Last trip... phew!

The summer is officially over. Well, not really because I still have Guatemala, but the river season anyway. If all of my trips could've been this easy, I could do it forever. I swamped for this guy Tom, who I hadn't met before, but ran a super relaxed really fun trip, and the other boat was RD and Tony, who I've known for at least 5 years, and we wrestle and fight like they're my brothers. I'm not quite sure I





could handle this job if I didn't have my 4 younger brothers to prepare me for living in this world of boys. It was really fun. Sometimes we'll be cooking and I'll look around and see our peeps and I had almost forgotten that there are other people on the trip. It's pretty funny.


But don't let me fool you, it's not a fun job and it's hard work all the time.... well, sorta, while we were rigging the ranger came and picked us up and we got to go up and see the Glen Canyon dam which is 15 miles upstream and even though I have mixed feelings about the dam, it was pretty cool to see it up close at the bottom. The water is super clear and cold coming out of the bottom. That first night it poured at Lee's Ferry and most of us slept in the van and woke up to some beautiful clouds. Because of the rain, almost all of the side streams were flashing so we had clear water for like 5 miles, then it was dirty the rest of the trip. You can see two side streams bringing in tons of sediment.And it was like this the rest of the time. Even Havasu that flashed and those people had to be airlifted out a couple weeks ago was still dirty, but it was cool, because the water was almost white. The people were ridiculously solely concrete walkers and it was too hard for most of them to even get half way in to Havasu. But I always like seeing the side streams flash and seeing everything differently.



On the last night we had a little fire show.... and if you're interested, here's what you'll need:


finish the last of the watermelon from lunch. (I happily took this job)


Then a boy who likes to play with fire, paper towels, lighter fluid, a most importantly, Frito'sStuff all the lighter fluid soaked paper towels and Frito's into the watermelon, light and send down stream. This one lasted surprisingly long without tipping over. (Also, in this picture, you might notice the back of that boat looks a little weird. That reminds me that it wasn't all fun. We did have some adventure. RD got sucked into a wall below Phantom Ranch and the tube popped. We had to take another section of the boat and cut the whole bigger to put it inside that tube. I also hit the wall pretty hard, but luckily on a different part of the boat so it was OK. Tom let me drive most of the rapids and it was awesome. Oh, yeah, and this German guy on the 3 day trip fell and got a compound fracture in his finger and had to be helicoptered out at night. Luckily Tom speaks German or it would've been way more of a disaster. Hopefully some of our peeps will send some pictures of it landing right in the middle of our beach, and I can put some on here ... see, it's not just all fun :)


Since it was my last trip of the season, I tried to take some pictures of the Vishnu Schist. It's really cool, dark, super old (about 2 billion y.o.) rock with threads of Granite in it. They didn't turn out too great, but here's a couple to give you an idea. Ever corner is something else cool. I really love it down there. It pushes up from underneath the regular not so old rock (only 600 million y.o.) Here's some fluting. It happens in the sedimentary rock on occasion, but mostly in the schist, and I love it. My pictures really don't do it justice. Tom is a photographer and you should check out his site, then look through the action until you see the guy climbing in a blue life jacket. It's sweet and it's way better than my pictures.
Overall, it was a great trip to end the season on.



On the way home we stopped at a really cool hot spring I'd never even heard of that's right off the freeway by Meadow and here's a couple pictures from there.

So, I've got a week now, to try to pull my life together enough to be able to leave for 6 weeks. Until next adventure .....