An eight-ton motorized raft chugged down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Inside, I sat with two new Australian friends. Our seats were called “the bathtub” — and it’s obvious why. Every minute or two, we entered another set of giant, heaving rapids. We shivered in puddles of water, even though the air temperature was about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. We were also shrieking, laughing our heads off, and getting sillier by the minute as we tried kicking the rapids away from us with our soaked shoes.
This is what a typical summer day rafting through the Grand Canyon with Wilderness River Adventures (WRA) is like. Our seven-day trip started at Lees Ferry and covered 188 miles of sometimes roiling, sometimes calm river. We had the best imaginable view of the Grand Canyon — from the bottom up. We listened to the river all day and night as we stargazed, marveled at waterfalls, and spotted cute lizards doing pushups.
Could a Grand Canyon rafting trip be for you? Read on to find out.
Commercial vs. private
Potential guests must choose between joining a commercial group or getting a private permit and bringing their own raft. For most people, a commercial tour is the better option. The Colorado River rapids are huge. Unless you’re an experienced rafter and a wiz at reading currents, don’t even think about leading your own trip. Plus, permits are hard to get. If you enter the private rafting lottery system, you might wait years for your chance.
If you opt for commercial, there are a few options. I went with the cushiest choice — a seven-night trip on a motor-driven raft. The 35-foot-long raft included two inflatable pontoons to help keep it afloat. WRA also offers oar-powered boats, either rowed by the guide or by all the participants. The company’s trips last from three and a half days to two weeks. The shortest trips entail a grueling 10-mile hike into the canyon to meet the rafts.
“It has been voted one of the number one outdoor recreation vacations in the world for multiple years running,” Richard Adkins, our trip leader, told me. “It’s crazy because it’s a very small number of people who can actually do this. We only let 18-23,000 people come through here a year.”
Adkins is in his 29th year as a raft guide, so he has shared canyon views with thousands of people. “The way to see the Grand Canyon is definitely from the bottom up, instead of from the top down. People want to experience the whitewater but they also want to see the Grand Canyon. And a lot of people just want to say that they did it.”
A typical day on the Colorado River
Our two-raft party could accommodate up to 24 guests and four guides. My group had only 17 guests, so there was lots of space to spread out. We ranged in age from 10 to early 70s and included four Australians, two Canadians, and 11 Americans.
On the first day, a bus took us from the rafting company office in Page, Arizona, to our put-in spot at Lees Ferry. There, we had the first of several orientations, focusing on how to get on and off the raft and where and where not to sit. We learned about the wettest places on the boat (the bathtub and the shower, the spot on the front side where water shoots up between the raft and pontoon and comes down on your head) and the driest (elevated seats in the back called the chicken coop).
Our days on the river started early — coffee call was at 5:30 a.m., and we were on the raft every day by 7:30 a.m. The days began cool and shaded by the canyon’s enormous rock walls. Many of us wore rain gear to protect us from the cold rapids until the day heated up.
We’d cruise along for a couple of hours, alternating between rapids and flat water, gazing at the canyon’s incredible rock formations. Each day included pit stops (where we’d look for discreet places to pee in the river) and a lunch stop where the staff expertly set up a table with elaborate sandwich fixings, chips, and cookies. Some days featured optional side hikes to waterfalls, our guides offered bite-sized bits of geology and history info here and there. Sometime in the afternoon, Adkins would choose our camp for the night. Since campsites are on a first-come, first-served basis, we never knew where we’d end up.
Camp life
Once we arrived at camp, everybody staked out the best campsites. Some campgrounds had areas where a couple or family could have a bit of privacy. At others, people were lined up in a row or otherwise close to their neighbors.
After choosing a site, we made fire lines off the raft for a massive unloading. We passed the cots, camp chairs, dry bags, and kitchen gear from person to person until it was all on the shore. At our campsites, we set up rickety blue cots and made our beds with a sheet and a sleeping bag. We had some free time to read, write, socialize, and huddle under bushes and tiny rock ledges for shade.
As we descended into the canyon, it got hotter and hotter. Adkins’s advice on climate control was: “If you get too hot, get in the river. If you get too cold in the river, get out.” There was a lot of getting in and out of the river. We also experienced a lot of sand, as frequent sandstorms blew it into every crevice.
At mealtimes, the crew cooked amazing dishes. These are some hardworking people. I don’t know how they run the rafts all day, keep guests safe, and then whip up elaborate meals in the camp kitchen, from fish tacos to Dutch oven brownies. And they accommodated many diets. Our trip had a vegan, a vegetarian, a pescatarian, a couple of lactose-intolerant people, and a diabetic. Nobody went hungry.
Elimination was also a big topic of discussion around the camp. All solid waste must be packed out, so we had mini toilets that had to be packed on and off the boat at every campsite. Also, we weren’t allowed to pee anywhere except directly into the river or in a bucket at camp. This was to prevent the campsites from smelling like giant litter boxes.
In the evenings, we all pulled our camp chairs into a circle. Our group included a family of seven — three siblings, a spouse, two kids, and a teenage cousin — with a long family history of rafting the Grand Canyon. This was the first time for the kids but the second to fourth time for the four adults.
Fellow traveler Megan Dukes first came as a child and fondly remembers having a family adventure together. “My favorite part was the evenings when we sat around, and I got to hang out with my cousins that I don’t get to see that often,” she said. “And being on the boat with my family.”
After a few days, everybody felt like family. Spurred on by our youngest members, the evenings were soon full of fun. We faced off in a cutthroat card game called Egyptian rat screw and a roleplaying game called Ultimate Werewolf.
Highlights of a Grand Canyon rafting trip
Rafting through the Grand Canyon is an incredible experience. For me, the scenic highlight was a side trip to the Little Colorado River, which is a milky aqua color. We parked the rafts and walked a short distance to where the Colorado meets the Little Colorado. You can see where they connect when the aqua stops and turns dark green. We put our life jackets on like diapers (very inelegant) so they’d cushion our bums as we floated down the Little Colorado. It was some of the most beautiful water I’ve ever seen.
My guides were another highlight. I stayed on the raft piloted by Shyanne Yazzie, who is part of the Diné (aka Navajo) tribe. Her swamper, or assistant, was Kim Bighorse, who is Apache. Eleven tribes once lived in the Grand Canyon, Yazzie told me, though only the Havasupai remain. She and Bighorse greatly enriched the trip by sharing family stories and the traditional interp. Today, most of the rapids that bear people’s names commemorate white guys, so obviously, some stories are missing. I felt lucky to be guided through the Grand Canyon by Yazzie and Bighorse.
Then there were the stars. I slept better than I expected on my cot, but it still wasn’t super comfortable. So, I’d often wake up in the middle of the night. For a moment, I’d forget where I was. Then, I’d open my eyes and be blown away by the stars, moonlight, and enormous canyon walls.
As Yazzie told me, “I feel like everybody should come down and raft the Grand Canyon at least once in your life. Because it will change your life and it will also open your eyes to new possibilities and adventure. Take a pause in your busy life and just come down and enjoy this grand beauty that not a lot of people get to see.”
