Grand Canyon - Day 3

Monday 27th September 2010 by Dan –

River Miles: 18 – 29, known as the “roaring 20’s”.

Kayak Flips: almost every rapid.

Bow Rescues: 2; from Michael at Indian Dick Rapid, by Jim.

Swims: 2; rescued by Michael at Tiger Wash, by Erin.

Rolls: several, in one rapid I rolled 3 times!

Today has been the most difficult day on the river so far. Rapids come in quick succession. No sooner has one ended, does another begin. Some have massive walls of water, pointed and frothing at the top, sometimes coming from multiple directions. There is nothing like paddling into a wall. It is crazy. Several swims and rescues were made today. One rapid stands out from them all: 27 Mile Rapid, also known as Tiger Wash.

On approaching 27 mile rapid, it didn’t look like anything out of the ordinary. The canyon wall on river-right closed in, the river narrowed, and a drop in elevation formed the relatively short rapid. It was considered a “Read-and-Run” rapid which is where you don’t need to stop and scout the rapid from shore, but rather you read and react to the obstacles and features as you’re running it. The small boats in our team took a serious hit in this rapid. In quick succession: Erin flipped and lost her paddle, David flipped and lost his paddle and boat, and I flipped and lost my boat.

Near the bottom of the rapid a big wave hit me and I lost my balance. I held my breath as my boat flipped upside down and I was submerged in the water. I attempted to roll back up: I reached out from under my boat and felt no air – I was surrounded by water. I have never felt like that before. I tried again, still no air to be found. That was enough - I hit the eject button and bailed out of my boat, but still, I did not find the surface. The water was turbulent; it was pushing and pulling with jerks in different directions. I released my grip on my boat and instantly it was gone, pulled away by the current. It was dark. For several seconds I kicked in the direction I thought was up. I needed to breathe now. After several kicks and what seemed like forever, I surfaced and gasped for air. That was the longest amount of time I have ever been under. Now the river is carrying me downstream at a fast rate and I see my boat being carried away well out of reach. I began to swim aggressively for shore. Michael arrived and I grabbed on to the back of his boat. We reached the edge of the right side of the river with nowhere safe to stop. The river carried us down further until we found some rocks that I could grab on to. Michael left me to go after my boat which was now out of view. I clambered out on the rocks with only my paddle for company. My heart was racing. Now I was alone again, stranded in a canyon with nothing but vertical walls on one side and a raging river on the other.

I was standing at the edge of the river, on a rock that was partially exposed out of the water. There was a large boulder (several times taller than me) downsteam to my right and more boulders and rocks to my left. My visibility from this position was somewhat limited. I stood facing the river. One of the rafts passed by, but it was too far away, and moving too fast to be able to stop and help. By shouting and waving however, they were able to direct me to move downstream over the rocks. I was in an inaccessible position.

I began making my way carefully around the large boulder. Sam and Martie came by in their raft which was positioned closer to shore. They saw me and Sam quickly began pulling hard on the oars to try and slow the raft and direct it into the eddy before passing an outcropping rock. Fortunately his efforts paid off and he made it into shore, but now the raft was somewhat trapped between the outcrop and the shore. Martie threw me the rope from the bow and I was able to help pull the raft upstream and out of its precarious position. I then climbed aboard and Sam was able to maneuver quickly to get around the outcrop and back into the main flow of the river again. I was glad to be safe, but not thinking that at the time – I had not been thinking, but rather reacting, ever since entering the rapid. There was a lot going on. Now we didn’t know where the other boats were, or where we should go. We were positioned upstream on river right, some people were downstream on river left, and others were downstream on river right. They were out of shouting distance and radio contact failed.

Eventually we regrouped and everyone had a story to tell. A commercial guide later told us that the hydraulics in Tiger Wash rapid are only surpassed by Lava Falls in the current conditions. A landslide had caused some seriously turbulent and strong water movements at this location. Again, I empathize with how Powell must have felt when navigating the unknown and unpredictable river.

Other events –

Today injury struck. It happened after breakfast as we were assembling for the morning briefing. I was about to empty the water out of my kayak. Holding the handle on top at the nose of the kayak with only one hand, I lifted and attempted to rotate the boat upside down by pushing with my thumb. My thumb was not ready to rotate a heavy boat – for a split second my thumb joint hyper-extended from the normal fully stretched position right back so that my thumb was pointing towards me at the time my fingers were pointing away from me. I dropped the boat and recoiled in shock, grasping my thumb with my other hand.

The hyperextension had not been especially painful, but rather I had felt my thumb move to a position that it never had been in before (pointing backwards), and that had felt wrong and shocking more than anything. I knew the consequence of the mistake was still to come. The area of my hand around my thumb started to swell and it looked like a bruise was starting to form. It started feeling more tender and sore. I was worried how this would impact the trip, how long it would take to recover. As Andy said, my joint was not happy with me.

Fortunately it had not been worse. I was still able to grip my paddle, since most of the grip comes from the fingers, and I was able to deal with the soreness and swelling by dipping my hand in the ice cold river water in between paddle strokes. At lunch I was able take some Ibuprofen which also helped.

Finally –

Towards the end of the day, after taking a pounding from the river in Tiger Wash, enough was enough. Erin and I put our boats on the rafts and took the chauffeur service through the next rapid, and around the final bend to our designated campsite for the night.

I was relieved when the day was over. We crashed out in our tent to the sound of the rapid reverberating off the canyon walls, and the stars overhead.