33 Days To Launch - Granite Park

Emory Kolb photo of Grand Canyon storm





The Grand Canyon. It's my religion. -Emery Kolb

TL Report: A month to go and just over 3 weeks till we leave for Arizona. It's coming fast!


What the Grand Canyon forums are chatting about this week: What sort of bedding to use in the summer. Consensus is to use a queen size sheet with a light fleece blanket or sleeping bag liner if cool.



Hike at Granite Park



Mileage This Week: River Mile 180-214. After a brisk "good morning" running Lava, we will have a big day, covering 30 miles down to our next camp, Granite Park, at mile 209. Along the way, we will run several rapids and pass a couple of cool things to see:

• Mile 188.5 Whitmore Rapid class 3



Whitmore helo

• Mile 188.8 Whitmore Wash and helipad. This is the site where many commercial trip passengers helo out back to the Rim.
• Mile 205 Rapid, class 6. This rapid is also called Kolb Rapid (check out the fascinating history of extraordinary Kolb brothers below).



Granite Park Camp





• 209.1 Granite Park Camp. After a long day, and hopefully little wind, we will arrive at Granite Park where will will make camp 15. Dinner tonight is Artichoke Lasagna. 

Granite Park was named by Major Powell, during his first expedition into GC. Starving, the 1869 explorers were delighted to find food....

"About eleven o'clock today, we discover an Indian garden at the foot of the wall on the right... There are some nice green squashes. We carry ten or a dozen of theses on board our boats and run down a short distance where we feel certain no Indians can follow, and what a kettle of squash sauce we make! Never was fruit so sweet as these stolen squashes!"     -Powell Report, 1869

Then a few miles later...

Unless our course changes, we shall very soon run again into the granite. This gives some anxiety. About nine o'clock, we come to the dreaded rock. It is with no little misgiving that we see the river enter these black, hard walls."

Powell was, of course, anxious since as a geologist, he knew that granite, being a very hard rock, meant larger rapids were coming down stream.

pumpkin spring

• Mile 213, Pumpkin Spring. Named "Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin" by boatmen, this odd formation on river left gets it's orange color by a high concentration of naturally occurring arsenic in the spring water. The water is not potable.       



Emery and Ellsworth Kolb, photographers



GC History: The famous Kolb Brothers. I love these two pioneers of Grand Canyon. I can't begin to do them justice in this blog, so please do yourself a favor and google them to read about their fascinating lives.

The Kolbs taking photos in GC

Ellsworth Kolb arrived at the canyon in 1901 seeking adventure. His younger brother Emery followed within a year. By 1903, sixteen years before the creation of Grand Canyon National Park, they founded a photographic studio at the Bright Angel trailhead. At first it was nothing more than a small cave in the side of the canyon wall. With a blanket over the entrance, the cave served as a makeshift darkroom and lab until the first permanent structure was begun in 1904. That year the crude darkroom was replaced by a two-story wooden structure built on a 55-by-20-foot (17-by-6-m) rock shelf blasted out of the canyon wall.



Look closely to see the photography studio
That still stands today at the South Rim



The  brothers set up a tent photo business in Grand Canyon Village in 1902. They ran the river and traveled trails, photographing scenic views and thrilling exploits.

They made history in 1912, the first Colorado River travelers to film their adventures with a moving picture camera, but the journey was not always glamorous. “We [were] happy to be all together & alive,” wrote Emery after a particularly dangerous day on the rapids. “It took me the whole day to repair the hole in my boat,” he grumbled, but the crew still “took pictures.”



 In 1937, Emery Kolb climbed Shiva Temple ahead of a highly publicized “first ascent” backed by the American Museum of Natural History. The museum’s team hoped to find isolated species and other marvels, but their most embarrassing discovery (not divulged in any of the scientific reports) was an empty Kodak box. Emery, perhaps miffed that he hadn’t been asked to guide the expedition, had beaten the scientists to their goal and left his calling card.


With evermore remote and unexpected images, the brothers greatly expanded the breadth of Grand Canyon photography. Although their partnership dissolved in 1924, Emery Kolb remained at the canyon, where he gave lectures and continued to take pictures until his death in 1976.

 

Equipment/Camp/Info Check: Music in the canyon. Yes, bring your iPod, and yes, bring battery powered speakers, but remember, not everyone wants to listen to the Black Eyed Peas' Boom Boom Pow over the warble of the Canyon Wren, or the roar of a rapid. Be considerate, ask the group, and read body language. When in doubt, put your ear phones on.

40 Days To Go - Lava part 2

C1 enters the top of Lava

TL Report: I have to apologize, my shoulder was killing me last week and I was already late on the weekly blog, so I really copped out on the Lava entry. It's infamy demands a little more coverage, especially on it's history, so while not originally intended, it gets an additional blog post here. 

I made a mistake upping my workouts/paddling to get ready for this trip in combination with all the typing I did for school, and my right shoulder is now very unhappy. Ortho visit tomorrow and hopefully some cortisone will fix things up, atleast so I can paddle. Lesson learned.  Be careful not to overdo and stress out your body so you end up injured before the trip. Do not be like your trip leader. :-(

We are getting out the equipment lists this weekend and starting to see what last items we need to purchase for ourselves and the kids. Are you ready?

We will be heading out West on June 21st with stops at Canyon de Chelly and the North Rim before meeting up with the tribe in Flag on June 27th.



Above diagram from Colorado River Briefs for a trip through
the Grand Canyon by Dan Lindemann.  Note the left and right run.



Mileage This Week: River mile 179. There's a reason that big rapids on rivers tend to be named for Lava Falls (anyone run the infamous Lava South on the Bio Bio? Lava North on the Alsek?), this is the biggest, baddest rapid in North America and is considered to have the fastest navigable water in the Western Hemisphere. Some reports state the water is moving 90 to 100 miles per hour (but the NPS says it's more like 25 to 35 mph). Either way, this epic, intimidating rapid deserves all our respect.  

Running Lava

Here is a trip report of spending the night above Lava (like we will) then running it in the morning. Click this link then scroll down a bit for the text.

Yes, Lava Falls is one of the scariest ten seconds on the river, for kayakers, passengers and boatmen alike, but without it a river trip through the Grand Canyon would not be the same. It is the climax of an amazing trip that none of us will forget.



GC History: Here's some history on Lava and Prospect Canyon that I thought was interesting....

Aerial photographs of the debris fan at Lava Falls Rapid. A, (March 24, 1996) Lava Falls Rapid was constricted by a 1995 debris flow from Prospect Canyon. B , (April 9, 1996) Reworking during the rising limb of the 1996 controlled flood removed 5,900 m 3 of the edge of the fan, increasing the width of the rapid by an average of 5 m. (Courtesy of the USGS)

  

Powell's expedition

  Powell wrote:                                        

"Great quantities of lava are seen on either side (of the river); and then we come to an abrupt cataract. Just over the fall a cinder cone, or extinct volcano, stands on the very brink of the canyon. What a conflict of water and fire there must have been here! Just imagine a river of molten rock running down into a river of melted snow. What a seething and boiling of the waters; what clouds of steam rolled into the heavens! Thirty five miles today. Hurrah!"  
               
                         - Powell Report, August 25, 1869



John Hillers, a member of Major Powell’s
second Colorado River expedition,
captured this photo in 1872 from the foot of
Lava Falls along the right shore.

 

Historically Lava Falls has always been a big rapid, even Major John Wesley Powell and Robert Brewster Stanton refused to attempt it. They feared for their safety and lined and portaged around it. The first successful run of Lava came twenty-seven years after Powell skirted the rapid. George Flavell and Ramon Montez (spellings vary), started their expedition during late August of 1896 and ran all the rapids of the Grand Canyon except one, Soap Creek. Flavell published his journal of that trip, in which he said, “There is only one stone we must not hit, our Tomb Stone!” Sounds like sheer luck carried them through. Like most rapids in Grand Canyon, Lava Falls has changed a lot since the days of Flavell and Montez; unlike Flavell and Montez, not all river runners have fared so well.

When Major Powell viewed the rapid in 1896 it actually started 85 meters downstream from where it starts today.

Photo from the right shore at the head of Lava Falls rapid in 1894. Note the Black Rock jutting into the current for a comparison with the Hillers photograph above.

Prospect Canyon, who's debris litters Lava Falls comes in at river left. It was named for John conners and Franklin French, two prospectors from Holbrook, Arizona.  According to Tim Martin, in his book, Day Hikes from the River, the Prospect Canyon drainage covers an area of over 100 miles and the last mile of the wash drops over 3,000 feet. This combination equates to very unstable rock formations and is part of the reason Lava Falls has such a large amount of debris in it.  

Equipment/Camp/Info Check: The GoPro HD helmet camcorder. This is the camcorder that Bill is buying for the trip. Apparently he expects me to wear it on my helmet while I am kayaking (I'm thinking about it), he will also mount in on the oarrig behind him for footage. It comes with a waterproof case.

The video below is footage using the GoPro of some of the major rapids in GC. I especially like the waves at the end of Hermit, I actually felt a little motion sick watching it, the resolution was so good.

Whitewater Rafting the Grand Canyon, GoPro HD helmet cam from Earl Nicholson on Vimeo.

47 Days To Go - Lava!

Lava

Glen Canyon Dam

TL Report: Tribe: are you ready? 6 weeks until launch!  Look over past blog entries for what you should have squared away by June 29th!

Here's this week's big news: Tom Martin with River Runner's for Wilderness has stated that he spoke with Rick Clayton, of the US Bureau of Reclamation, and he says the release during June and July 2011 will be a whooping 24,000 cfs +/-500. WOW. To put this in perspective, the last two trips we did were about 12,000-14,000 cfs, So, we will be seeing huge water! I checked on the BoR website and indeed, they state that June release will be 24,000.

The higher releases are due to greater than expected melting snow pack that supplies Lake Powell. Looks like the water will fluctuate from peak releases of 24K to off peak releases of 16K.

What the Grand Canyon forums are chatting about this week: Posts are all centering around what the high water will mean for lines through rapids. Go left here, go right there, this hole disappears, this one gets monstrous. We'll take it as it comes.

Scouting Lava

Mileage This Week: River Mile 179. You can hear it a long way before you see it... Lava Falls. The most infamous rapid in North America, Lava has a reputation for capriciousness. Sometimes it opens up and lets boaters through and sometimes it thrashes you.



Really great video of the right run at Lava with beautiful green water and no flips (so it's good for you to watch Eve and Meg!). The crux of Lava is to run it straight, get sideways and over you go!




This video is from the raft as they run Lava.

There are two runs in this rapid, river left and river right. We will scout the evening before we run it, then after a good night's sleep (read: impossible with the roar of the rapid) and a hearty breakfast (again, impossible), the boatmen will scout again while the rest of the rafters wait in the boats.  The boatmen will decide which run they want to take. We've always run right in the past, but with the high water, we'll make a decision when we see it. There is really nothing like the feeling you have at the top of this rapid, except maybe the euphoria you feel at the bottom. :-)

GC History: The Toroweap Overlook, just downstream of Lava on river right, accessed from the North Rim.

Toroweap Overlook

3000 vertical feet above the Colorado River, is the breathtaking Toroweap Overlook. You can just see Lava Falls upstream  in this photo. You can easily see and hear Lava from the overlook.

Toroweap, a Paiute term meaning "dry or barren valley," refers to many local features, including the geologic formation and fault, the valley, and the overlook. Tuweep came into use to describe the local white settlement and later the park district. Tuweep in Paiute refers to "the earth," but this place name may be derived from a longer Paiute word meaning "long valley."



Equipment/Camp/Info Check:Take a minute and Google Lava Falls and read some trip reports. :-) Try not to mess your pants while you're reading. It's so rare that we get really scared (in a good way) in today' world. Relish the feeling!

54 Days To Go - Vulcan's Throne & Vulcan's Anvil

Vulcan's Anvil - Check out the tiny kayaker at the base

TL Report:

Folks hiking in at Phantom:

• You need to be thinking about shipping your gear to MOE in the next few weeks. Remember you will be flying home with your gear, so pack your stuff in an appropriate piece of luggage. We will repack in a drybag for you at Flag and will store your luggage in one of the cars to retrieve after the trip.
• That being said, you may want to simply buy your own drybag and use that as your luggage so nothing needs to be repacked. If so, you need the 55 liter size.
• Remember that you don't need much at all besides hat, water, snacks, day pack, clothes on your back for the Bright Angel Trail hike. Go as light as possible, you'll be glad you did.

Everyone else:

• You should be workig on the equipment list. Call me with any questions.
• Start working on your base tan. Sunburn sucks, especially when you can't get out of the sun. And while we can apply 50spf all day long, you are in the sun with water splashing you.

What the Grand Canyon forums are chatting about this week: Rangers Receive Report of Fall Fatality on River Trip

Grand Canyon News Release
Release date: Immediate


Contact(s): Shannan Marcak
Phone number: 928-638-7958
Date: April 29, 2011

Rangers Receive Report of Fall Fatality on River Trip


Grand Canyon, Ariz.


At approximately 1 p.m. on Thursday, April 28, the Grand Canyon Regional Communications Center received a report from a commercial river trip of a fatality at river mile 74 on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National Park.


According to one of the trip guides who reported the incident via satellite phone, the group had gone on a side trip, a hike up the Tabernacle Route, located in the vicinity of Upper Rattlesnake and river mile 74. During the hike, a woman aged 77 lost her footing and fell approximately 100 feet suffering fatal head trauma.


Park Rangers responded via helicopter to the scene, began initial investigations into the incident and packaged the body for transport. The body was flown via helicopter to the South Rim where it was met by the Coconino County Medical Examiner.


The National Park Service is conducting an investigation into the incident. No further information is available at this time.


-NPS-

Our sympathy goes out to the family. Please let this be a reminder to all of us to always observe safety rules while in this magnificent wilderness environment.

Mileage This Week: River Mile 171-178. FLAT, FLAT WATER with a queasy, queasy stomach. We may be enduring seemingly endless flatwater in this stretch, but its never an easy float since the most difficult rapid on the river, Lava Falls, class 9 (out of 10),  is just a few miles away. The anticipation (or anxiety, or just plain panic) can be, well...... I'm just gonna say not to expect a good night's sleep at camp this night, because we will be camping at "Above Lava" the camp just before this infamous rapid. :-) The sound of this rapid can be as intimidating as the actual scout. I'll cover Lava Falls in next week's blog, but there's still lots to say about the lead in.



Vulcan's Anvil



The geology in this area of the western Canyon is heavily influenced by volcanic activity that occurred over 100,000 years ago. At River Mile 178.2 we'll pass one of the remnants of this volcanic acivity, the Vulcan's Anvil. This  huge column of jet-black basalt rises 50 feet in the center of the river. It is traditional to leave an offering or to pay respect here in order to ensure safe passage through Lava, although most commercial trips say it's bad juju to do so (I think they don't want to have 30+ passengers trying to leave offerings!).



Vulcan's Throne, with Lava Falls at the base.

Just downstream from Vulcan's Anvil, and just above Lava Falls, we'll pass Vulcan's Throne. The eruptions of this volcanic field were responsible for damming the river multiple times between 725,000 to 100,000 years ago. While some believe that these lava dams were stable, lasting up to 20,000 years and forming large reservoirs behind them, others think they failed quickly and catastrophically as massive floods. What we do know for sure is that lava flows traveled downriver almost 76 miles from river mile 178 to 254.






Acient Lava flows from Vulcan's Throne. You can just see the river below. Lava Falls is just downstream.

At river mile 179 and change, we'll stop for the night at either "Above Lava" camp or "Just Above Lava" camp at Prospect Canyon. After a dinner of BBQ ribs, cole slaw, baked beans and blueberry shortcake, we'll all hike down through the black basalt to scout Lava just downstream. This is the hottest scouting hike on the river so doing so after dinner will help with the heat.  

GC Geology: Vulcan's Throne is one of the monogenetic volcanoes in the Uinkaret volcanic field located along the North Rim. A monogenic volcanic field is a volcanic field of small, scattered volcanic vents. These volcanic fields, containing numerous monogenetic volcanoes, are noted for having only one short eruptive event at each volcano, as opposed to regular volcanoes that have several eruptions from the same vent over a long period in their history.

Equipment/Camp/Info Check: Check out this great "Canyon Minute" of a Condor bathing in a GC stream.