If a guided rafting trip were a Las Vegas casino, the paddle boat would be the craps table. That’s the noisy hub in the center of the room where every winning number rolled is met with shouts, cheers and high fives. And with every rapids successfully passed, those in the paddle boat shout, cheer and raise their paddles in an elevated high five.
I spent 11 of 15 days in the paddle boat on a Colorado River rafting trip through the Grand Canyon in September and October of 2023 – from Lee’s Ferry to Diamond Creek. I spent the other days as a rider in the relative calm of oar boats, a guide pushing us downstream, answering questions on stream flow, the geology and history of the canyon – the sort of conversation you might have with a dealer and others sitting around a blackjack table.
And, if this were a Las Vegas casino, I would abide by the spoken rule that “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” But that was never said on our rafting trip so I feel free to tattle on the paddle boat.
The women on the trip outnumbered men, 2 to 1, counting the clients, the guides and the accompanying string quartet. So I was in the paddle boat some days with five strong women paddlers and a female guide, the strongest of us all. The conversations often were on the distaff side of things. On the second day, one of the women complained that the personal flotation device (PFD) felt more like a corset than a life preserver. Another brought up that she had been in a play (wedding or some other event) that required outdated female undergarments, including a corset. Someone had to put a leg up against her back to pull the laces tight enough, she said. That was too much for her and she preceded without the corset. She did mention that the corset pushed her boobs so high they looked like balloons. This led to a discussion on huge boobs. One said that her mom had huge breasts, and she prayed that she did not get them. Prayer answered. The corset rejector remembered her mother’s breasts as “humongous watermelons,” and she also prayed to not get them. Another prayer answered in part. Maybe cantaloupes or beefsteak tomatoes. Speculation surfaced on whether there is a goddess responsible for boob prayers.
The next day the conversation turned to menopause. I had little to say.
Neither did I participate in the effort to liven up the mnemonic device for remembering the layers of rocks that make up the Grand Canyon. Our crowd needed something more lively than, “Know Canyon History. See Rocks Made By Time.” Someone, maybe on one of the oar boats, or in another time and place, had a more sexy version: “Kissing Takes Commitment. However, Sex Requires More Breath (and) Tongue.” But our paddle boat had a haiku writer, who challenged us to write a bawdy mnemonic device in haiku (three lines, 17 syllables with first and last lines in five syllables and the last line related but coming from a different, and surprising, direction). By the end of the day, the boat had come up with “Kink Takes Commitment. Horny Sluts Really Mingle. Bootydelicious (Times? Thoughts? Tasks? My choice: Tits – which I did not say out loud.) A work in progress worthy of sleeping on it.
Next day, a paddler finished it this way: “Kink Takes Commitment. Horny Sluts Really Mingle. Bondage Titillates.” She credited that to “what I think about under the stars.”
Worth an elevated high five.
While I can remember the mnemonic devices, I cannot remember what they stood for. That’s like remembering “A Rat In The House May Eat The Ice Cream” or “George Eliot’s Old Grandfather Rode A Pig Home Yesterday,” but not remembering what they spelled.
If you have come this far, you might think I was hanging out with a rough crowd. However, we had conversations that could have been on an oar raft. Water politics on the Colorado River and when the seven states and 40 million people depending on it will reach an agreement to stop using more water than there is in the river. History and geology (and not just ribald mnemonic devices) of the canyon. Water levels. Down to 5,000 to 9,000 cubic feet per second as opposed to 18,000 to 20,000 earlier in the summer. More rocks but the calmer parts of river moving more slowly. Keep paddling to get to tonight’s camping spot before dark.
And we talked about the rapids.
Before each set of rapids, the guides would explain what to expect and how to get through them. My wife described those explanations as, “There’s a pour-over on the right, rocks on the left and a hole in the middle. We’ll try to get through it.”
The paddle boat guide had descriptive words for the rapids. Splashy, which could be applied to a rapid or a day: “Better wear your splash gear today.” Munchy. Crunchy. Munchy not as bad as crunchy, which is often on the top of a wave and you should paddle “forward fast.”
We especially talked about Horn Creek Rapids – after they fished us out of the river.
The rapids was 90 miles into our trip, and our guide said that rather than splitting the “horns” (rocks) we would go to one side of them. The rapid drops nine feet and is rated eight or nine in the Grand Canyon style, which would be a 4 or 4.5 for the rest of the rafting world. We went into the rapids pulling hard, made the first wave and met the second one.
Because of my hearing loss, I always sat at the back of the boat near the guide so I could hear her commands. So when the boat went vertical, I found myself lying on my back in the river, looking up through the waves, my head underwater and my feet still wedged in the boat. Deciding I needed to be in the boat or out, I pulled my feet out, or maybe the river did, sank and hit something, either the river bottom or another paddler, as all six of us went overboard. I floated to the top of the waves, trying to catch a breath between them until I reached calmer waters.
At that point, my plan was to float down the river until I found a sandy beach to wash up on. But by then, several boats were around the swimmers. The paddle boat went by, but I missed it. Could not get to the second one that went by. Then I saw an oar boat coming toward me with my wife sitting in the front, waving and shouting at me, something like, “Get your ass in here!”. So I started swimming toward her boat. The guide threw out a safety line, pulled me to the side of the raft, grabbed my PFD straps and lifted me in one-handed. Then they dumped all of us back in the paddle boat, and the all female crew (except for he/him me) kept going. The guide had remained in the boat.
“Once all of you left, the boat straightened out and zipped past the wave,” she said.
The river waterboarded and frisked me. Lost my new hat, my glasses, the Croakie attached, my Do-rag that I have had forever (“Ride It Like You Stole It”), my bandana out of my back pocket and my sunscreen from my front pocket. The part of my hearing aid that goes behind my ear was left tangling but the earpiece stayed stuck in my ear hole. Overnight in magic rice from the kitchen got it working again. Worst of all, according to the guides who told us what to do if we fell in the river, I lost my paddle. Fortunately, someone else found it and returned it to me.
That night in camp, I asked our guide what the official guides’ declaration was on our flipping. She said we were rowing strongly and the boat was on the path she wanted it to be. But it was a small boat versus a big wave. “A tsunami of a wave,” as she said.
A virtual “humongous watermelon” of a wave, munchy on the way up, crunchy on the top and very, very splashy.
A rare thing on our trip: Evenly split between the men and women.
Here is a video posted on YouTube of Horn Creek Rapids. I did not film this as I was too busy swimming.
