16 Days in The Ditch: Day 9 - Schist Camp to Upper Garnet

I'm peeling like a lizard. Seriously. Despite all manner of lotion, salves and oil, the constant sun and wet/dry, wet/dry has made my parched skin dry enough to molt. For reasons unknown, the effect is particularly pronounced on the back of my right hand. Ouch. Still I'm generally paddling well and having a great time although it's hard to pay attention to my kayaking with the grandeur of the scenery. Bob, our newest member from Texas said it well when sitting on a rock drinking his first sandy beer from a burlap drag sack last night, "isn't this just amazing?".

Morning and the Moon

For the second night in a row - I didn't sleep well. Jim was up and down and as a result, I only slept in fits and starts. Too bad, because today we paddle the Jewels and the Gems. Not a great day to be in a sleepy fog. Despite my lack of energy, what an incredible run of whitewater! We started our morning with a healthy dose of Crystal. CRYSTAL first thing in the morning... crazy. This was a rapid with a reputation.

Looking up the Colorado, the tongue of Crystal Rapid appears broad and silky, but the smoothness is deceptive. The water actually powers down Crystal's initial drop at speeds approaching 20 miles per hour.... Along the tongue small rocks and their ensuing holes pock the right side of the river. Increasing in frequency and size, they funnel the Colorado inexorably toward a truly unbelievable hole.... It exists because of several enormous rocks directly at the end of Crystal's long, racing tongue. Most of the Colorado River plunges over the rocks and down twelve feet into this hole. Rebounding, the water shoots twenty feet into the air. It is this mountain of water that fills boatmen's nightmares... The hole is only a quarter of the way through the white water. Below it and slightly to the right is a rock that many Grand Canyon veterans think of as the worst on the river.
.......ROBERT O. COLLINS and RODERICK NASH, The Big Drops, 1978.

Don Runs Crystal on the Left

We were at lower water levels today than the days which inspired such a dire description but Crystal was certainly one of those rapids that got worse the longer I stood on the bank and looked at it. After all the kayakers discussed, then peed, the further discussed, 1/2 our group settled on a line to the left and the rest of us the line on the right. I've heard it said you can never be too rich, to thin or too far right in Crystal. Sounds correct to me. Graham and Don ran first and made the left line look easy.

So deceptively easy in fact, it almost made me reconsider my route choice. I stuck with my first decision and went right, missing the big scary exploding mess in the middle and clipping the shoulder of the hole down below before eddying safely on the right. Beautiful and realistically, not as hard as expected. Flying high as we were A.B.C. (alive below Crystal), we spent the rest of the day in the Jewels and Gems beneath a brilliant bluebird sky.

Graham Busts Through the Entrance at Crystal

Agate, Saphire, Turqouise, Emerald and Ruby

meant all day entertainment. Most of these were more or less straight forward wave trains with the occasional hole to avoid and surfing available for those willing to power back up the eddys and catch them. I was content to float. In discussing how rapids get named, I reiterated my desire to someday name the gnarliest rapid I've ever seen something like "fuzzy bunny". Not something appropriate like 'Pure Screaming Hell' or 'Come Home to Jesus'. The rapids in the Grand are rated in difficulty on a 1-10 scale. I've taken to asking for degree of difficulty ratings in terms of fuzzy bunnies. More bunnies = more badness.

The group pulled out for a stop across from Bass Camp to look at the wreck of Burt Lopers' metal boat the 'Ross Wheeler'. Josh, who was as passionate telling the tale of Burt Loper as anyone I've ever seen telling a story seemed harried and disinterested. Good Josh/Bad Josh (more about that later). As for Bass Camp, it looked inviting enough and Don told us it was a great camp except for being infested with Ringtails. By report, Ringtails are entertaining to watch with a red flashlight and a water gun but not conducive to a good night sleep. The also have a propensity for stealing things. We kept going.

The Ross Wheeler

Not far downriver we stopped at Shinumo Wash where a hike a few hundred yards brought us to a gorgeous 15 foot waterfall and swimming hole. Everyone clambered in and rinsed off. There was a good sized cave behind the falls where many of us poked around and

played for almost 20 minutes before getting truly cold. As you can tell from the picture of me grinning ear to ear, it was as happy as I've been the whole trip.

Hank Swimming at Shinumo

Us Behind the Falls at Shinumo

We continued on our way, stopping to surf whenever possible. Our last rapid of the day was Waltenberg, a wave train with a hole on river left and an extremely dynamic eddy line guarding amongst enormous boulders. I was still soaked to the skin and cold from the jaunt at Shinumo and not inclined to mess with the eddy. I followed Don and Hoppy down the the middle and saw Hoppy pitch up on a wave and then disappear falling hard to his right. I also saw the challenging eddy move to the left. No thank you. I continued hard downstream expecting to see Hoppy upside down and was pleasantly surprised to see him calmly waiting right-side up 100 yards downstream. He must have thrown the brace of his life. Joining him I looked back upstream and saw that Jim, Don, Graham and Rob had all made the upper eddy move. One by one they peeled out and the current of the eddy fence whipped their boats downstream with an incredible force. Rob peels out last (and high) and gets slammed by a breaking wave and into a hole on the eddy fence. I can see the bottom of his yellow boat as it gets tumbled and swirled on the line. Then he swims. Jim blows a whistle and I yell and motion frantically upstream but Graham (who is closest) can't figure out what we are pointing at.

By the time Graham got down to us, the eddy where Rob and his boat have disappeared was two hundred yards behind him. A moment later we saw Rob's green paddle blade bob to the surface nearby and managed to grab it before it was sucked under in another boil. No boat and no Rob were visible. Don got out and grappled his way up the boulder strewn shore. Graham, paddle in tow, walked, draged and pulled himself up successive eddies. After what felt like an eternity, Rob appeared high on the rocks guarding the upper eddy. Everyone was relieved to see him. The process of getting Rob reunited with his boat and paddle took the better part of 20 minutes and by the time we were ready to go, the sun was starting to sink and everyone was cold. Graham, after fighting his way back up to Rob with Rob's paddle realized that he couldn't pull his own spare out of his boat and ran the rapid with about 1/3 of the breakdown paddle (he even managed off a roll).

With the delay, we had lagged well behind the rafts and everyone was anxious to get to camp. No sooner did everyone gear up to go when Hoppy hit a funky eddy line and swam. The boys did a great job getting him back into his boat in an area of sheer canyon walls. Phew. Between the dark, vertical walls of the canyon even the calm water felt ominous. We arrived at camp at Upper Garnet completely exhausted and cold. I was happy to just be out of the water although it took a good while and a bit of alcohol to warm back up again.

Upper Garnet was tight, rocky and inhabited by more mice and insects than we've seen on the trip. While setting out my sleeping bag I moved a pack around and startled a small rodent. It stopped frozen in it's tracks for a moment, hoping that a complete lack of motion would somehow camouflage it against my bright blue pack towel. We regarded each other in that moment - neither one of us happy to see the other before he thought better about his freeze in place strategy and disappeared into a pile of rocks.

Another monumental event occurred this evening the evidence of which can be seen in the following grainy photograph....

Can you see it? Look very closely at the man in white. 'Man in white' you ask? Yes indeed. You probably don't even recognize him. 9 days down the river and Jim has decided to change t-shirts. He packed 6 (at least).
It's just so much easier to throw the same one back on than to dig more than 3 inches down in a dry-bag.