The Grand Canyon

Last April I met Kieran for the first time:

"Soooo, Kieran, I hear you got a permit to float the Grand."
"um, yeah."
"Well, great news: I can make it!"
"...okay..."

When people heard that I was going on a Grand Canyon trip and asked whose permit it was, I reveled in telling the truth:
"it's my ex-girlfriend's little sister's boyfriend's."
"..."
"yep, my ex-girlfriend is going, too."
"..."
"no, no. We still get along really well."

Nights in the Grand.

A few points about this post. It was a 25 day trip and the theme was roughly boat, set up camp, eat, sleep, get up, eat, launch boats, boat, repeat. On a typical day there was a godawful amount of beer drinking mixed in there, along with shit talk and general verbal abuse.

The photos are pretty out of order. Typically my blog posts tell a coherent story, but that will not be the case here. There were just too many days and too many photos. So please look at the pictures and get a feel for how it was, and be happy with that.

Could it possibly be a coincidence that the two least-experienced and least-qualified guys on the trip looked this good?
(to be clear, me and Nick did not know each other before the trip, or even two days before this picture was taken, and did not collaborate on our appearances)

We broke into groups that rotated for chores. By pure chance I ended up with these two guys, Nick and Greg - a couple of gems of human beings if there ever were such a thing. We became Team HJ, the Handsome Jents (occasionally the TJs, when we were being extra Thoughtful). Rarely has so much fun been had in the kitchen as I had with these two boys (especially as such delicious and nutritious meals were being prepared).

On the clear nights I delighted in playing with long exposures. This was shot at 30 seconds with a fisheye lens. 

We stopped at Redwall Cavern, and Jake took advantage to do some bouldering.

As did Bernie. These two boys are the real thing, easily hiking around, up and then back down, on problems that looked like they had to be at least V3.

I herded the cats into a line for this photo.

The cats started to tease me by doing yoga and other such antics. But it worked alright.

Carla is amazing.

Jake kept bouldering.

Betsy in my packraft, before it rained and the water turned muddy.

Still Betsy.

I had a pretty good amount of fun in the packraft, and had one especially motivated day when I ran quite a few rapids in it. I built confidence gradually, going through bigger and bigger rapids. Finally,  one rapid had waves coming in from both sides. I pointed myself to the right to meet the biggest waves head-on. I was on top of one wave, having paddled through it, when a wave came from the left and knocked me out of the boat.
Water and I have never been friends. Some people (like Kieran) have an attitude towards swimming in big water that regards it as a rather benign thing. I, however, didn't enjoy the experience, and I dialed back my aggression in the boat after that. Fear rules my aquatic experiences, as a rule.

As to photos of the packraft, or boating in general - I have some bad news. I specifically bought a small waterproof camera for this trip. It's an Olympus TG-3, their "Tough" camera. It was recommended as the best one. On about the 8th day of the trip it began fucking up - none of the menus worked, or the zoom. It would turn on, take a reading and snap a picture. No other functions worked. I could see the photo it took for the default amount of "review" time it allows, and then it was inaccessible to me. Needless to say, I wasn't too pleased with my purchase.

But it also wasn't a show stopper. I took pictures at the widest setting and grumbled about it at times, but I shoot wide quite a lot anyway.

But on about the second or third to last day I received a new message: "chip error." Upon my return to civilization I took it to a computer store, where they confirmed that the hardware in the chip had gone bad. A quick phone call to a data recovery place got me a quote of nearly 900 dollars to recover the photos off of the chip. Since I don't intend to shell out that kind of money, a lot of photogenic moments slipped into history, to be forgotten by me. Worse things have happened to nicer people, but it still sucks.

But if anyone has a line on a better price, then I'm all ears.

The Prom King and Queen: Betsy and Kieran, who are intolerably adorable.
This is at some ancient graineries that were on a hill above the river. I have in increasingly awful memory, and cannot be expected to remember many of the names of the things we saw.

Looking downstream from the graineries.

In the background of this flat and contrast-less photo is a deer. Typically, I mercilessly taunt tourists when I catch them doing shit like photographing deer or squirrels. And yet, somehow, the moment you yourself become a tourist you find yourself taking pictures of some of the most godawful banal shit, like this deer, one of the most common mammals in North America. 

As soon as I took that photo of the deer I realized what I had become, and I immediately turned to Greg and took a picture of him for the express purpose of  using the photo to taunt him online. Greg should henceforth consider himself publicly humiliated.

I mostly didn't take many whitewater photos. But this one is pretty good. This rapid might be Hermit.

Betsy ran it in the Ducky, which I found quite impressive since it was very big water. The Grand Canyon Whitewater system is on a scale of 1-10, and Hermit rates an 8.

These photos are not very sharp. I'm not sure why, but I tentatively blame the zoom lens.

She was *pretty* pleased with herself.

I tended to feel the way Ellen does. Merely surviving the ride through in the boat was plenty of cause for celebration. Later in the trip Ellen was able to vanquish her fears, but I never did.

Arianna, who was also known commonly as Kieran's Little Sister.

I know two of the Sullivans (I'm told there are more), and they are both easy to simply, unabashedly, like. It is a family that is blessed with such style and grace that you can't help but admire them.

Though Arianna did require a bit of slapping around from time to time.

Nick.

Carla Jo. She's from Texas and oozed competence from every pore. I'm old enough now that not everyone that is younger than me is automatically stupider. I found myself deferring to CJ on nearly everything. 

Oh, and it was cold, rainy, and, up high, snowy.

Betsy.
I did the math - I've known Betsy for over 8 years now. Holy shit. 

We went for a hike.

This picture is not out of focus. Your vision is bad.

We were blessed by a brief reprieve in the rain and got this nice weather. 

It became something of a contest to see who could come up with the most scenic location to put the shitter.

Coyote poop. Still more interesting than a live deer.

Bernie.

Life on the river was easy. The food was excellent. Here Kieran grills hamburgers.

We began to gain moon.

We had a layover day at a camp called Cardero, in Furnace Flats. I had been want to walk to the rim, just to see the whole change through the canyon. Nick brought the motivation, and so we went for it. We hiked the Tanner Trail.  

Nick has naturally gregarious body language. This moment was spontaneous, for the first time in this blog's history. 

His whole hillbilly persona, right down to an Arkansas accent that he picked up growing up in LA, is a carefully crafted joke. And, over time, the joke becomes funnier and funnier.

We got high enough that there were junipers.

Junipers and snow. Lots of snow. Calf deep a little later on.

At the rim. But don't let the quiet, idyllic setting fool you.

There were tourists. Lots of tourists. It was quite a shock to us, and we got some funny looks from people, given that we clearly didn't fit in. We stood there and slammed two beers each while the strange tourists milled about around us. I actually took a video, but I find embedded video somewhat obnoxious. 

Agaves bloom once in their lives, then die. The flower stalks look like this.

The hike ended up being something like 24 miles with around 5,000 feet of elevation gain to the rim. We did the return hike on a belly full of a mixture of Tecate and Pabst Blue Ribbon and three Nutter Butters to share between us. But it was all downhill, and we were buzzed off the beers for the first third of the way, so I would say it was altogether pleasant. 

As the moon grew brighter, the night shots did too. It was dark when I took this photo, but the long exposure makes it appear bright.

There was a small waterfall with a cave behind it. And an angry little troll inhabiting the cave. 

But I threw him out and took it for myself. I might even still be in there. How would you know if I wasn't?

Arianna (shown, dressed in black) and I went for a quick afternoon hike that turned out to be one of those hikes where we accidentally goad each other into going much further than either of us really intended. We eventually scrambled onto this plateau after doing some quite steep scrambling. Neither of us had headlamps, and I (much more than Arianna) realized that we needed to hurry down before we got caught in the dark. We were no where near the rim, but we made it out of the deeper gorge onto a large plateau - and it was even prettier than this photo suggests.

We invented a game, which we called Sand Pound. Each contestant has an empty beer can in front of them, and a mallet is passed around the circle. Each contestant takes a turn walloping the can of one of their opponents after doing a tricky hammer flip. When your can is flat, you're out. However, there were two problems with the game, which were somewhat nested within each other: 1) there was no clear definition of what qualified as a flattened can and 2) some of the contestants had a hard time understanding that it was just a game and that the idea was to have fun.
In this photo Kieran wallops what appears, tragically, to be my can. And though this photo might appear blurry, I assure you that it is not.     

We lost Bernie because he had to hike out to be with his family,which I thought was bullshit. I cried when he left. But we gained Susie in his place, so that helped.

After a couple of soaking wet and cold and miserable days, we arrived at Pancho's Kitchen, a camp with a large overhang. The rain was mostly done at that point, but the shelter was still a nice relief.

Same camp, seen from the other side. 

Jake found a super long boulder problem that traversed the roof and pulled out to a logical top out. It was actually super cool. He did all the moves, but didn't link it all together, though he only gave it one real try.

At Havasu Creek. This was the first hot sun we'd had in about a week, and spirits were high. I know this photo is already on my blog, but look at what a happy picture it is!

Thick as thieves.

Kieran walks about in Havasu Creek.

Though I got a little overzealous with the saturation in other photos on this blog, this is not one of them. That really is the color of the water.

This was very pretty in practice. But I need to work on my tent shots. I have some ideas of what I need to do better - notably, this is not a posed shot. Jake was really rummaging about in that tent with his headlamp on.

Deer Creek Canyon.

It had poured the previous day, and this canyon obviously flash flooded, washing out this large (and probably quite old) cactus.

A cactus.

Greg is a man of leisure.

Kieran complains when I post pictures of him in his underpants on my blog. But if that's really the case why does he 1) walk around in his underpants, and 2) look so good doing it?

National Canyon, maybe?

Sisters holding it up.

Susie is more flexible than you.

Carla Jo doesn't mind the fisheye being shoved in her face.

Lower in the canyon there were very (very) large basalt flows, with intricate swirls and stacks of basalt columns. It was cool.

Ellen liked to row.

Ellen at the camp fire.

Betsy.

Here I reward Betsy for actually being a cooperative muse by posting a whole series of cute pictures of her.

Zeke is also just adorable. But one photo will be enough, I think. I feel that it makes a stronger artistic statement that way. And what else could another photo possibly say about The Zeke?

Susie.

Arianna.

Nick.

Carla.

Jake.

Greg.

Carla Jo.

Nick, Zeke, Kieran.

Arianna.

Betsy.

Cactus.

A blooming yucca. I'd been seeing them at a distance for a while, then, while out on a hike, I finally made the trek up a hill to this one so that I could see it up close. There were some thorny plants along the way, but the bigger issue was a thorny hiking partner, who thought that it was just too hot of a day for side trips.

After a short hike on the previous hot day we returned to find that the camp was filled with people who had spent the entire morning and afternoon drinking margaritas, while barely eating lunch. We then went for a "night float" which was called off for safety reasons just before night arrived. The primary photographic evidence of the evening's antics is the tiny cut visible on Nick's lip when he got tackled by one of the more unruly members of the group. In Nick's defense he was largely an innocent bystander, though there does seem to be something about his persona that makes drunk people want to wrestle him. 

On the lower reaches of the river, where the water has become tame and the temperature hot, tossing beers to the boaters is entirely reminiscent of tossing fish to the seals at Sea World. 

Kieran shows off his catch.

Stef.

Ellen looks sweet, but don't be deceived - she's quite feral.

The river cuts through the enormous mud bluffs of the former bed of Lake Mead. The water levels in the lake are low enough that the river is flowing through old silt deposits. Large sluffs off of the banks were a common sight.

We tied the boats together, and lazy daze were the rule. 

There is no particular rhyme or reason to this being the last photo in the post. So far as I know we had no group photo or goodbye shot. Which was fine. But there are two things that are notable about this photo - the weather at this point in the trip was quite hot, so the fact that Nick is wearing a hoody indicates that it must be morning when I took this photo. And also, he is using a Red Vine as a straw to drink PBR.


Grand Canyon, you gave us all so much.