Day 16

A short blog–maybe the last–on the final twenty minutes of laptop battery remaining.

First, the river taketh away: this was the morning Leif Mortenson woke to discover a crucial part of his generator unit
had been washed away in the night. He and I climbed into the knee-deep rushing water (in drysuits) to wrangle the
remaining components out of the water, but no luck finding the entire system. What there is left–the …

April 4

Today, after yesterday’s layover at our OC’s camp near Deer Creek, we’ll be traveling about nineteen miles, where we’ll
stop at Last Chance camp on river right at mile 156. Last Chance is the final campsite above Havasu Creek, one of the
most popular side canyons along the river. We’ll be pulling in to Havasu tomorrow to re-create some historic photos
of Moulty Fulmer and Pat Reilly’s boats, so our camp at Last …

April 2

That day the wind blew strong and true up the Canyon, and the boatman rowed his raft into the teeth of it. It was not
easy. But then, he thought, you did not expect it to be easy. You did not want that. And the light was clean and bright
on the golden walls above them and the boatman rowed the way the old river rats had showed him, a smooth strong pull…

April 1

Today’s run takes us nine miles from our camp at the foot of Forster Canyon at river mile 123 to Galloway, a long thin sandy beach stretched out along the right side of the river at mile 132.

It’s past time to record some hellos and goodbyes: Crystal Elliot and Randy Dersham left us after Day 10, hiking out to the rim on the morning of Day 11 to go back to the …

March 31
Today we run from Hotauta at river mile to 108 Upper Forster, a wide sandy beach tucked in at river left below Forster Canyon at river mile 123.5 or so. The Colorado runs generally westward here, except for a giant U-bend southward from mile 114 to mile 119. By the way, I’m taking all references to river miles, names and ratings of rapids, and campsite locations from Tom Martin and Duwain Whitis’s …

March 28
After packing up camp and loading the boats, it’s time to scout Hance Rapid. As soon as we shove off from shore we’ll be into it, and we’ll want to know where we’re going; Hance is the biggest rapid of our trip so far, an 8 out of 10 if numbers mean anything. I follow the rest of the group up a tall sand dune above camp, where we have a good view …