Day
6
I try to ignore
the hustle and bustle about camp in the morning. Yes, we only have one warm-up rapid before
we’re at Hance, our first really challenging class 10 rapid. Nothing I can do about that. I’ve got personal issues to get under
control.
Background: I’m
normally not one to go fussing about my hair and whatnot. Maybe I wash my hair twice a week, maybe not. Either way I put it into a ponytail in the
morning and call it good for the day. If
I ski or camp, I braid it.
Now after six days
of river water, wind, de-tangler, and erratic braiding, I’ve got a minor
disaster area on my head. I try to run
a comb through my hair and with each stroke it grudgingly stretches to separate
then immediately jumps back into a tangled mess. It’s like combing kelp. I can’t get it to all go the same direction
long enough to get it all into one braid.
Instead I divide and conquer with pigtails.
And hair isn’t the
only thing! Normally the most abrasive
substance I touch is cookie-crumbs on my computer keyboard. Now between the dust and silt and gear and I
don’t know what all in the canyon, my hands are falling apart. Fingertips red and swollen, both thumbs
split, I’m having trouble zipping my life vest.
And you don’t even
want to know what a week of living in ancient, wet dive booties has done to my
feet.
Not good, but
onwards to Hance.
On the way there,
Charlie gives a time limit on scouting.
The river won’t get any better for looking longer so we’ll have to just
go for it.
At first glance,
Hance is a rather wide, flat stretch with some chop. Loud, but it doesn’t look like the killer
rapids of my imagination. The trick,
however, is that you need to pick a way between the rocks and the holes. To me this is a dubious prospect given an
unresponsive raft.
The crew takes a
good look and jumps right in. Clint
holds to a center line while Tom powers across on a diagonal route to the
biggest hole at the bottom. These guys
can really move the behemoth rafts after all.
The kayaks have a
grand time. Here’s Jules doing an
“ender”, and Nell taking it all in stride.
It’s really the
Unnamed Riffles that give us more trouble than the big-name rapids, so far
anyway. We’re traveling in lower water
than usual, I wonder if that is skewing the difficulty from the
guidebooks. In low water, rocks that
would normally erode silently in the depths are now near enough to the surface
to make their presence known.
Our boat glides
uneventfully through a particular riffle and we spin around to watch the next
raft come through. Ben is an experienced
river runner. He’s even been a guide in
such far-flung places as
The raft carrying
Ben and Mona hits the riffle and lumbers up out of the water – picture a whale
breaching and you get the idea. We get
a clear view of the raft bottom and then it comes down hard….and empty. Mona and Ben are swimming. Tension is high -- as the next boat
downstream, we’re suddenly on emergency alert.
No photos of this scene. Jeff,
the good paparazzi, goes for the throw rope instead of his camera. Mike blows his whistle to alert the others,
and I’m scanning the river for bobbing heads.
There’s some
distance between the unoccupied raft and us so it’s hard to see exactly what
goes on. Mona’s account is that she was
fine in the water. She was set to float
down to calmer waters when Clint summarily hauled her into the boat. Whew!
Big sigh of relief to know everyone’s okay.
What does the name Sockdolager Rapid sound
like to you? A less-than-pleasant image arises in my mind. It turns out that the name means knock-out
punch in German and it also turns out to be a fun run.
Afterwards, I ask
Ben about staying on if I left in his place.
Nothing doing. He’s got other
commitments the week after he gets back.
I wonder if things would have gone differently if I’d asked before the
incident in the riffle. I doubt it. It doesn’t seem like he’d let a little dip
in the water turn him back. Nor does
Mona for that matter. I remember how
lucky I am to get a spot on this trip.
It would be a crying shame to leave a spot vacant when people are
waiting over 10 years to get on the river.
We’re camping at
Lower Cremation, just shy of Phantom Ranch.
Jeff pumps up the ducky so he and I
can venture into “town”. We cross the
river and leave the ducky slightly downstream of camp, thinking it will be
easier to walk back upstream than paddle an inflatable against the current. We quickly find a trail that requires some
scrambling and a choice between coming too close to a 20’ drop-off or a
cactus. I err on the side of the cactus
– ouch! Then we connect with the Bright
Angel trail. It feels good to stretch my
legs as we stride up the wide path.
The Phantom Ranch
cabins are cute and maybe I’ll get to stay here someday.
The store is
closed until
We pass by the community showers. Unfortunately they require a key but the
large clean white sink in the public ladies room looks mighty promising. Will come back prepared tomorrow.