LUCK OF THE DRAW - Packrafting the Grand Canyon

I see waves, really big wave drains, and I'm thinking it's so huge, I'm never going to be in Grand Canyon, too much for me, and now I'm here. To run the Grand Canyon, you have to put in for a lottery. You put in a full year ahead of time for the lottery, and then periodically throughout the year they raffle off. Uh, any cancellation trips. 30,000 people go down the Grand Canyon every year. And if they were to not have a permit system, it would just be overrun with way too many people. Um, and it would be disastrous. So they're protecting the resource by keeping only a certain amount of people to go down the canyon. Some people will wait 20 years. I put in for one of the last lotteries of the year, but I was unsuccessful. After the lottery was filled, there was a few participants that didn't pay. And so the ranger just started calling people to try and get rid of these last permits. And so I got a permit about two months before we launched, and they gave me a half an hour to decide. So that was just the perfect amount of time to ask my wife if I could go, and for her not to think about it too much. Ben pulled a permit at the last minute and rounded up this awesome group of 16 people, like many of whom have never even seen the Grand Canyon. I decided I would wanted to do a full self-support packraft trip and I thought of There's a lot of... all my friends in in Europe who are really into packrafting but have never Never done the Grand or never done a big trip in the desert in the West. Three years ago we met, or I met, Ben in the Swedish packrafting meetup. I'm going to ask a question which means, are you okay? And this is a response, I'm okay, and you're not okay. Okay. I remember me asking Ben what's the best place to go packrafting, and Ben told it's maybe Grand Canyon. My husband got the invitation for both of us, packrafting in Grand Canyon. I know it's a... Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so we had to take the chance and come. The funny thing is that when I got the invitation about a week before that, I was thinking that, wow, it would be so cool to go to the Grand Canyon, but I knew that it would be very, very difficult. And when I read that email from Ben on Friday, I was just flabbergasted. I didn't know what to say. I invited five people from Europe and, to my surprise, everybody I invited said yes and came right before Christmas and one of the hardest times of year to travel to get down here. My boyfriend Nate is an excellent packrafter. He got started on it many years ago in Alaska in the beginning of packrafting and one of our first dates together was a packrafting trip a couple years ago and I've really loved it ever since. Nate was invited but couldn't make it and luckily he said Lindsay's available and so I got to join this wonderful group of people on this awesome adventure. My name is Dustin Partridge. I work with Ben. I work for Alpacka Raft. Build the boats that we use on this trip. He had asked me earlier if he were to get a permit if I'd be interested and yeah I was definitely in. I couldn't couldn't say no. I invited some good friends of mine who I've grown up rafting and kayaking with. I'm a childhood friend of Ben's. We went to high school together. That's when we met, actually, and he began teaching me to kayak. Then after kayaking, I got into rafting. I was a raft guide for a short time. They're great to have along because they can help fish people out of the water. They're very experienced river runners and they've been down the Grand before so they've been very helpful to keep things moving along and keep spirits up and keep the substances flowing. My name is Aubrey William Hood and I've been fortunate enough to come down here several In different forms, backpacking and rafting. and pack rafting. Three years ago, I did a self-supported trip with just four other friends and we didn't know exactly how it was going to go. Like, could we do it all with pack rafting, self-supported? And if you could carry enough food, the trip went really well. And every year since then, there's been one group, I've been on most of those trips, where we self-support paddle the Grand Canyon from Lees to Diamond. We got invited last year and I was way too nervous to go. So when Ben invited us this year, I was super hesitant, but I knew I really wanted to do it. So the weeks leading up to it, I was so nervous. The first trip I did, I was a medium level experienced boater and it was scary. I was really nervous to come here first place. I knew it's too much for our skill level. And I also saw all those pictures of big rafts just being flipped, you know, airborne and then tossed aside. I was nervous about the white water because I've never done anything like this as far as white water goes. I didn't know what to expect and yeah, I was nervous. But then I thought I can always walk if there's a really bad rapid for this. I did some paddling in the white water before. Having said that, this was definitely by far the wildest, the whitest that I have ever paddled. For six days here I was scared a lot, swimming under big waves and always when I heard the roaming white water right now, oh my god, a nice comet just going around. The worst part might have been swimming the first bigger rapid, House Rock. And I was like, oh God, maybe I can't do this. Maybe this is going to be too much for me. I was thinking that there is a good chance to be a better white water paddler in here because it's so high up from our level. And I know if you want to be better, you have to go away from your comfort zone. But I was really afraid. Swimming happens. There's been a lot of swimmers. It's nothing to be ashamed of, these rapids are big. I feel like for most of us it's sort of just like luck of the draw, who makes it or not. There's like some really experienced paddlers and they always make it, but then for the rest of us, I feel like sometimes we make it and sometimes we don't. I'm not a super strong swimmer and I knew I would swim, so I was really nervous about having big long swims, not being able to rescue my gear. Right now we're in this really beautiful place that's quite mellow water and the group, you and everyone else, are all about to go into Horn Rapid tomorrow morning, first thing. I'm unfortunately hiking out with a couple of people. And all the biggest rapids are tomorrow, except for lava. So, good luck with that. So the big day with the big rapids, it was very busy. We had four big rapids and a number of tiny, I mean, tiny rapids and a few smaller rapids than the bigger but still rather big. We scouted those four rapids. On that day we had Horn, which seemed intimidating. We scouted it and we looked at all these huge holes. Some of the rapids were quite technical. They needed to do a few moves. It's breathing the river and making those little moves, you know. Thank you. I swam Horn, but I swam it and held my breath at the right times and did totally fine and that was actually a huge confidence boost that, okay, I can even swim the really big ones and that's okay. On that day we had granite, we had ruby, we had sapphire and a few other precious gem records. I don't know if I can make this move, but it doesn't look like it. Bigger than I expected but it was also more forgiving. Swimming wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. I've taken the panic level down quite a bit since we started swimming and so you know I've let myself wash out and I feel almost more confident after I've taken a big swim. Even if I swim I was okay. The swimming was okay, I'm not afraid to swim if the water is good, if there's a lot of water and no rocks, so it wasn't so scary. I started to enjoy it and it was a lot of fun when you get rid of the fear. I mean we were all exhausted, but paddling was super fun. I wish everything was longer, I wish I could like go back and redo every single rapid, you know, especially when I swam those things, but that's okay. It feels like a safe rafting experience. The rapids are big, but they keep moving. There are not a lot of rocks, the river is deep, and after every big rapid, there's a big pool, so everyone has had a good chance to feel big rapids and feel safe. The best was probably my ride down Horn. I got turned around. And ended up like not flipping over, going down backwards over a couple big waves and then ending up in an eddy line and not having flipped over. At the end of that day I felt really accomplished. It was just a full on team supportive day of four huge rapids and Kermit was my highlight that day. It was such big waves, it's kind of slow motion going up and down. That was my favorite rapid of the whole trip. Managing emotions and nerves, knowing that it's not useful to be nervous about lava, rapid or whatever far in advance, taking it one rapid at a time, one day at a time, one paddle at a time, and keeping myself calm, staying rested and focused, continuing to push yourself day after day. We had every day we went Almost 20 miles, except for a few days, with huge rapids on all of them. So continuing to stay at that edge of pushing yourself is a real challenge, and I needed everyone's support to stay in that challenge zone the whole time. I would say just the campsites we've had, too, have been really good places, and it's great to sit around the fire and connect with everyone. Thank you. Oh no, I thought we had escaped. Okay. We have nice dinners around the fire though, everyone brings their own stuff to cook. So even though you're cooking for yourself, it still feels like a community around the fire. We'll go down in history. Like George Washington. The sharing of food on this trip has been amazing. Jakob hands out chips, Constantine gives out cheese, it's just been great. I've even shared a few of my own things. We talk about the day and look at the crazy pictures that everyone took and recount our amazing swims. And then people start drifting off to bed around 7.30. Then we get up early and do it again the next day. I think we're lucky to make it to 8 p.m., but I think we've probably been asleep maybe around 7 o'clock some nights. Yeah, I usually get about 10 hours of sleep, and I feel like I need every hour. You wake up at dawn, it's beautiful. Before dawn, actually. You see the fading of the last stars. And then you're ready to get out of your bag, but it's wet. And then you don't want to put it away, because it's going to be wet all day. A wet sleeping bag might be the worst part of every morning. Oh my god, yeah. I screeched like a little girl, because there's a mouse on me. Yeah, but we have the classic, he said that we are never going to the rapids, never in Scotland. Just lake jumping and easy rivers. And the Grand Canyon. And I remember the first time you went to the proper rapids was in the Swedish backpacking meeting and you had... I don't know how big the... You couldn't see in front of you. Yeah, do you remember this? His pack on the back Just so big he couldn't see it. It was just incredible. And I think you wrapped it up with the tarp. Then I was hitting the rocks all of them. Oh, there was a rock. Yeah, the whitewater, I think, has been the most fun of the whole thing. Just paddling the big rapids has been super fun. Coming into every one of these rapids, you're just like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. And then as soon as you're paddling into it, I just have this huge smile on my face and I'm having fun. Even when I'm swimming or getting crushed by huge holes that I didn't mean to go into, or maybe I did mean to go into them, but it's super fun. You might go flying out of your boat, but your friends grab your stuff and bring it back to you at the bottom of the pool and you keep going. Oh, yeah. I know I've become such a better paddler. I think I'm paddling stronger, I'm able to get my boat where I want it to go, able to maneuver in the large waves so I can really tee up to the big waves and power through, and gotten much better at swimming and recovering all my gear on my own. So every part of pack rafting, even the packing, has become So much easier and better for me. It's really exciting. It's exciting. The forager takes a certain caress that's different because you are doing, you know, a dance between two people. You have to read the person in front of you and correct and maneuver. And so it's really fun. Okay. Wave, wave. And now paddle. Paddle. Paddle. Paddle. I haven't swum yet but tomorrow we're gonna go through lava and that might be the day. I'll probably swim. That's my only story. Almost every night somebody talks about lava and that's maybe the big point of the trip. So my first trip I only swam twice and my first swim was in some little riffle like we saw earlier today which is nothing and then my second swim Which might as well have been my first swim. It was in lava and it was huge. I'd swam right at the top of the rapid. The first little lateral up the crest to get actually where you want to be and paddle the rest of the rapid. It just went and I swam immediately in the top of the rapid. I lost my boat. I just got destroyed, totally destroyed, and that was pretty terrifying because I'd never swam big water like that before. Two years ago we did a canyoneering trip down here. Actually we paddled past this spot and I remember paddling up to lava where we were going to take out and hike out before lava and just looking down and thinking like, wow, we are never going to paddle that in packrafts. Like that is never going to happen. And here it is like two years later. Yeah, where are you going? All right. On the other right. Plus hard. Plus hard where? To the left. Okay. Do that kind of, I don't know. Over that lateral. Yeah. And then you got that little, you know, that's not as big as crazy. It's not as bad as the other stuff. Yeah, right? I'm so excited. I mean, I'm going to be scared as soon as we get to that little flat pool. But even if I swim from the first wave, it's going to be really wild. For Lava, it's almost like the end of the trip for us, I feel like, because it's the last big rapid that we have. And... It's just worth a shot and I don't think I would have felt like that at the beginning of the trip. So it's been good to just get some more experience under our belt before we got here. And now it's like if you swim it, you swim it, I guess, right? Right? The lava rapid scared me a lot more when I was looking at the pictures rather than in reality. I immediately lost track of everything and wound up in the nasty stuff, but still had a good time and swam at the end. It was great. I was sure I would walk through, I wouldn't run that one first, but then I ended up running it anyway, and I'm so glad I did because it wasn't so bad. Lava fast water was, when I heard it, I was getting stomach ache almost. It's terrifying as it was for a moment. I reconnected with my boat at the bottom of the rapid, got back in, and it was all fine. I think the last gear went away in the lava. We finally made it through lava. We started on the bubble line and I wasn't sure if we were going to make it through. I knew we had a chance, but it was by sheer fortune we made it through. This is the first time I haven't swam lava, so I was very happy for that. I swam the lava. I did swim in the second big wave. And then I was like a little bit like damn I want to nail this one I want to do it again. After the lava fall I was really really happy to get it get it over. Thank you. Oh, the rhythm! Don't hit me I'm filming. Hey, nice guy! Nice-y French guy! That was my business. Guy with the secret knife skill! Hey! After the lava I could see in everybody's face big relief that now the biggest rapid is over. And after that it was so much fun to go to rapid. I could play a little bit and I capsized a few times because I was A little bit playing on the waves already, having fun. We're down to just tequila left here, so cheers. Like I said, when we crossed underneath the Navajo Bridge at the beginning on day one, when you pass under that bridge, you become a different person on the other side because you've paddled the Grand Canyon, which is an experience that only a handful of people can experience, especially in a packraft. Like what we're doing, it's like a whole different thing. You just feel like even extra small. I think I thought it would be this scary place, but with these people, with our calm demeanors and our just... Love of adventure together. We just took it one rapid at a time and we've paddled hard and made it through all the rapids unscathed and supporting each other. It felt awesome. Felt more calm actually than I expected. More just like a wonderful group wilderness experience with some adrenaline rushes thrown in. Thanks for the great pack rafting trip 2018. Awesome.