Grand Canyon Expedition.

I got another invite down into to the heart of the canyon. That big one that a lot of river rats refer to as the Big Ditch. For those of you not familiar with the slang I'm putting down, it's an opportunity to row my boat the 284 mile stretch of river on the Colorado through Grand Canyon National Park. I got the call in March of last year when my good paddling buddy was notified that he was awarded the lottery permit needed to run this stretch of river. Excited, I didn't think much about it because it was still 18 months away.

Funny how that number 18 came back up, because I'll actually be leaving for that trip in 18 days and I haven't done much to prepare for the 24 day expedition. I do have a pretty extensive list of raft maintenance and prep to do though. Just not actual work done.

start small I'm thinking...

First off I needed to install a better carrying handle for one of my pieces of group gear. I have a mesh bag that holds all the necessary pails and buckets to set up a dishwashing station and 2 hand washing stations. However, the bag needs a carrying handle on the side of it to make it easier to lug it from boat to shore every day when we land on a beach for camp.

I found these brass grommets at my local hardware store so I just punched a hole through the mesh bag that holds all that gear, and tied a piece of webbing through the 2 grommets to finish off the handle.
And that's how I started checking items off my list.

 

When you're in the big ditch for 24 days with no resupply points it's important to think ahead and plan for all the food and beer you'll need so you don't run out of any necessary items. Having to think about how many beers one needs in that time span can be overwhelming. The old rule of thumb is a 12 pack a day. Some even say a case per person per day. Now I know that seems excessive but do I want to be the clown that doesn't have a refreshing beverage available because I don't plan accordingly?

Nope.

My plan is to follow the more conservative route and pack a solid 13 cases to keep me refreshed from beginning to end.

To help keep cases of beer compartmentalized I built these beer boxes. Because carrying duct tapped cases of beer loosely packed on the floor of the raft (AKA gravity beer storage) is a complete mess. No matter how well they get tapped up, the cardboard just gets soaked and falls apart. And beers get everywhere. And some don't even make it without getting punctured. And that's a surefire way to find yourself packing enough beer but not having enough beer.

Each box will hold 2 cases of normal sized 12oz cans and store on the topside of my raft decking. I'll use stainless steel hinges and hardware. The bonus of them is that they also make the top of the raft one big flat area by raising the height of the decking equal to the height of my coolers and dryboxes that hang in the center of the frame. This makes for a great sleeping platform as well as keeping Bird neat and tidy when she's running the many class IV and V rapids.

Boxes built, check.


The first test fit shows that the current Bimini mounting location will need to be moved so that I can access the inside of the box as it opens on the axis of the hinge outward from center

After moving and test fitting the Bimini mounts to ensure that they still function with my oars range of motion, I measuring everything twice and mark all the holes for all the mounting locations of all the hinges and new Bimini mounts.

In this photo you can see the Bimini mount moved back and out of the way as well as the first box installed on its hinge on the decking.

And how it functions for access.

That's all for today gang. I'll finish mounting the other boxes in a few days and get the decking back on the raft.

 

That should be a bad ass trip.

 

Super cool, thanks for sharing! Everyone needs to visit the GC at least once in their life. The fact that you get to raft the bottom for over 3 weeks is just over the top! Can't wait for the pics man! Be safe and have fun!

 

Did a float from Glen Canyon dam to lee ferry crossing years ago. Flat water, very pretty. They said after lees ferry its permit only and gets fun.

 

Couldn't agree with this more. It's one of the seven wonders of the world for a reason.

 

Just curious, if you're out for 24 days and no re-supply points, what do you do for ice?

 

I've never done the math but floating through the Grand Canyon is pretty similar. I've heard the phrase that 90% of the canyon is flat water. The first big rapid, House Rock isn't til 17 mile downstream from Lees.

 

So do you guys just filter drinking water from the river and tributaries?

 

Like most of the permitted rivers the NPS changed that wait system in 2006 to a weighted lottery. Every Feb they hold the lottery wherein participants choose the days they wish to apply for their launch. They get 5 choices. The lottery is for launches the following calander year. Then March 1st they send out emails to the winners.
They (the NPS) went through everyone that was on that wait list by awarding them a permit. But it took til 2020 by the time they issued everyone who was on it to be given their chance to go. Some of those wait list participants ended up pulling lottery permits, and were therefore taken off the list. But for those that never won a lottery it took a while to get their chance. I have a good friend who eventually got his permit awarded in 2020 and they launched right before Covid hit and shit hit the fan. He got off the river and had no idea what Covid was.

And to your last point, no they sure aren't. This is a screen grab taken from my GoPro on my last run through Lava Falls. I was rowing an 18' rental raft on that trip and usually the camera catches about 16' of the raft in its camera angle. You can't see the raft in the photo because it's at the point where it was completely submerged in the bottom of the wave that we crashed through. The adrenaline dump one gets from running these big rapids is insane. I've said it before and I'll say it again, there is no drug I've ever taken that gets me as high as running clean lines through big water.

 

Hiked in the canyon earlier this spring. Rim to rim (same side) with a detour to the phantom ranch for beers. Pull off at boat beach and grab a few if you’re running low. Jealous of your upcoming trip, I got in, but would have loved to float that water.

 

One of my crew is an ice carver. He cuts custom blocks of ice for our roto molded coolers a couple days before launch when we start driving out. Anything that can get frozen, especially meats, gets prepped in a vacuum sealer and frozen at home. Because his ice is crystal clear with no bubbles or impurities it lasts quite a while longer than most block ice. We'll also have 2 dedicated ice coolers. So that we can replenish coolers that aren't holding up well, and chip some out for cocktails every few nights. I also drain my cooler every evening when I get to camp. I drain it into a five gallon bucket for beers. Because when you're packing that much food for 16 people for 24 days, there's no room for beer in a cooler. That unfortunately gets thrown in a drag bag and the river temp is your beer temp. At the tip they are nice and cold near the tip of Lake Mead, not so much....

Nothing melts ice quicker than water sloshing around in your cooler. Ice management is one of the never ending debates over on Mountain Buzz, the forum for white water geeks. It's basically like a the endless how big of tires can you fit on it threads we see.

We also pre assign cook crews for meal planning and each cook crew will cook all their meals consecutively. This allows for the people who cook later in the trip to not have to open their coolers and let all that warm air in there. The way we run our trips we use cook crews of two people. And each crew is responsible for feeding the entire group for 2 3/4 days. Once you're done with your assignment, that's it you just get to eat, hang out in the canyon and enjoy yourself the rest of the trip.

 

Thanks for that. Makes a lot of sense. Do you ever use dry ice?

 

Yes. We rent a commercial battery powered Katadyn water filter. Side creeks are best but if we take it directly from the main channel we'll pull the water up to shore in buckets and let the silt settle to the bottom before we run the filter. Alum helps settle things faster if the river is running muddy. We've always rented them because nobody wants to drop $2k on a water filter. And that's the version with a pump.

 

This is all pretty interesting. I bet there’s a lot of tricks to slow the ice melt. I wonder if just taping aluminum foil to the underside of the cooler lid would make a big difference. As a radiant barrier. If it’s on the inside it probably will just reflect heat back into the cooler though. I’ll stop BSing, sorry. Looking forward to seeing your progress.

 

Now that's a hike of a lifetime. I bet it was an awesome experience. And that beach is known to hikers to come mooch a few beers off the rafts. I know I've given quite a few out there, because if you hike down there and back you've already earned my respect.

Some trips have exchanges. Apparently some people can't afford to just up and take 3 plus weeks off to run the whole thing. Because it's not just time to run the canyon but you have to pack all your gear into your trusted truck and haul it all down there and back.

That's a sweet photo of the bridge looking upriver.

 

Yeah we use dry ice in the just ice blocks coolers. Our resident Iceman is in charge of coordinating this. We've gotten off the river multiple times with ice when he's on our trips.

 

I use a thin foam insulation pad on the top of my cooler. As I'm pulling food out, the pad gets pushed down. Less space to cool equals less melt as well.

 

I've never won a grand permit. But I keep getting invited on trips down there. I've been applying for trips down there for 17 years. When we do apply there is a core group of friends that all apply for the same dates. If anyone in the group wins a permit an automatic invite goes out to the others who applied. On the upcoming trip, 12 of the people going (including myself) are from that core group. And this will be our 4th time running it together as a crew. So I'm pretty excited to get the gang back together.

 

I applied for the Phantom ranch hostel room / cabin overnights for many years. Friend of mine did too, plus our kids. One of his kids gets the draw for a group of 7 of us!! Elated we begin planning the trip and gearing up. Then, much like the story above, Covid hits. Park closes. Reservations get cancelled. Trip is off. No rain checks. Haven't gotten a draw since. This year we said fuck it, we ain't getting any younger. We'll just hike in and out on the same day. So we went just after the last snow to avoid the heat and made it happen. Phenomenal trip, totally worth it. Hit Zion, Bryce and Antelope while we were out there.

 

Hard to like, hard not to!

 

The best part is, he's also a Tundra guy.

 

Hell yeah! Improvise, adapt and overcome. Obstacles are nothing but speed bumps if you have the right perspective.

One day out and back though. That's some serious elevation! If I ever win a river permit I may just have a spot for someone like you.

 

Haha. 3 of my crew roll in tundras. We've put thousands of miles on our rigs together.

 

I did the rim to rim hike back in 2023 with a group of friends (North rim to south, straight through). We did it during a heat advisory (not ideal, but we were prepared) and as a result had the canyon pretty much to ourselves. We saw 2 hikers (one was a ranger coming up from phantom), one family tenting at phantom, and two workers at phantom. That was it for the entire hike. Awesome experience, and the beer at phantom was a great way to recharge for the hike up.

 

A few. We have a few people hiking out at phantom and a few hiking in as well. They will have to hike through closed areas of the trail system at their own risk.

Phantom ranch will be completely closed to all traffic and we'll have to do our exchange at pipe creek beach.

Depending on winds we may or may not have some smoke present. But we are prepared for heavy smoke as everyone will have an n95 mask.

 

Sounds like an awesome trip! This picture reminds me of running Browns Canyon back in the day at like 7k CFS
FULL SEND!!!