place where the river trip ends is another two miles so conveniently the river trip through the Grand Canyon is about 280 miles long.

Doug: Wow.

Wayne: Fabulous trip, multi day.

Doug: So what's the average length of a Grand Canyon River trip?

Wayne: You know when you do a river trip, you can either go on an oar powered boat and river trips like that are anywhere between 12 and 16 days. And if you do a motorized trip, they’re anywhere between seven and 10 or 12 days through the Grand Canyon.

Doug: So how many rapids are there on a typical, let's say, when you go all the way through to Pearce Ferry, how many rapids?

Wayne: I have heard the figure that there's 165 named rapids in the Grand Canyon. I haven't verified that number.

I should also say that when Hoover Dam was finally built in 1936, that the water from Lake Mead backed up 35 miles into the Grand Canyon and drowned out at least three big rapids, two of which were considered the two biggest rapids in the Grand Canyon. And they no longer exist. This would be the rapid at Separation Canyon, where three of John Wesley Powell's men left the river trip in 1869 and then just downstream from there, six miles, was Lava Cliff Rapid, which was considered the most treacherous of all the rapids in Grand Canyon. But again, those rapids no longer exist. But the vast majority of Grand Canyon still has wonderful white-water experiences on the river trip.

Doug: How about with lower lake levels on Lake Mead? Have some of those reemerged?

Wayne: You know, we have been in this 23-year-long drought and Lake Mead is much diminished from what it used to be, however, the sediment that backed up into the Grand Canyon when the lake was full has choked those rapids, and they have not reemerged yet. And there's a big sediment pile of reservoir sediment that is still burying the rocks that used to create those big rapids.

Doug: Are there any hints that the rapids might be underneath the sediments? Boulders or anything?

Wayne: The boulders are still there, they're encased in reservoir sediment. The problem with those being re-excavated is that once the river leaves the Grand Canyon, it is running over what used to be bedrock high above the river. And there are some large rivers now down… , I’m sorry, large rapids downstream from Pearce Ferry. And so we've created a perched sediment pile back up in the lower end of the Grand Canyon.

So until the river can excavate that bedrock wall that the river now has to flow through, this reservoir sediment will stay perched and we won't have those rapids reemerging until the river can find its original river channel and then eat away at that soft reservoir sediment.

Doug: OK, so I know there's some legendary named rapids. How did the rapids get their name, and what are some of the legendary rapids?

Wayne: Grand Canyon is famous for its rapids and a handful of them were named by John Wesley Powell, and some of those still go by the names of Sockdolager Rapid, a really fun ride. Sockdolager is a 19th century boxing term for a 1-2 punch and apparently one of John Wesley Powell's men after running the rapid, turned to Powell and said, “that was a real sockdolager, Major”!

And other rapids that John Wesley Powell named would be Granite Falls at the mouth of Monument Creek. Lava Falls is considered the most treacherous rapid right now on the Grand Canyon.

Anywhere there's a side canyon that comes into the Colorado River is where we see these rapids located, and so a lot of the rapids take the name of the side canyon.

Doug: OK.

Wayne: Probably the most exciting rapid in the Grand Canyon today is Hermit Rapid at the mouth of Hermit Creek. And there you have a series of 7 to 9 roller coaster waves that at certain river levels can really give you a fantastic ride and everyone looks forward to riding the waves in Hermit Rapid.

Doug: And I know some rivers in North America using I through VI rating system, but the Grand Canyon’s unique. How are these river rapids rated?

Wayne: And one of the things that I've noticed, Doug, is that most of the boatmen don't really refer to the one to ten rapid rating in the Grand Canyon anymore and they don't really use the Roman numeral I to VI rating either because the river level changes and the way that the rapid appears to a boater also changes. And you know, on some of the trips that I do, the boatman will say this is a one-hander or this is a two-hander.

Doug: What's that mean?

Wayne: Well, what that means is you hang on with one hand or two hands (chuckles). And I've even heard the rating of robust two-hander and that might be a rapid like Hance Rapid. Hance Rapid has a lot of boulders where you need to maneuver. Now, if we were to use the Roman numeral I to VI rating for Grand Canyon, we have a lot of II’s and III’s, which would be one-handers. But Grand Canyon also can have IV’s and V’s, and that Roman numeral I to VI rating system each Roman numeral actually has a definition for what you will need to know going through the rapid.

For example, a Roman numeral VI means the rapid is un-runnable. It's too treacherous. You should not attempt it. But a Roman numeral V means you have to make two moves in the rapid to miss obstacles. And so the Roman numeral system is a much better way to rate rapids on rivers. But historically, that has not been used in the Grand Canyon. But today we can look at the rapids and we can say well, this would be a Roman numeral IV, or a Roman numeral III or whatever it is.

Doug: OK.

Wayne: Yeah.

Doug: So maybe list the top five or six well known and notorious rapids.

Wayne: OK, so the most well-known or notorious rapids, I think at River Mile 17, that would be 17 miles downstream from the start at Lee's Ferry, we have House Rock Rapid. Great big churning hole on the left side of the river there. Probably the next well known rapid would be Hance Rapid at River Mile 76. This could be considered a Roman numeral V especially at low water where you have to make a couple of moves it within the rapid to miss these obstacles.

Horn Creek Rapid just below Phantom Ranch can be a big rapid at low water levels and then we have Granite Falls and Hermit Rapid other really well-known rapids. And then of course we have Crystal Creek Rapid, which was created only in 1966, when 15 inches of rain fell on the north rim over about a 55-hour period. And it washed a huge debris fan into the channel of the river and Crystal Rapid is probably the second most treacherous rapid after Lava Falls, which is the one with the historic and the modern reputation as being probably some of the most treacherous waves in the Grand Canyon.

Again, if you run the rapid properly you might not even get wet going through it. But there are hazards and obstacles, and should you hit a hazard or an obstacle, this is where things can get exciting. And so a lot of times the rapids that have the higher rating can be run relatively dry because the boatmen have to be in the right place.

By the way, I should mention that professional boatmen in the Grand Canyon, a lot of them have run the rapids so many times they're very well experienced and professional about the way they run the rapids. There's also an opportunity to take your own river gear and do what is called a private river trip, and some of the people that do private river trips have a lot of experience running rivers. There's also people that on private river trips that are learning how to row rapids for the first time, and they might have more exciting runs in the rapids.

Doug: How does the Park Service separate commercial river trips versus private river trips?

Wayne: Yeah. When you think about people using the Colorado River in Grand Canyon, it's been regulated since the early 1970s because the demand was just growing exponentially. And the Park Service wanted to protect the river environment from too much overuse. So, in the early 1970s, there was the establishment of licensed concessionaires who can offer river trips to paying customers, and we call these commercial river trips in the Grand Canyon. And so you will pay a fare to one of 15 river companies that still exist here. They are licensed concessionaires by the Park Service. And they will take you down on either a seven- or eight-day motorized raft or, a 14- to 16-day oar-powered raft through the Grand Canyon.

And then we have the other side, which is the private river running sector. These are people who apply in a lottery to receive a permit to run the Grand Canyon. They either have their own river equipment and are experienced river runners in the Grand Canyon or other rivers, or they will rent equipment and go down and this is something that's become quite popular in the last decade or two because there's a couple of outfits in Flagstaff, AZ that rent complete gear and menu and food for these 16-day river trips. And you just write one check, and they'll give your private party six boats, all with the oars and the boxes full of food and a menu on how to cook the food. Those are the two ways that people access the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, either on a private trip with friends or relatives, or paying a commercial outfitter to take you down.

Doug: So let's say I want to go down with a bunch of buddies and we're all experienced boat, boat people. When I throw my name in the lottery, what's the normal wait time to get a private permit?

Wayne: They get a lot more requests for these private permits than they have permits to give, and if I'm not mistaken, there are around 400 or 450 private permits given per year. And so you might have 8-9000 people who get on the list every year to try to snagb one of those 450 permits. The system that is set up now is that if you do not get chosen in your first year, then for the next year if you reapply, you will get two chances to get your number or name picked for a river trip that second year. If you don't get a permit the second year, then you get a third chance and you'll have three balls in the hopper, if you will, to get a chance, and so it's a weighted lottery, meaning that the longer you're on the list, the better chance you have to getting one of these coveted private permits.

The Park Service only allows the commercial river trips to run between April 1st and October 31st. And if you wanted to go in November, December, January, February or March on a private trip, there tend to be more openings. However, going down the river in the wintertime is a completely different thing than going down in the warmer summer season, or spring or fall.

Doug: So how many people typically get to run the Colorado through the Grand Canyon, combining the private and commercial trips every year?

Wayne: Given the current use, about 27,000 people a year are allowed to go down the Colorado River in Grand Canyon.

Doug: Sounds like a pretty exclusive club.

Wayne: It is a pretty exclusive club and you know it's too bad that it has to be that way. But on the trips that I do and I'm lucky enough to get to do two or three geology themed river trips every year. The passengers invariably will mention to me how clean the beaches are and we are sometimes camping on beaches that every night between April and October will have somebody camped on them. And my passengers will come to me and they'll say “I can't believe how clean this place is.” And the Park Service has very strict regulations about building fires along the river, you can build fires in your camp, but they have to be in a fire pan. All the ashes and charcoal have to be contained and packed out and this keeps the sand in the Grand Canyon from getting that dirty charcoal color and charcoal bits spread all over the beach. We always pick up our micro trash.

Doug: So talk about how you set up a typical kitchen on the river.

Wayne: This is another thing that the passengers are commonly surprised at. On these boats, whether they're the oar powered boats or the motorboats, there are folding metal tables that get brought off the boats and set up for cooking and serving meals. There's huge ice chests that are in these boats that can take refrigerated goods for up to two weeks in time. There are metal cans that bring canned items and packaged items like fresh bread and things like that. And people are always amazed at how good the food is on a Grand Canyon River trip, even after day 12 or 13 they may still be serving you sandwiches with fresh bread.

Doug: So how can they keep the beaches so clean when beaches are being used over and over and over again?

Wayne: We always encourage people to eat their sandwich down by the river's edge. So if you're eating a tuna fish sandwich and a little bit of a celery or the lettuce falls out of your sandwich, if it's big enough, we ask people to pick it up and put it in the trash receptacle. All the trash is taken out as well.

Also underneath the serving table and the kitchen table, these mesh mats are set up to collect all of the crumbs that might fall off of the table. And then when the camp is being broken down, these mesh nets are folded up, taken down into the river and shaken out into the river. So tiny breadcrumbs and potato chip pieces and little bits of relish that may have fallen on the ground they fall on this net and these nets are then taken down to the river when we leave the camp. And that stuff just goes into the river. And so that's one of the ways that the beaches are clean.

But one of the other things that's happened in the last couple of decades is that now the operations at Glen Canyon Dam allow for these controlled released floods that come down through the Grand Canyon. And if enough sediment has been washed into the main channel of the river these controlled floods will put this brand-new sand up on the river beaches.

That's the ethic of running the Grand Canyon. And the professional guides and the private river trips that go through here know that every little bit of trash that's left behind can become a problem. You know, we didn't always have these regulations in the early days and granted there weren't that many people running the river prior to the closing of Glen Canyon Dam in 1963, but human waste used to be buried in the sandy beaches and as river running began to increase in the 1960s, the river runners started to realize that the beaches were not as clean as they used to be. And so somewhat by self-regulating, but then also by Park Service regulations, it became such that we wanted to preserve these beaches in the Grand Canyon in as pristine a manner as possible. And again, I'm even amazed myself that when we go to these places, you rarely find any trash at all, even little wrappers.

Doug: So what's the ethic for human waste?

Wayne: So all river companies and all private trips are required to carry all human waste out. People are asked to urinate in the river because in this dry desert environment of the Grand Canyon, if you were to urinate on the shore, we don't have enough rainfall to wash that away. And so you can get odors that will develop. And so everybody as much as possible urinates right in the river. The volume of the river takes care of that, that urine waste.

And then the human waste, the solid waste, is in toilet systems that are contained during the day while you're on the boat. You never even know that stuff is there. And every night the toilet is set up in a secluded place on the beach and all of the waste is taken out of the Grand Canyon. Every bit of trash, every bit of human waste. And as we say, the urine goes into the river. So it's really remarkable how clean these beaches are, especially with the use that they get.

Doug: So tell me about a typical Grand Canyon toilet.

Wayne: A typical Grand Canyon toilet will be a metal can that sits as high as a toilet at home. It will have a toilet seat just like a toilet at home. And there is either some kind of powder or liquid that is included in the bottom of the metal can to disable the bacteria that can build up when this human waste is containerized. What that does is it allows for the human waste to be taken out and then it is disposed of at proper receptacles back in Flagstaff or Kanab or wherever the river company operates out of.

And so we follow standards where it would be like going to an RV park. And if you have a recreational vehicle that has a toilet, there is a known place where you can go and dump that human waste. Once the river trip is over, the human waste is dealt with in that manner back in an appropriate place back in the city.

Doug: OK. Is there a slang term for that toilet?

Wayne: Yep, we call that the groover.

Doug: And what’s origin of that name?

Wayne: (chuckles) The groover word was originated, there used to use these old ammunition cans that had sealable tops. We called them ammo cans or rocket boxes. And before they found out that you could put a toilet seat on top of you would sit right on the edges of this metal can. And as you got up from it, it would leave little grooves in your butt cheeks. And so people started calling it the groover.

Doug: I also thought it was named because sometimes some of the best views on the river is while you're doing your business, you can kind of groove on nature and enjoy the view.

Wayne: I had not heard that definition, but it's definitely true.

Doug: OK, so far out I can say to that!

Wayne: Yeah, one of the companies that I do my geology themed river trips on, they have an indoor toilet where they set up a small tent. And you can have some privacy in that groover.

But then they also have the scenic groover, which is a little bit farther away, but just set up in the great outdoors, usually facing the river as you do your business. And that's called the scenic groover.

Doug: OK, a special one.

Wayne: And I just completed 2 river trips in the month of May 2023, right after one of these high flood experimental flows and the new sand was just lovely to camp on.

I'm telling you, when you camp on a Grand Canyon beach down along the Colorado River, it's as nice as setting out your towel on a Caribbean beach. The sand is wonderful. It's great to sleep on, and this replenishes the sand and helps to keep it clean.

Doug: Wayne, how dangerous is running the rapids in the Grand Canyon?

Wayne: You know, there are some people who do have a fear of the rapids and the rapids are nothing to take lightly. But as I told you before, if you're going down with a professional guide, they often have run the rapids dozens, if not hundreds of times, and know exactly every rapid by heart.

There occasionally are oar boats that go over, really extreme rare cases when a motorboat goes over. And it's not a completely hazard free experience. Nothing in life is, but I'm really impressed with the professionalism of the commercial river guides. And also, a lot of the private boaters also have a lot of experience on the river.

There are guidebooks that tell you how and what you can expect in each of the rapids. And I would say overall, it’s an extremely safe trip, but one must always be aware that things can happen, and that's why in some instances it may be good to go with a professional group just because they have the most advanced first aid training and they travel with satellite phones should that be necessary.

I have flipped a boat once myself when I was an oarsman, and my boat went over. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. Everybody was safe. We did lose a little bit of gear to the river, but as I say, I've done over 100 trips and I've had one flip in my boating career.

Well, we're living in modern times. And so, as I say, all river trips, even the private ones, are oftentimes traveling with satellite phones. That if you can catch a satellite going over, you can make a direct call to National Park Service dispatch. If there is a medical problem that deserves attention, living in the times that we do, there are options to get people off the river in relatively quick fashion.

If the wind is blowing really, really strong, they won't fly the helicopters. If it's raining or there's a big storm coming through, that's another reason that might delay a helicopter rescue from the river.

Doug: What's the cost to do a commercial river trip or a private river?

Wayne: So how much does it cost to go down the Grand Canyon by river trip? You know, I wish this was something that absolutely everybody could afford. But you got to realize these are trips that sometimes last over 2 weeks, and the general cost is somewhere between $400 and $500 a day. So, if you go on a motorized rafting trip in the Grand Canyon, it's going to cost you about $4000 per person. And if you go on an oar-powered trip, that might last as long as two weeks, it might cost you 5 or $6000.

Doug: Wow, how about private … how about private trips?

Wayne: So on a private trip, if you. And by the way, private trips are limited to a maximum of 16 persons. One of those persons is designated as the trip leader. And one of the popular ways to do a private trip is just to rent all of the gear, all of the food, and even the shuttle from one end to the other. And if you divide that by 16 people, the cost is somewhere around $2000 per person, so probably about half the price for a private trip.

But then you have to do a lot of the things yourself. And hopefully there's somebody on the trip that has prior Grand Canyon experience, someone who knows the way, someone who can lead the others that may not have any prior Grand Canyon experience and that can also be a wonderful way to go down the river.

Doug: Sounds pretty spendy to pay for a commercial trip. Any thoughts on how it can be more inclusive for the everyday person?

Wayne: Well, I don't know how you could do that except to say that a lot of the river companies that if you can gather together a charter group, in other words, where you find all of the participants to go on a commercial river trip, a lot of the river companies will let the organizer go down the river for free.

So if you can sell 20 spots on a two-boat motor trip the river companies will allow one person, the leader of that group, to go down without paying a fare. So that's one way you can do it.

Another thing is that my wife and I have established a scholarship. Every other year, Northern Arizona University Geology Department does an alumni river trip. And people who have graduated from the program at NAU Geology, we get together and do a river trip. And my wife and I have established a scholarship for an undergraduate who wants to go into geologic education as a career. So there may be other ways that you can learn about scholarships that may be available to go down the river.

Doug: That’s great. I didn't know that. So what are some of the must see stops and side trips if you're doing the Grand Canyon river trip.

Wayne: You know, Doug, I can honestly say that it's not specifically the river and the rapids itself that has caused me to go down there more than 100 times. What really gets me to come back time after time is all of the side hikes that we can do from the river and going up into some side canyons in Grand Canyon. And you just can't believe the number of springs and waterfalls and side streams and places where there's ruins left behind by ancestral peoples that lived here 1000 years ago and hikes up to beautiful scenic temples and viewpoints. (Note: the word “temples” is used in Grand Canyon to denote prominent, high-standing natural landforms a d not religious temples).

There are tremendous opportunities to do off river hiking on one of these river trips. And some of the more enjoyable ones by myself would be up into North Canyon. That's a four-wheel drive hike, but it's only about a mile long and you get to a beautiful reflecting pool at the end of the hike where you see a beautiful view.

I also like to hike up into a place called Saddle Canyon, where there's a very remote and secluded little waterfall back in a slot canyon gorge, and the approach to the Saddle Canyon waterfall is through this most verdant green ground that you've ever seen with redbud trees and cat claw trees and oak trees. I love the hike at Saddle Canyon.

I love to do the little side hike up to the Phantom Ranch when we stop at the Bright Angel beach, and I just like to go up there and maybe mail a postcard to a grandkid or something like that.

One of the bigger hikes on the geology themed river trips is to start at Carbon Creek at River Mile 64 and hike up Carbon Creek about a mile and then look at the Butte Fault and then hike along the trace of the Butte Fault for about a mile and a half. And then you get to a place called Lava Chuar Canyon and you hike back down that canyon to the river. And that's one of the most incredible geology themed hikes you can do.

And then around the Tapeats Creek and the Deer Creek area, there are probably half a dozen different hikes you can do to these beautiful springs and waterfalls and side streams that are just not seen from the rim of the Grand Canyon but traveling along the river you really get a sense for how important springs and side streams are to the ecosystem of the Grand Canyon. And that's one of the neat things about these river trips takes you below the rim into the wilderness of the Grand Canyon, and you get to see the Grand Canyon from the bottom up. And the side hikes are a great way to do that.

Doug: Any special sacred or special places for indigenous folks? And how does the park manage visiting those areas?

Wayne: Yeah, we do have a number of these very special places to indigenous people. The first one that comes to mind is where the Little Colorado River comes into the Big Colorado River. And if the Little Colorado River does not have any runoff in it with brown mud, there is 13 miles of the Little Colorado River that is a turquoise blue color from dissolved calcium in the water. It literally is the color of turquoise. And this is where the Hopi believe that all human beings emerged out here into the 4th world. And so the Hopi have asked the National Park Service and the National Park Service has asked river runners to visit the Little Colorado River with respect. This is a very sacred spot to the Hopi.

At Furnace Flats, which is a very rich archaeological area because the Grand Canyon has opened up relatively wide and in about a five- or six-mile stretch, there's a lot of ancestral sites and Furnace Flats is a place that has been deemed [off-limits to visitation] just because of the amount of archaeological sites that are present there.

Also caves in the Grand Canyon are closed to visitation without a permit because of the archaeological and paleontological resources that can be found in them. In these dry desert caves, human items as old as 4000 years have been recovered from hunters and gatherers that used to live in the bottom of the Grand Canyon. They would leave these split twig figurines that were woven in such a way that they resembled a Big Horn sheep, probably made to invoke hunting magic for these hunting and gathering people, and literally hundreds of split twig figurines have been found in Grand Canyon caves. And so for that reason, caves have been deemed a place we should not visit without a permit.

Doug: Wayne, any favorite river stories you want to share?

Wayne: Oh gosh, there's so many river stories, but I guess the first one that comes to mind is back in July of 1983, when Lake Powell became too full, too fast, and there were not enough outlets at the Glen Canyon Dam to let out all of the water that was coming in. And so, with as much water as could humanly be released from Glen Canyon Dam, we saw a flood travelling through the Grand Canyon that mimicked the historic floods before the dam was constructed across the river. And river revels got as high as 100,000 cubic feet per second. That's about 10 times higher than what we normally see in the river through Grand Canyon. The Park Service temporarily closed the river because there were some accidents on the high water that was moving through. But they eventually just ended up telling people to please consider canceling your private river trips and commercial river trips were even halted for a short time.

A group of river runners and myself got together and we obtained a cancelled private permit. And we did an oar powered river trip 226 miles through the Grand Canyon in three days, a trip that normally takes 14 days. And we weren't trying to set a record. We weren't trying to go as fast as we could, we just wanted to see what the river looked like at that high river level, that high water volume. And it was striking how different the river is.

I mentioned to you earlier in this podcast about House Rock rapid at River Mile 17. I was a half a mile below House Rock Rapid before I realized we had already gone through it because the water was completely flat through the rapid, the volume of water had flattened out the rapid to a flat lake-like scene.

We spent four hours at Crystal Rapid trying to figure out how we were going to get around that big thing. That was really a memorable trip to travel through the whole Grand Canyon in just three days’ time.

Doug: So how do you get past the hole in Crystal?

Wayne: What we did is we pulled over on the right side of the river and we scouted the rapid for all of those hours watching other trips go through and we finally just decided the best way through was to hug the right-hand shore and go right over the tamerisk trees that were being bent over by the river current in the downstream direction. It was actually quite easy to run Crystal Creek Rapid because there was so much slack and slow water up against the right-hand shore. But God forbid that you should ever be pushed out into that current in the middle, because that big hole just got bigger and bigger and bigger as the river volume got larger and larger and larger.

Lava Falls, the biggest rapid on the river we also scouted that. That was not really a concern because these gigantic V waves, as we call them, we're just coming off of both shores right and left, just meeting in the middle. And it was just [so] easy [to] ride the wave train through the great big rapid. That's one of the stories that comes to mind,

But you know. Every time I think about a Grand Canyon river trip, what I think about is how wonderful it is to fall asleep on those sandy beaches, looking up at the darkest sky you've ever seen, pockmarked with 4000 stars visible to you. It's just an incredible experience. I hope, if your finances allow your bucket list sometime down the line, allows that you will put a Grand Canyon river trip on your list. It's really one of the most incredible trips a human being can take on this planet.

Doug: Very good. Thank you, Wayne.

Wayne: Yeah. Thank you, Doug.

Doug: The Behind the Scenery Podcast is brought to you by the interpretation team at Grand Canyon National Park.

For more information and a list of approved National Park River outfitters, google Grand Canyon river concessioners.

We gratefully acknowledge the Native People on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant Native communities who make their home here today. Thanks for sharing your homeland with us and being good stewards of the land.

Thanks to ranger Dave for podcast editing. Thanks to Ranger Hannah who will join ranger Dave and I for our ending parody song, with apologies to Keith, Mick and the boys!

Now’s where my guitar?

♫ Guitar and singing:

I saw the river Far, far, below Strong current cold water A powerful flow

Muddy river Filled with silt Frothing, tumbling, buddling A challenge to the hilt

Wild river Just float me away Wild, wild, river I’ll ride you some day

Rapids ahead Dangers abound Horn Creek and House Rock I prey I don’t drown

Hance and Hermit Grapevine and Soap Crystal and Lava Let’s hope I can cope

Wild river Just float me away Wild, wild, river I’ll ride you some day

Sleeping on sandbars Stars fill the sky The thrilling white water A Grand Canyon prize

Inflate your raft Prepare for some fun Let’s do some livin’ On a river run

Wild river Just float me away Wild, wild, river I’ll ride you some day

Wild river Just float me away Wild, wild, river I’ll ride you some day