In the Heart of the Canyon
Alive below Crystal! On down the Grand Canyon we went. The "Jewels" are classic Grand Canyon rapids, as the river traverses a rugged inner gorge. Most of them aren't particularly difficult, though at Ruby and Sapphire you want to enter in just the right places. Well, you always want to enter in the right places. Nothing new about that.
At mile 108, at the end of the Jewels, Bass Camp is large and nice. It's just downstream of where the North and South Bass Trails reach the river. We were there in 1986 with six people when another group came down the river, obviously looking for a camp. We shared the place with them and made some new friends too. In 1997, we didn't need a camp yet that day.
We stopped for an hour or so at Shinumo Creek, just downstream. A Grand Canyon river trip is like no other I know of, and the wonderful waterfall that's less than a hundred yards up Shinumo Creek is one of the reasons.
The canyon changes here, and becomes very stark for a few miles. I like this wild-looking, almost lunar, defile. Is it Waltenburg or Walthenburg Rapid at mile 112? Named for John W..., I've seen it spelled both ways. Two dark masses of rock rise from the river just above it. My technique (at high water) has been to line up with the lower one and ride the big waves. I understand it gets quite rocky at lower water, though. The canyon walls slope right down into the river, and there aren't any camps for a few miles.
Near Garnet, the scenery reverts back to normal, for the Grand Canyon. Elves' Chasm is up Royal Arch Creek at mile 116, but we skipped it this trip. There are a number of good camps all the way down to Blacktail Canyon (mile 120). Blacktail is just about my favorite place in all the world, but if I were to pick ten runner-ups, several would be in the Grand Canyon, along the river. The trip is this good.
At Blacktail, the geological contact between the Precambrian and Cambrian rocks just happens to be right at the base of the narrow, deep tributary gorge. Most of the inner gorge consists of very old Precambrian rock which, near the end of Precambrian time, got eroded down to a fairly level surface that was near sea level. Then the sea advanced, and beach sands spread over the Precambrian. This happened all across the west.
Walk up Blacktail less than fifty yards, see that contact, and you can almost hear the ocean waves break across the beach! The contact represents a time-difference of over a billion years between formation of the two rocks. The underlying Precambrian is about 1.7 billion years old while the beach sands are around 500 million. The Precambrian rock was already old (over a billion years old) when it was eroded level and the beach sand was deposited over it.
At one place, you can see a small vein of harder rock that protruded up into the advancing beach sands. Pieces of it must have broken off and were distributed nearby on the surface. The pieces are still there, covered with sandstone, and this was roughly 600 millions years ago. The protrusion of hard rock is now visible in cross section there.
Upstream about a mile is a place where there were larger irregularities in the Precambrian surface when the sea advanced. The beach sands flowed around these prominences, which now stick up into the Tapeats Sandstone. They were fortuitously exposed by the Colorado River, as it cut the Grand Canyon. Another example of this is far upstream, in Whirlpool Canyon on the Green River.
Just as Blacktail Canyon is my favorite place, the Tapeats Sandstone is my favorite rock. In Conquistador Aisle, right below Blacktail, Tapeats rises from both sides of the river. This continues down through Fossil Rapid at mile125.
We took a layover day at Blacktail, one of our favorite camps in the canyon. We were about halfway through the Grand, at mile 120. We'd have river almost until Separation Canyon, mile 240, at the beginning of Lake Mead. Then we'd mount the motor and go out.
Soon after Blacktail, you're in the Middle Granite Gorge. The river cuts through black, shiny, polished Precambrian rock, containing many veins of Zoroaster Granite. It's an awesome, spooky, forbidding, wonderful place!
Specter Rapid is at the foot of Specter Chasm, which joins the river through a dark defile of its own. Spectre was supposed to be difficult, but it wasn't at this water level. I scouted it from the large eddy on the left, and there was an easy run left of the wave train.
A Tour West motor raft came down the river then, ran the gut of the waves, and really got twisted and hammered! We were just pulling out to run the rapid then, and the motorboat operator turned and waited as we ran it, just as another one had upstream at Granite Rapid. Again, I appreciated it.
Bedrock Rapid is a hard scout on the right, and even then it's hard to see. But I could see enough. You've got to row right, and I got a lock on just where I'd be able to enter the rapid. Once in the rapid, it doesn't look like you're going to make it, but you do.
Duebendorff Rapid has a left-scout, but the run isn't too critical at high water. It can be a matter of making sure you hit the best wave in there! We camped right, just below the rapid, at a beautiful spot. It was just a short walk up Stone Creek to a great waterfall and plunge pool. Note: Friends who went down the Grand in the summer of 2000 reported that a flash flood had come down Stone Creek, removed the greenery, and filled the pool with sediment.
We didn't make the hike to Thunder River this time, but we stopped at Tapeats Creek to get drinking water. We put saturated iodine in the water. It looks good there at the mouth of the creek, but where has that water been? We hadn't come all this way to pick up giardia. Leaving the eddy to properly run Tapeats Rapid was one of the harder pulls of the trip.
We passed "Helicopter Eddy," which wasn't rotating nearly as fast as the name indicates. We entered the short gorge that includes the narrowest point of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, 76 feet. There were a couple nice camps in this little gorge, though we didn't need one yet.
Deer Creek Falls is a real treat, and it's an even bigger treat to walk up the steep trail just downstream. How nice it would be wasn't obvious to Jeanette at first—it just seemed hot and dry. But soon, the trail enters the narrow gorge of Deer Creek. It goes along a ledge above the creek, which here has eroded tight, entrenched meanders that seem deep for a creek this size. After a bit, the creek had risen to the level of the trail and we waded into one of the nicest soaking pools anywhere! A little waterfall enters the pool there.
Wading back out, I forgot about the small tape recorder in my pocket and a roll of film, of which I was short anyway. I bought a new tape recorder later, but the tape on which I'd been keeping notes was still playable.
Downriver a bit, we stopped in a large eddy to wait out a rainstorm. A motor trip came, and we waved them into the beach to camp. We and they saw what looked like a river bag floating low in the water. I'd seen it go through the riffle at Deer Creek. The motor trip people retrieved it, and it turned out to be a folding chair! We said they could have the camp, near where the map shows Anasazi graneries. The rain had lightened, and we went another three miles or so.
We camped on a great beach at mile 140. We dried out nicely, though the high cliffs were getting closer to the river and the sun set early. In the morning, the motor trip passed our camp. In unison, they all called, "Good morning!" and then "Thank you!" We appreciated their thanking us for letting them have that camp.
Large trips need large camps and it wouldn't normally be good for a two-person trip like ours to occupy a gigantic beach, where no other large camps were available. But with that in mind, we did claim camps as needed. Some trips, seeing us, may have thought we were just an advance boat sent ahead to claim a desired camp for a group to follow. We did see another group doing exactly this, though I question the ethics of it.
Somebody did ask once, "Where's the rest of your party?" I think I said, "She's right over there."