Grand Canyon kayaking
November-December 2020
Sitting is not my forte.
And as much as I enjoyed my stint of whitewater kayaking around 2010-2011, I’d managed to never go on an overnight river trip.
For years my friends have preached the virtues of Grand Canyon raft trips to me. For years I’ve had the good fortune of being invited on Grand Canyon river trips. And for years I’ve found ways to avoid ever going on a Grand Canyon river trip, because I was so afraid of how disinterested I’d be, how out of shape I’d get, and how much I would disappoint myself and my friends for not having the life changing experience they all seem to have on that stretch of the Colorado River.
But 2020 wasn’t a normal year. I hadn’t gone on any substantive adventure all year, and I was feeling a bit cooped up in my house. When my sister Chelsea invited me to join her and 13 strangers on a 21-day trip in late fall, it was finally time to go. Because if I kept saying “no” to invitations to raft the Grand Canyon, I’d never go. Plus, running Rim to Rim to Rim the day before put-in was bound to make me appreciate my soreness for at least a few days at the beginning of our river trip.
A week before departure, my friend Trent was listening to me lament the fact that I had to sit on a raft for three weeks. He told me to kayak the river, instead. “But I sold all my kayak gear when I quit kayaking. Remember those close-calls that I had?”
”You can borrow mine,” Trent said.
Little did I know how drastically my watercraft of choice would change my experience on the river.
As the only person who kayaked the entirety of our trip, I often found myself 100+ yards ahead of our group of rafts, engulfed in thoughts of how nice it was to not only get out on a proper adventure while maintaining covid safety and protocol (we all were tested and quarantined prior to the trip), but also how much I appreciated my privilege and opportunity to completely log offline, ignore politics, covid, and elections, and simply be immersed in the natural cathedral that is the Grand Canyon.
I’m also a pretty terrible kayaker these days, as it turns out. Trent’s boat was quite large for me, making it very difficult to flip over but even harder for me to roll back upright. That led to me swimming, I mean “wet-exiting” my kayak eight times throughout the trip, and only completing a handful of successful rolls in rapids.
After 21 days, our group of 15—which started at strangers—enjoyed a night float from Separation Canyon to Pearce Ferry to end our trip. I came very close to attempting an UltraKayakingEndurance ending by paddling beside the rafts all the way through the night. I’m very glad that I didn’t do that.
The life-changing experience that so many of my friends have on the Grand Canyon doesn’t seem to be what I’m taking away from it. Yes, it was beautiful—it was like the very best part of the Southern Utah desert, in every direction, everywhere you looked, at any given time, for 280 miles and three weeks—but as a decidedly “not water person,” it wasn’t that which kept me excited. Instead, it was the opportunity to safely and responsibly go on what I now consider to be the best covid-responsible-adventure possible in the United States in 2020.
