Fri 6/10 - The day we've all been waiting for

Videos will be added to this post as soon as I am able.  Internet access is slow at the moment.

Today is the day we've all been waiting for.  Today we will be tackling the biggest rapids on the most extreme whitewater river in all of North America.  And best of all, our boat held it's air all night and the decision was made to press onward with our paddle boat, so we get to run the rapids in our little boat instead of the much larger (and less exciting) S-Rig!

The Dollhouse Hikers

By the time that the lazy smart group of rafters who elected to save our energy by not hiking to the dollhouse woke up, the others were already well on their way to the top.  We had a nice slow start to our day, enjoying a breakfast of "McRiver" biscuits.  (Basically like a sausage egg McMuffin)  I went double meat, double cheese, hold the egg and enjoyed it immensely.  Afterwards we broke down all of the camp so that we could depart immediately upon the return of the Doll House hikers.  We wound up hearing a lot about the dollhouse from Dave, who proudly extolled it's virtues as the single greatest part of the entire trip on account of us not having gone along.  (This would be a recurring theme for quite some time....)

Now it was time for some rapids!  The biggest drops (appropriately named Big Drop 1, Big Drop 2, and Big Drop 3) would be after lunch, but there were still some pretty massive rapids before lunch.  Unlike the passengers on the S-Rig who only needed to hold on, those of us on the small row boat had to actively participate to keep our boat upright.  The two important jobs are "high siding" and "punching the waves".  High siding simply means immediately moving left or right to the high side of the raft whenever we are tilted.  By placing all of the weight on the high side, we counter the rotation of the raft and prevent it from tipping over.  "Punching the Waves" is probably even more important.  At the crest of each wave, whoever is on the downriver side of the boat needs to throw their body weight against the tip of the raft.  This helps the boat to break through the crest and reduces the maximum angle that the raft winds up tilting toward.  On a small wave this has the effect of keeping forward momentum intact, but on the really large waves can make the difference between flipping over backwards or successfully cresting the wave.

After a series of intense rapids, we caught up to the boats from Sheri Griffith River Expeditions on a sandbar where we stopped for lunch.  They had planned to wait for us so that we could all support each other through the Big Drops, but got impatient and decided to continue on without us.  This did not turn out to be a good decision for them, but we would learn more about that later.  Lunch today was "Mexicones", which was the first time that I did not find an option to my liking.  Thankfully I still had a full complement of protein bars that I had brought along for just such a contingency.

After lunch Dave, Eric, and I took advantage of the availability of wetsuits that the guide had brought along for us.  While it was probably a hundred degrees out, the probability of falling out and swimming through the rapids for an extended period of time was high, and the water very cold.  Brad was the only member of our group who skipped this option, which had me convinced he would be the only one of us swimming.  Murphy's law is a powerful force indeed......  We also all donned helmets for the excitement ahead.  It was obvious that things were about to get serious.

The three big drops were all stacked one after another just downstream of the lunch beach.  Dave was obviously excited to check out the rapid named "Satan's Gut", as he had been talking about it for the last few days.  Truthfully, I think he just liked to say the name.  Either way, his fascination with that particular rapid was about the prove quote prophetic.

Our boat approaching vertical.

Big Drop 1 more than lived up to it's name with immense waves that towered above us as we passed the troughs and deep valleys before us that we slid into as we crested each wave.  It was awesome to ride through it, and we made it through without incident but Big Drop 2 loomed straight ahead, and inside of it's "Satan's Gut".  Within moments we encountered the biggest wave we had seen yet and the boat began to rear up.  We rose to a nearly vertical position and were on the verge of tipping over backwards, but just as we thought we were going over we finally tipped forward again and rode down the back of the wave as I exclaimed "That was a close one!".  We
punched through the next wave as I heard a cry of "Get me back in the boat!".  I turned around to find Dana (our guide and oarsman) clutching the side of the boat and nobody manning the oars.  As I

Pulling the guide back into the boat

grabbed him and began to pull the next head wave slammed into him, but Brad had come forward from the rear of the boat and we both hauled him into the boat.  In the blink of an eye he had jumped back into the oarsman position and with a couple of quick strokes directed as away from the much discussed "Satan's Gut" formation which even the biggest boats avoid.



After clearing Big Drop 3 we met back up with the other boats, where the guides were all extremely excited about the run we had just had down the rapids.  We later found out that both of the Sheri Griffith row boats that had left without us from the lunch had wiped out in Satan's Gut, with one completely flipped and the other folded in half with all passengers thrown overboard.  Another outfitter running wooden dories had also had an encounter in "The Gut" as it was called, and has smashed in the front of their hull.  Nobody was hurt, but a lot of people wound up swimming through part of Big Drop 2 and all of Big Drop 3.

The campsite further down the river had already been claimed when we got to the sign in sheet, so we stopped early at a camp further upriver.  That meant that instead of running all of the rapids today, we would have some left for tomorrow morning.  It also meant that we would need to get an early start and not have time for any side hikes tomorrow since we had to get to the takeout in time to catch our return flights.

As seems to be tradition on multi-day river trips, the best dinner was saved for the last night.  The guides prepared a steak dinner with Dutch Oven potatoes, corn, rolls and cobbler for desert.  Our final campsite was the least buggy one yet, possibly due to the much more swiftly moving water at this point in the canyon.  We knew we would be getting and early start in the morning, so called it an early night as the sun set.