A Journey Down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon


North Canyon Clamber
Descending the Smooth Contours of North Canyon on Foot

First posted in the WELL's Outdoors Conference.

outdoors.159.10 (gail) posted Sat 20 Jul 96


Elena was a warm, knowledgeable guide who picked up the history and nature tours from the day before where Factor had left off, with her own interpretations and colorings. Amazing how easy that is in a geographic structure. The term "course of study" takes on a new meaning while winding deep into a river canyon.

But before getting much into the tales of the canyon, there was the sound of water around the bend. She pulled hard and brought the Hidden Passage, her pretty dory, up next to the other boats to the right of the upstream side of the rapid, and everyone jumped out, scrambled up and looked down on House Rapid. I looked around for a rock resembling a house, but couldn't figure out what facet of the cliffs could have given this one its name.

The guides and the raft boatmen huddled and pointed. The rapid had a characteristic smooth central chute of green, called the "tongue", with white crashing waves on the sides, converging as the v-shaped tongue disappeared into some pretty serious looking froth.

The guides could read the water and point out where the waves were the result of the river broken in the shallows over sharp rocks, and where the waves, walls and holes were serious turbulence, but the boulders and dropoffs were far enough under the surface so the dories couldn't hit.

Usually in a simple rapid with enough water they'd row facing forward, pushing rather than pulling their oars, and go down the center or just to one side of the tongue, pull through the big crashing water where the tongue converges, and stay in the middle of the current, avoiding any strong eddies that could swing them back around upstream.

The little wooden boats would just leap in the waves, lively, maneuverable and tippy if the breakers rolled them too far. So this morning the boats had been rigged with a nylon strap under the flat bottoms, fastened to the gunnels (the hand-rails as I thought of them) on each side. We were given instructions to try to stay with the boat if it flipped, to use the strap to pull ourselves up on it, and to get two or more people up there to lean off one edge of the capsized (rapidly drifting) boat to right it by pulling it over with the strap. Neither Steve nor I are strong swimmers, and he's particularly unhappy in icy water, not that many people embrace it, so these instructions had all kinds of crashing images swimming in our imaginations.

And House Rock, like several of the others the guides seemed to respect, had the combination of shallow rocks on the right and a curving cliff coming in from the left, into the main current below the tongue. So if you ran down the deep water of the tongue and rowed forward, you'd be heading straight for a wall at good velocity. We naturally visualized the boat flipping in the first big surging wave it hit, and ourselves trying to climb its slippery bottom as it careened into the cliff. Pretty cliff. Ancient rocks with a fine name and all, but not something you'd want to be slammed into on a little eggshell of a wooden boat.

Elena explained that we'd "Powell" the rapid, a term named for John Wesley Powell, the first man to navigate and survey the river over a century ago. She'd head in forwards, turn sideways on the tongue, and then use the current to spin her backwards so she could pull hard with the oars and stay off the wall. She gave us detailed instructions on how to help keep the boat level in big water, by "high-siding" and shifting our weight toward really big waves.

"If you look downstream and see something really huge breaking over us, just lean hard and stick your head into it!"

We all nodded. And we clambered back into the tiny little boats, life vests in place, and making silly remarks about how there aren't any seatbelts. Everyone was psyched, the sunlight was sparkling on the water, the anticipation crackling. From Elena's boat, almost motionless in the slow eddy above the rapid, we watched Factor take his group down, positioning in the top of the tongue, sliding sideways and then dropping out of view over the green curve into a few fronds of visible white. It was obvious why the rapid was scouted from a ledge above -- from river level it just *dropped* over.

Elena took us into position. For the first time, she seemed tense, and ignored our banter. We quieted down.

The boat drifted into the tongue. At a moment that seemed impossibly late she turned us and we slammed into big lovely wave, whooping with delight. Hit another and the footwells filled... and then we were heading for the wall, bailing like crazy with plastic scoops, watching her row for all she was worth. We came around just off the wall, and grinned in relief. The rest of the day would be the "roaring twenties" rapids.

We were wet but ready.

Rapids in a river are strange things. The Colorado runs cold and deep and swift through its serious gorge unless it hits something it hasn't scoured away. After a day on the water it became obvious that almost all rapids are at the junction of a side canyon where boulders and rocks have been swept in in some side flash flood. The turbulence is erosion in action, the sculptor at work.

House Rock Rapid was named for a canyon with a shelter somewhere high above in its drainage, long ago. And Elena said it was probably misnamed, that the rock shelter was really upstream in another tributary, but such is the way of Western placenames.

The Grand has enough rapids that even the poetic one-armed explorer, Major Powell, didn't name them all. He and his expedition was responsible for all kinds of evocative description, sprinkling placenames like "Zoroaster," "Vishnu," "Bright Angel" and "Brama Temple" on the awe-inspiring landscape. But in 240 miles of spectacular vistas and impressive rapids, there were quite a few places left to be referred to by how many miles down-river they are from the crossing and put-in site at Lee's Ferry.

The twenties are a set of rapids which are mostly unnamed. North Canyon, Indian Dick, 23 and a half, 24 Mile, 24 and a half Mile, 25 Mile... you get the picture. If the side canyons had been mapped and named before the first river expedition, the naming would have been different, but many of the fine rapids and steep gorges of the Grand are still named after famous numbers to this day.

Elena's boat was swamped repeatedly in this section. We filled up again and again to our knees, managing to catch a surge and bathtub worth of icewater on our laps over and over.

Oh, by the way. Indian Dick Rapid. Probably not named for a Native American called Richard, judging by the enormous anatomically evocative red pinnacle above the river. Gads, if Sigmund Freud had explored this place, we'd have an orgy of genital, oral and anal names in this canyon. There are older sacred places where older spirits gave birth in this land, too, so the associations have been obvious back into mythic times, but "Indian Dick" is a grand overstatement of the obvious.

Another evocative sensual canyon, North Canyon by name, but female and curving to the metaphoric eye, was a place for a side hike on this fine day. We went to a pool where we listened to Shawn recite cowboy poetry, and watched small frogs in the still beauty under the curving red rocks. As Laurie pointed out right away, the rock was exfoliated, onion-peeled like the domes in Yosemite. It's a gorgeous scene.

I didn't even remember to write down North Canyon in the margin of my river guide, however, because the cold run through the twenties really caught my attention.

Later I came to appreciate that luck has something more to do with a particular run than I'd realized. The most skilled dory guide can flip -- two of our oarsmen had flipped boats on the trip before, and Elena's trip had been "golden," with no dings, flips, or repairs. But this was a wet and somewhat sobering day for us.

Fortunately, every time you got wet and serious the sun and scenery and comraderie would pull you right back.

We camped at a beautiful site called Shinumo Wash. One of several names which sound Japanese to my ear, and are usually Paiute, sometimes Havasupai, or Walapai.

Competition for campsites can be fierce, and the guides talk with any other party that goes by, by paddle or motor, to arrange where the group will camp. We had excellent sites most nights, and a few adventures in marginal beaches. By the second night out, it was easy to grasp the enormity of the river and the journey ahead.

Skip ahead, to another magical day on the Grand!



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