Honestly, it has not taken me more than two and a half years to motor 226 miles down the Colorado River in Grand Canyon. Think of all the food drops involved with such a time frame! It has, however, taken me that long to write up any sort of account. And I’m not done yet.
GC Raft Trip 829a
We are on day seven of an eight–day, seven–night raft trip of a lifetime, and when I look today at the negligible notes I kept back then, I cannot help but think “These notes are abysmal! At what river mile were these pictures taken? Where am I???”
Ah, well. Life happens. I have reference books along with penciled scribblings in my river map & guide so that will have to do. Even though so much time has passed, and my little gray cells may not be firing as well as they once did (if ever), I am still happy to be living the dream through those images I kept.
There is no composed music to accompany these videos. There is only muted chatter and the ruffle of rapids amid the whispers of geologic time. Volume up or volume down. It makes no never mind. Your choice.
Sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit. And sometimes I just sit and turn on my camera video function and let the canyon world roll by through its lens.
In my notes from the river I call these miles a “lovely, long stretch of canyon.”
Indeed.
Along these western reaches of Grand Canyon, the slope of the Kaibab Plateau contours downward. The river leaves the mean & mangled metamorphic rocks of the narrow Inner Gorge to once again carve a wider course through the overlying softer, flat–lying sedimentary rocks as seen in eastern Grand Canyon. For a brief stretch tomorrow the schists and gneisses will outcrop once again beneath the sedimentary Tapeats Sandstone in John Wesley Powell’s 1.2 billion year old “Great Unconformity,” but for the most part we will travel “up section” into younger rocks.
The daily chronology of my posts here is out of order. We floated this stretch of river before the stretch in my previous post. Cove Canyon (see video below) is at river mile 175, while last night’s campsite (night #6, day 7, whatever) is at river mile 172. Oh well. I guess that’s what happens when you take eight months to compose the next installment of your geologic & literary masterpiece.
We are nearing the end of this adventure, but we are not done yet. We still have a few miles of basalt to pass, one hella rapid to plow through, and a final night of sleeping on the sand before we can tie a bow on this adventure.
Spoiler Alert: No one falls out.
