Down the Colorado Alone
Drifting away from Lees Ferry, through the Paria Riffle, in Sunshine Lady, my 15′ Avon Professional Raft, I slid between the Kaibab Limestone that quickly ascended on both sides of the Colorado. I gripped my oars, feeling very small and insignificant. I was alone on a dark green river flowing between solid walls.
Solitude has a sound all its own, a feeling, a special vision. With each stroke on the oars, I draw myself deeper into its realm. This solitude differs distinctly from the times I’ve spent alone in my home or walking through the woods by myself. Hesitantly, I sample it. Otherworldly, risky, fascinating. Intimidating, serene, vulnerable. Yes, I’m terribly small and vulnerable, minuscule compared to this deep, green river and the walls growing up around me.
The Canyon is familiar, yet strange, like an old friend under new circumstances. An imperceptible inner excitement pulsates through my veins, compelling me to absorb every impression I feel, hear, see. My senses sharpen, taking me beyond myself, beyond my fears, into another world. Within two miles of Lees Ferry, the well-known walls have risen quickly on either side of a river that has wedged itself between solid rock. The vermillion cliffs are gone, hidden behind Kaibab Limestone that sits on top of the Toroweap Formation. The rest of the world has disappeared. It is just the Canyon, the river and me. To be here, that is all there is. Nothing more is necessary. Nothing more exists.
Days later, morning touches the earth lightly, blending the sweet smell of tamarisks with water and sand. Lazily, I look down the steep bank toward Sunshine Lady and bolt out of my sleeping bag. Forgetting the cold, which raises goose flesh on my bare skin, I dash to her. Like a cat stranded by a flood, she is perched precariously atop two boulders. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she climbed on them deliberately to play a joke on me. I approach her cautiously as if I’m afraid of scaring her off her perch. I pat her bloated side to reassure her, or myself, that the situation isn’t as bad as it appears. Fearing the worst, my fingertips reach underneath her, examining the rock for sharp ridges. I withdraw my hand and push gingerly against a tube. Much to my surprise, she slides easily down the side of the boulder, placing her more askew than she was before. Moving to the other side, I push again and with a loud slurp, she is floating.
The first large rapid after stopping at Phantom Ranch is Horn Creek. At low water Satan pops out at Horn with an ungodly cauldron of sharp rocks and huge holes. After tying my raft upstream, I walk along the boulder strewn shore to scout Horn Creek Rapid. To my delight, a full-bodied river with a glassy tongue and evenly spaced waves has drowned the dervish. At the oars again, I sway with the roller coaster swells. Complacency is about to tear a yawn out of me when a hidden current grabs the raft and hurls us toward a solid pillar of schist. My left oar is torn from my grasp. I wait for the collision but the raft stops before impact. I look for the fiend beneath the foaming boil that holds us a hair’s width from the wall.
Fear rattles my teeth as I sit motionless on my seat. An impetuous move could cause the raft to flip–or worse–wrap against the wall, pinning me underwater. I pull cautiously on the left oar. Slowly, Sunshine Lady swings out. I have it licked. Another pull and the bubble will release us. I’m sure of it, until the current catches her stern and sucks the tubes under water. I leap away from the onrushing river to balance the raft, then reach out again with the left oar and swing the raft away from the wall. I stand in waist deep water and shake my head.
“Okay, so I was a bit cocky. You didn’t have to get so riled up about it.”
The Canyon chuckles, “Gotcha!”
In the distance, against a black wall darkened by its own shadow, a fine, almost imperceptible mist ascends out of the river. Far above the mist and the occasional splash of water leaping high into the air, far above the sound that resembles the roar of fans in a stadium, I pull Sunshine Lady over to the right shore. Involuntarily, my stomach muscles tighten.
The rapid that causes the mist to hang heavy in the air is a legend. On December 7, 1966 a heavy storm moved over the North Rim and dropped fourteen inches of rain within a thirty-six hour period, turning the side canyon into a raging monster. The flood wiped out pueblo sites that had existed for nine hundred years and washed a fan of boulders into the river, giving birth to a wild child known as Crystal Rapid.
Crystal’s fame grew and for years she terrified boaters with a nightmarish hole and a rock garden. The hole snuggled against the left wall just below the mouth of Slate Creek, randomly mushrooming twenty feet above its trough before crashing in upon itself like an explosion gone awry. The rock garden, downstream from the hole, loomed in the center of the river with naked fangs of granite and schist.
****
Once upon another time, prior to my solo trip, I scouted Crystal with a group who had a lot of experience on other rivers but very little in the Canyon. While the rest of the party discussed a jarring run through smaller holes to the right of Crystal Hole, I fixed my gaze on the Highway, an unruffled ribbon of current, perhaps eight to ten feet wide, slicing between the hole and the right run. The Big guys run, the run that required precise timing and nerves of steel. The run that combined the irresistible with the terrifying.
For a long time the group was silent, then Mark declared, “The only run is far right. Anything else is suicide.”
“Yeah,” Larry agreed, “I don’t want to be anywhere near the hole.”
“What about the Highway?” I asked. Eleven pairs of eyes examined me as if I’d just arrived from outer space.
“You going for it?” Greg asked. I knew he was genuinely concerned.
I nodded.
“Want me to be the lead boat?” This would put him in a rescue position should I flip.
I nodded again.
“Where exactly are you going to go?” my friend and passenger Lisa asked.
I pointed out the route. “I’m sure I can do it.”
The others looked at me in disbelief.
I marched back to my boat, my stomach overrun with butterflies, my mouth laden with cotton fluff. I tied up the bow line and handed it to Lisa, then climbed over the gear to my seat. Sitting still, I closed my eyes, took a number of slow deep breaths and said a silent prayer to the spirit of the river.
Greg waved and rowed away from shore. When he was thirty or forty feet ahead of me, I pulled evenly on both oars, rowing Sunshine Lady to the middle of the river. Then, with a double-oar pivot, I turned the boat one hundred eighty degrees, facing the boat’s stern toward the right side of the tongue. I would row hard to gain momentum, break through two or three small holes, pivot the bow downstream and allow the Highway to carry me past Crystal Hole, giving her right edge a kiss as I went by.
It was a good plan and it went like clockwork. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I powered through the small holes. I relaxed. I allowed the bow of the raft to turn slightly downstream toward a cauldron of exploding waves. Something was wrong. Things didn’t look right. In less than a fraction of a second I recognized everything. I was too far left–on top of the current that went directly into Crystal Hole.
Sheer panic churned my brain to mush. Sprouting wings seemed the only escape. Instinctively, I pivoted the raft, turning the bow directly downstream, and lay every ounce of my one-hundred-fifteen pounds hard against the oars. Sunshine Lady responded, gliding up and over one haystack then another until we slid down the back of the final wave into the yawning curve of the Hole, which opened wide like a mythical monster and swallowed us whole.
Tons of water buried us in a liquid night, buried us with a force that shook Sunshine Lady to her thwarts and ripped the oars from my hands. I waited for the surge of water that would flip us, waited helplessly in the belly of the whale until slowly, very slowly, she regurgitated us to the topside of the hole. And eternity passed up there in the rarified air on the crest of a wave that surged beneath us. Then, with the power of a shot-put, she catapulted us downstream.
Lisa and I remained motionless for what seemed a lifetime. Then her scream pierced the air. “We ran Crystal Hole!! We did it!! We did it!!” She danced in waist deep water, laughing and screaming.
I lunged for my oars, then sat on my rowing seat trembling until a scream was wrenched from my throat and I joined her in announcing our feat to the world. “We did it! We did it, we ran Crystal Hole!”
After the worst of the waves subsided, Lisa and I hugged in ecstatic joy. Then I glanced upstream. No, Lady, we didn’t run you. You were kind and forgave our absolute audacity. Still, I laughed. “Bail!” I yelled. “Bail.”
****
The trip unfolds with brief encounters with other parties, with introspection, with knowing that I am a tiny, insignificant being in the grand scale of the Canyon. It is easy to lose time in the Canyon, easy to lose other things too, like reality and myself.
The final days take me up side canyons, through rapids in the lower Granite Gorge that kick and scream and proclaim that while they may be tucked away at the end of the Canyon they are still to be reckoned with. I give them respect; they give me safe passage. When I reach Lake Mead I ship my oars and float on a small current. Looking back over the twenty-five days that I spent mostly alone, it occurs to me that life is very much like a river trip. Some days I’ll have perfect runs, other days I’ll eddy out and flounder around in murky water before continuing on downstream, hopefully having learned a thing or two.
In 1982, Patricia (Patch) McCairen made history as the first woman to solo raft the Colorado River through Grand Canyon. Her journey began in 1975 with her first trip down the river, a life-changing experience that led her to quit her job within six months and enroll in Whitewater School. Patch soon became a guide in California, Utah, Idaho, Oregon and Arizona. During her time guiding and working in the AzRA office, she accomplished her Oct 19, 25-day long solo trip! After two decades of rafting, she ventured beyond the river, spending two winters in Antarctica and exploring New Zealand’s Eight Great Walks. She has traversed all 50 U.S. states and Canada while living in her 18-foot trailer.
Above was a brief excerpt from her adventures during that groundbreaking solo trip and her early years as a guide. For the full story, check out her inspiring book, Canyon Solitude: A Woman’s Solo Journey Through Grand Canyon, which intertwines her thrilling outdoor experiences with a deep exploration of her inner self. You can purchase a copy directly from her at PatriciaMcCairen@gmail.com for $20 plus shipping.