My friend Bri updates her blog everyday and I think it really would be almost easier to do that so I wouldn't feel like I had so much to catch up on, but let's be honest, that's just not going to happen. So, now I've got three major things to catch up on. The summer on the river, my trip to Italy and Kenya and my 18 day private trip in Grand Canyon. So here goes....

I had a great summer working in Grand Canyon. I did 9 Grand trips and I got to do 2 high water Cataract Canyon trips and they were awesome! I worked in Moab on Cat for 5 years and the highest I'd ever seen it was 35,000 CFS (cubic feet per second) and I'd only driven it at 27,000 but a lot of the boatmen from Moab weren't coming back, and I'm a pretty big deal so they asked me to come back and do it and I was stoked for the chance to see it. Moab is a little bit of a shit show, and it makes me really glad to be down in the Grand.

The water was so high that the ramp we usually rig at was under water so we put in about 40 miles upstream from where we normally do and we got to do the Daily in our J-rigs.

It was pretty awesome idea, but it was really windy and the upstream white caps blowing water in our faces made the novelty wear off pretty quick.

So after picking our peeps up by the bridge we headed off. I really like the relaxing first day of a Cat trip and we did a lot of floating and swimming because the water was so moving so fast. The next day was rapid day .... du du du.... I hadn't really been too nervous about it until we saw Big Drop 2.

 It was pretty big and scary looking but it was awesome! Here's Newty running straight through Little Niagara. The second time through the next week I got washed out of the boat in "The Claw" and the park service was there filming but they have yet to put any of the footage online. They were both really great trips, but I was ready to get out of there.

I'm totally going to be one of those people for the rest of my life talking about how I got to see Cat at high water. It was awesome.