My Whitewater Adventures

  The only whitewater available in Chicago is when a storm is pushing huge waves onto Chicago’s beaches.  So in 1982, when our family vacation included a visit to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, we investigated the possibility of whitewater rafting when we were in Jackson, Wyoming. We went into the rafting company office to inquire about rates and availability, but were told that our youngest, Steve, then age five, was too young for the trip. He needed to be seven. There was nowhere to leave him if we went rafting, so we turned around and began to leave when the clerk told us to hang on a minute. After a brief consultation with someone else in the office, she told us Steve could go on the trip, but we'd have to keep him sitting on the bottom of the raft and hold onto him. We agreed! You can see him in the center of the raft.

The scenery was drop-dead gorgeous for the eight mile trip through the Bridger  National Forest on the Snake River which is rated as class II and III rapids, with the largest two rapids called Lunch Counter and Kahuna.  The photo above was taken by the professional photographer just as we hit the six-foot-tall standing wave of Big Kahuna Rapid.  You can see young Steve next to me in the bottom of the raft between the two girls who are in front, and Scott is seen between the two girls on the right side of the raft. When the trip was over, Steve was shaking from sitting in the cold water at the bottom of the raft for a couple hours. I asked if he had enjoyed the ride and he shivered,  “Ye..ea..ah.”  Then I asked if he'd like to do it again and he shivered, “Not… right… now.…”

I enjoyed that whitewater experience so much that I've gone whitewater rafting over 20 times since then, including a number of multi-day river expeditions where we camped each night on beaches. 

The Chattooga River serves as the border between Georgia and South Carolina and is famous as the setting for Burt Reynold’s film “Deliverance.” I rafted the river in 2002 as part of an Elderhostel adventure outing that featured two days of hiking on the Appalachian Trail and two days of rafting. Bull Sluice Rapid is classified as a class IV rapid and was the grand finale of our trip. In the first photo below we are nearly vertical as we drop ten feet straight down the waterfall section of the rapid...

...and the next photo is seconds later after our raft has turned to our left to finish the rapid (the waterfall we just went over is in the background.) You can see the raft is completely filled with water.  I’m sitting front right in the blue shirt.  (A tip: in all these photos, when we are wearing helmets, you know it’s a very dangerous river.)

The photo below is on North Carolina’s Nantahala River as we negotiate Nantahala Falls (class III rapid). We had just completed a week of kayaking the perimeter of Fontana Lake, camping each night on the shore of Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and our guide and my buddy, Greg, owner of Adventures in Florida, asked if we wanted to raft before heading home. We all said yes of course. Greg is wearing the white hat and steering from the back of the raft, and I’m in the front left position wearing my green Tilley hat.  As we hit the rapid, the fellow to my right began to lift up from his seat, about to fly out of the raft, so I reached over, grabbed his shoulder, pulled him back down, and then resumed paddling. He yelled “Thanks, Chuck!” as he put his paddle back into the water.

In 1987 the family rafted a section of the Colorado River while vacationing in Steamboat Springs. It was mostly a float trip in calm water, but we did have a few nice rapids as seen in the photo below  (Scott, Steve, and I are in the Cubs caps in the front.) What we hadn’t been told was the drive to and from the river was nearly two hours each way, so we were in a vehicle far longer than we were actually rafting the river. At least we got to see some lovely Colorado scenery on the drives!

In 2004 I took an 11 week driving trip to Alaska and rafted three different rivers while there. The photo below was from the Mendenhall River raft trip out of Juneau. I was camping in Mendenhall Lake Campground and the raft trip left from the beach near my campsite. We paddled across the lake and within a few yards of Mendenhall Glacier where the river, which is glacial melt, begins. I am in the front left position with the green Tilley hat and blue shirt. This photo was taken by a professional photographer stationed at the biggest rapid.

Another Alaska raft trip started at Spencer Glacier which is the headwaters for the Mercer River. Though the river didn't have huge rapids, we began in the iceberg filled lake created by the glacier melt and had to negotiate around the bergs. The thought in my head the whole time was recalling that most of each berg was under water, and if any chose to roll over while we were nearby, the tidal wave created would have given us a heck of a whitewater ride! A video of my Alaska adventure is available here.

One of the best rivers I’ve ever rafted was the Pacuare in Costa Rica on a two week visit with Len and Marlene and Ellen in 2010. This sixteen mile section of the river has numerous class II and III rapids. A huge group of about 15 rafts traveled together that day, the largest group I’ve ever been a part of. It was also the only time that we had whitewater kayakers accompany us as rescue personnel, plus another kayaker who served as photographer taking over 400 action photos in the rapids, which is why I have more great photos of that day than any other raft trip. And at the end of the trip, they sold us  a disk with of all the photos for a very low price. The rapids were amazing as seen in the following three photos.  

The first Pacuare River photo below shows me front right with Ellen in the middle (pink helmet) and Len and Marlene in the back. It was their first whitewater experience. Much of the area we were rafting was one of Costa Rica’s rain forests and the scenery was magnificent, and when we weren’t paddling for our lives we were able to enjoy the views.

     

In the next picture, Marlene has been thrown out of the raft and you can see her blue helmet in the whitewater on the right side of the photo as the guide gets in position to grab her and pull her back in.

In the next photo, the guide had lost control as we hit a wave train, and our raft bent in the middle as we mounted a boulder which catapulted me out. I grabbed the rope that circles the top of the raft (called the chicken rope) as I went over the side and hung on and quickly pulled myself back in, with the others helping me. One nice thing about Costa Rican rivers — the water is nice and warm, not cold from snow-melt like the rivers in Alaska and Colorado! This was the only whitewater adventure where I ever went for an unplanned swim.  On all these raft trips, the guides allow us to swim in the lulls between rapids, and in the warmer river waters, everyone goes swimming. That also gives everyone practice getting back in the raft in case you get thrown out. Again, we are all wearing helmets which testifies to the ferocity of the river. A video of this trip is here.

  

One of my favorite multi-day raft trips was six days down Oregon’s Lower Salmon River. The scenery was gorgeous and the rapids were invigorating. In addition to the rafts, we traveled with several “duckies” which are one person, inflated kayaks. In one rapid, I got a photo of the ducky going perfectly vertical as the paddler went airborne and landed in the waves just to the left of the boat. You can see her blue helmet in the photo below. She was fine and couldn’t stop laughing at her exciting experience.

Multi-day excursions allow the participants and guides to get to know each other much better, and the days on the water seem to be more relaxed and carefree than on single day trips. Water fights often develop between boats as part of the fun. A video of this trip is available here.

In 2006 and again in 2008 I canoed 120 miles down Utah’s Green River through Canyonlands National Park with Greg’s adventure company. The stark high mountain desert  scenery and colorful rock formations entranced me, and exploring the ancient Anasazi Indian cliff dwellings provided an amazing history lesson. There was no dangerous whitewater on the trip or we would have had to use rafts, not canoes. Since all our boats were heavily loaded with food, water, and all the gear required for a dozen people on an eight day expedition, the tricky riffles and class I rapids we hit had to be cautiously negotiated to prevent capsizing and losing or damaging needed gear and food. 

The Green River ends at “The Confluence” where it joins the mighty Colorado River. The next 50 miles or so down the Colorado are called Cataract Canyon and are class I to class IV rapids, which would be suicide in a canoe. So on both Green River canoe trips we were picked up at The Confluence by a jet boat down from Moab, Utah, onto which we loaded all our boats and gear and ourselves, for a 20 mph jet boat ride upriver back to Moab. Great fun! But both times I rued not being able to make the right turn at The Confluence and continue down the Colorado through Cataract Canyon. 

Then in 2010 I got my wish. It was actually a Sierra Club service project to remove  invasive tamarisk plants at The Confluence, which necessitated rafting from Moab down the Colorado, camping three nights at The Confluence and working with a National Park Service trail crew to remove the tamarisk. Then the fun way back to civilization was rafting through Cataract Canyon the next two days to Lake Powell and exiting via road at Hite Marina. 

Below you see our four rafts loaded with all our food, camping gear, water, and tools for the work project. 

The professional rafting company, O.A.R.S. provided the rafts and the licensed, experienced guides, and we didn’t even have to paddle which allowed me to take movies of the rapids and some photos like that below in one of the many rapids. That standing wave is about eight feet tall. The video can be found at YouTube.com/cmorhiker.

     

As you have probably figured out, in order to safely negotiate rapids in a paddle raft, the licensed, trained guide has to steer the raft to the proper, safe routes through the rapids, and it is the job of the paddlers to provide constant forward momentum so the guide is able to steer us. If there is no forward momentum, the raft will simply go where the current takes it which is NOT the safest route. That’s why I can’t take photos while we are in the best rapids while I’m paddling like mad to help the guide get us safely through.

Below are a few more photos. This is the Colorado River in Glenwood Canyon. I've seen the photographer set up on the bike trail that was built along I-70 through the canyon as I've biked there, and I always wanted to do the raft trip, and finally I did! I'm on the left side of the raft with my green hat.

The next photo is one I took from my raft just after we had survived this waterfall on West Virginia's New River National Gorge...

In 2009 I again rafted Wyoming's Snake River with Dave Hansen Whitewater and here we are at Big Kahuna rapid again, and I have my usual green Tilley hat. The photographer got two shots this time -- the first as we hit the rapid and the second as it completely inundated our raft! Fun!

My last trip to share is the grand-daddy of all raft trips — seven days in 1999 down the 277 miles of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, negotiating 166 rapids in a motorized pontoon boat that was about 40 feet long and hinged in two places — articulated — to bend and absorb the worst that the rapids can dish out. The Grand Canyon does not use the class I to VI rating scale used on most American rivers. Instead, it uses a 10 scale, and 47 of the rapids are rated five or above which means “high flip/swim potential.” The best way to experience the Grand Canyon is a two or three week trip in a  paddle or oar raft, but that length of trip is very expensive, so we opted for a less expensive seven day trip. We still rafted the entire canyon, but to do it that quickly means fewer stops to hike and explore and also means traveling on our Canyoneer's motorized raft as seen in the photo below as it negotiates Hermit Rapid.

We even had the opportunity to experience a rapid without a boat -- body surfing! Here I am with my feet up to bounce off any rocks. I am wearing two PFDs (portable floatation devices or life jackets), one on my butt and one worn the correct way. This was so much fun, I hiked the one-third of a mile up the Little Colorado River Canyon and surfed back down three times before we had to leave. The water from the Little Colorado is generally a remarkable robin's egg blue, but a rain storm up canyon had brought all this red sediment down so even though it looks like I'm in mud, it's just discolored water.

Rafting the Grand Canyon in one of these large boats is safer because these large craft rarely flip! I used a disposable waterproof camera so the photos are not very good, but you get a feel for the wall of water that engulfed us in the shots below. The first is Separation Rapid just as the wall of water hit the raft...

...and Hermit Falls Rapid as the water engulfs half the raft...

... and Lava Falls Rapid, one of the largest in the Grand Canyon, as the water reaches my camera.

It was an awesome trip — the scenery, the solitude while a mile deep in the Grand Canyon, wonderful hikes up side canyons, a professional crew of three who did all the cooking, sleeping under the stars each night on sand beaches, and thrilling rapids that got our hearts pounding and kept us wet and cooled off.  Bottom line: If you ever have a chance to do any whitewater rafting, I recommend you try it. I think you’ll like it!

The multi-ay trip down the San Juan River had different challenges. The river was low so more rocks were visible and created the problem of navigating around them when normally you would go over them.

Here's Government Rapid and we see guide Sara trying to maneuver the supply boat around the protruding rocks without getting hung up on the rocks.

The final photo is on the Arkansas River through Colorado's famous Royal Gorge...

The Colorado River

The Colorado River flows 1450 miles from Grand Lake on the western slope of Rocky Mountain National Park through 11 national parks in seven U. S. states and then crosses the border and flows into two Mexican states. It is the fifth longest river in our country. Dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts allow 40 million people to benefit from use of the water. The river's large flow and steep gradient provide hydro-electric power to much of the Intermountain West. It also provides amazing recreational opportunities along its length, especially in the Grand Canyon, Glen Canyon, Lake Powell, and Lake Mead.  

Over the years, I've rafted, house-boated, or kayaked 777 miles of the river on various adventures.

But most people don't know that the "Colorado River" originally did not flow through the state of Colorado! Until 1921, the Colorado River began in Utah in Canyonlands National Park where Utah's Green River met the Grand River which flowed west and south from Colorado. The name "Colorado River" for this Utah river came from its location on the Colorado Plateau.  

In 1921, Colorado U.S. Representative Edward T. Taylor argued for the name change claiming it was "an abomination" that the Colorado River started outside the borders of Colorado, and the name was changed despite the objections of Wyoming, Utah, and the United States Geological Survey (which argued that the Green River had a larger drainage basin and was much longer.)  Thus the original Colorado River, along with the former Grand River, together became the longer and current Colorado River.

The river segment in Colorado had originally been named the Grand River because its origins in Rocky Mountain National Park (as a tiny stream draining a wet meadow) fed Grand Lake and then went through Granby. Some water was collected in the Never Summer Mountains on the western slope and diverted into the 14 mile Grand River Ditch, a water diversion project which flowed over the Continental Divide at LaPoudre Pass (elevation 10,175 feet) and delivered water for eastern plains farmers. Here's a photo of the narrow, tranquil, and shallow Colorado River at its headwaters in the Never Summer Ranch...

The Grand River also influenced the naming of several down-river locales besides Grand Lake and Granby.  Miles later, the river flows through "The Canyon of the Grand River" which is now named Glenwood Canyon. One of my favorite bike trails runs through the canyon, alongside the river as part of the I-70 highway...

...and provides amazing close-up views of the rafters and white-water kayakers on the river...

 In the photo below (which was taken from the bike trail) I'm sitting in the front-left of a raft as we battle a rapid in the Colorado River... 

Next comes the town of Grand Valley which has since been renamed Parachute, Colorado. And finally, as you near the border with Utah you reach Grand Junction, so named because the Gunnison River joins the once-named Grand River at this point. The town has an amazing riverside bike trail that runs for 28 miles, connecting several river towns.

Here's another map showing the drainages into the Colorado River...

In 2007 I did a double adventure in Colorado's Royal Gorge. I'd been high above at the bridge several times but never at the bottom, so I first rode the train through the canyon and then whitewater rafted it. No photos of my raft, but here's a shot I took from the train...

Moab, Utah is on the Colorado River adjacent to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. The river is a bit tamer here but still gives a nice whitewater rafting experience. I'm in the front obscured by the water in this 2008 photo...

Below is a shot of one of my two 120 mile canoe trips down the Green River from Green River, UT to the Confluence with the Colorado River in Canyonlands National Park, at which point a jet boat from Moab picked us up and returned us up-river to Moab because canoes cannot negotiate Cataract Canyon's rapids below the Confluence (which by the way was so named by John Wesley Powell in 1869 when he made his first trip here.)  

At the end of both canoe trips, as we camped at the Confluence waiting for the jet boat, how I longed to make that right turn onto the Colorado River and continue down through the turbulent Cataract Canyon, but of course couldn't. Finally, a few years later I did! The Sierra Club offered a service project removing invasive tamarisk trees at the Confluence.  By necessity, we had to raft to the Confluence from Moab, do our work, and then exit through Cataract Canyon's rapids.  What a great raft trip that was! Here are info and photos of Cataract Canyon and the service project.

Below is a photo I took of the Colorado River from our hike high up to the mesa as we camped along the river...

...and here's a photo as we entered Lake Powell at the end of Cataract Canyon, beneath the Highway 95 bridge (also called the Hite Crossing Bridge)...

After Cataract Canyon, the Colorado River enters Lake Powell National Recreation Area, created by the Glen Canyon Dam at Page, Arizona.  Below are two aerial shots of magnificent Lake Powell and a few of its side canyons, several of which we explored by houseboat and kayak on my two houseboat adventures there (in 2003 on the western end, and in 2012 one on the eastern end of the 186 mile-long long lake.)

Kayaking the side canyons is a wonderful way to explore Lake Powell...

Fifteen miles after Lake Powell (below Glen Canyon Dam) you arrive at Lee's Ferry, the put-in for raft trips through Marble Canyon and then the Grand Canyon.  I was fortunate to raft the entire Grand Canyon in 1999 and here are a few photos and comments.

Finally, in 2002, I kayaked 50+ miles from the base of Hoover Dam (Lake Mead Recreation Area) through the Black Canyon/Lake Mohave portion of the Colorado River.  Here are some photos and info from that 5 day kayaking/camping Elderhostel program.

My Most Unusual Hikes

I began hiking with the Boy Scouts back in the 1950s, generally in Schiller Woods which was the closest Cook County forest preserve to our homes, and I quickly realized I had an affinity for the woods -- I was never frightened or intimidated, but rather felt at peace and at home in the wild. 

I now live within a 15 minute drive of a dozen forest preserve hiking trails, and add another fifteen minutes to the driving time and the number of trails more than doubles. During the late fall, winter, and early spring, our little hiking group hikes these trails...

 ...and as the snow depth approaches 10 inches, we switch to snowshoes. 

Besides great exercise and scenery, another fringe benefit of hiking is spotting wildlife such as the deer in the photo below taken at Lakewood Forest Preserve, but we’ve also spotted coyotes, sand hill cranes, oppossum, as well as the usual ground critters like rabbits and squirrels.

When the group isn’t available, I’ll go off to the woods on my own. In the late 1990s, I’d sing in the church choir at the 8 am service, and after the service, when my friends would ask me if I was heading to the adult Sunday School class I’d reply each week, “No, I’m  going to my other sanctuary for more worship.” And when they’d ask where that was, I’d reply, “Deer Grove Forest Preserve!” 

Deer Grove was the first forest preserve acquisition by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County in 1916. At 1800 acres it is quite sizable, and over the years I got to know every trail. In the winter when the foliage was dormant, I often bushwhacked off-trail, exploring every trail-less portion of the preserve. I even wrote to the forest preserve district for a map of the woods (this was before the Internet) and they sent me a map of the cross country skiing trails. I then added to their map all the secondary and tertiary trails that I had discovered in my explorations and shared my map with interested friends.

Though my hiking began as a local activity, it expanded nationwide as I adventured in national parks and national forests. Here are a few of the more unusual hikes I’ve taken across the country.

My buddy, Len, and I backpacked in Colorado a dozen times, but coming from Chicago with its altitude below 800 feet, we had to acclimate to high altitude before attempting strenuous Rocky Mountain trails. So we camped three nights at Great Sand Dunes National Park (back then a national monument) and each day we hiked in order to acclimate to the altitude of 8000 feet.

The first day we’d hike the area around the campground and over to the visitor center. The second day we’d hike the beautiful Mosca Pass Trail, about 8 miles round trip with an elevation gain of 1520 feet. 

The third day we’d hike to the top of the tallest dune, 800 feet up, though slogging through loose sand made it seem much higher. No trails up the dunes, of course, so we had to plan our route carefully to reach the tallest dune peak the easiest way.

I've backpacked once in Utah’s Zion National Park, but I’ve been to this magnificent national park four times for camping, biking, photography, and day hiking. One of my all-time favorite day hikes is The Narrows of the Virgin River. There is NO trail here, just the river, so hikers walk in the water with occasional dry spits of land. As seen in the two photos below, the scenery is unlike usual hiking locales. When there is a large rain storm up-canyon, even dozens of miles away, the Narrows is closed by rangers because it becomes extremely dangerous and flash floods have killed hikers in the canyon because the canyon walls are unclimbable and there is no escape route if you are caught in the canyon. 

Rocks in the river are very slippery so care must be taken when hiking. At the start, dozens of hiking sticks (tree branches) are available and I used one and returned it when I finished. Hiking with a staff gives you a third point of contact with the ground and provides stability. You can see all are using the staffs.  

I hiked about three miles upriver and then back, taking about four hours. Water depth ranged from knee depth in most places to nearly waist deep. The depth of course varies day by day depending on rainfall upriver. The first time I started this hike, I had my very expensive Nikon SLR camera around my neck, and after hiking about ten minutes and nearly slipping a couple of times, I realized how foolish I was being. If I fell and got the camera wet or hit it against a rock, it would be a very expensive mistake. So I ended the hike, reversed direction back to dry land, and the next afternoon returned with my two waterproof cameras, one for stills and the other a video camera. I also left my cell phone in my van to protect that investment.  My video of this hike is available on my YouTube page.

Another “wet hike I enjoyed was in southern Florida’s Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. “Strand” in Florida means swamp, and we were hiking ankle to thigh-deep through a fresh water swamp forest in the Big Cypress/Everglades area looking for wild orchid plants as one of the activities on a Sierra Club kayaking adventure. 

The Fakahatchee is the “Amazon of North America” and is considered the orchid capital of the continent with 44 native orchids. It is basically a forest that had flooded. The “floor” of the swamp provides solid footing so there was no muddy goo to worry about. Fortunately our guide was an expert because we wandered around seemingly aimlessly for a couple hours looking at orchid plants as well as the rest of the abundant flora, and I was completely disoriented and had no idea of where we were or how to eventually get out of the swamp .

Another unusual day hike was on Alaska's Root Glacier deep in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, the largest of all our national parks. This was a two week Sierra Club outing which included two days of camping in the park in late September which was already getting pretty chilly. In fact, my water bottles froze in my tent overnight! We had one free day to relax or go on an adventure. A few lazed in camp, several took a plane trip to see the glaciers from the air, but a couple of us  chose to hike Root Glacier with a guide as seen in this photo on the right. What a great experience! We had crampons (metal plates with spikes on the bottom) attached  to our hiking boots which allowed us to scale the glacier...

...and to investigate various chasms in the glacier to see the deep blue coloration caused by hundreds of years being compressed by tons of ice.

Canyon de Chelly National Monument (pronounced de-SHAY) covers 83,000 acres in northeastern Arizona and is entirely owned by the Navajo Nation. 

I spent five days camping and hiking there as part of another Sierra Club outing. By law, licensed Navajo guides must accompany all visitors. Our guide grew up in the canyon and we camped on land his family owned. Our day hikes took us through the entire canyon and twice up to the rim and down again via very interesting routes as seen in these next two photos...

The “stairs” we are climbing below were chiseled out of the rock over a thousand years ago by the local Native American residents. 

Petroglyphs and pictographs adorned many walls, and the ruins of numerous structures were also abundant as seen here...

This area was inhabited for over 5000 years by Puebloans, Hopi, Navajos, and Mexicans. Our guide and his family prepared traditional Navajo meals and demonstrated how they sheered their sheep, made wool thread, dyed the wool with soil and plant matter, and used homemade looms to craft magnificent rugs and clothing. Very interesting!

The Tongas National Forest is the largest of our national forests and it occupies the coastal land surrounding Alaska’s Inside Passage. I made  use of their campgrounds just outside both Ketchikan and Juneau and hiked several lovely trails in this temperate rain forest. This area averages over 150 inches of rainfall annually, so flora is prolific in the forest.  Obviously, dirt trails found in wet hilly terrain don’t fare well, so miles of my hiking were therefore on wooden stairways or raised wooden walkways, often with old asphalt roofing tiles nailed to the surface to provide traction when the surface was moist. 

As someone who has done 30+ volunteer trail projects which included building bridges and elevated walkways, I appreciated all the time, effort, and money that had obviously been expended to create these trails! (See my stories about trail work here.)

Badlands National Park in South Dakota (below) was the opposite environment — extremely arid. Its nearly quarter million acres contain rugged beauty and striking geologic deposits, and hiking among these formations of eroded buttes, pinnacles, and spires is breathtaking. They are also fun and challenging to climb. 

The colonies of prairie dogs that inhabit the area are especially interesting to observe. I have backpacked, camped, and done trail work in the Arizona desert several times, but I’ve only done day hikes in the Badlands because my visits were always brief since I was always enroute to Yellowstone National Park, where I have backpacked, hiked, and camped extensively on my ten visits there.  

Another unusual hike in Yellowstone is to the bottom of Yellowstone’s Lower Falls, the final part of which is this extremely long and steep metal staircase seen here...

This was quite an experience and is rewarded by this view of the thunderous 309 foot waterfall. If you look closely, a small rainbow can be seen near the bottom. The noise is deafening as the water crashes on the rocks. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is 1000 feet at its deepest and these stairs take you down many hundreds of feet to an overlook where you can see the falls...

The stairs and railings are wet and slippery from the constant mist, of course, so care must be exercised, and the trudge back up is quite strenuous, but that pretty much guarantees that this route will be less crowded than trails to the other overlooks because far fewer people are willing (or physically able) to accomplish this hike. 

Another strenuous and dangerous hike was in Havasu Canyon, a side canyon of the Grand Canyon west of the national park, located on land owned by the Havasupai Tribe. Their name means “people of the blue-green waters” which refers to the beautiful Havasu Creek that runs through their canyon as it travels down to the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon proper. We visited three of the four waterfalls created by the Havasu, and the third, Mooney Falls, was the most challenging because the trail to the bottom of the falls involves climbing 200 feet down to the bottom of the falls through two passageways chiseled out of the rock by miners (notice the people on the "trail")...

Here you again see hikers descending via ladders and chains and handholds to the bottom. A sign at the top says “proceed at your own risk,” and they’re not kidding! 

Here you see Scott, Steve, and Len on their way down,

 and Scott, Steve, and I with the falls in the background below. 
            

Hanging Lake in Colorado’s Glenwood Canyon within the White River National Forest is another marvelous day hike. Long ago, this 1.5 acre lake dropped from the land above due to a geologic fault and became a magnificent scenic location that supports a thriving hanging plant  community which has been granted National Landmark status. The hike up is a strenuous mile and a half in length with an elevation gain of some 1055 feet. 

You’ll see lots of people turn around and not complete the hike, but if you can make it to the top, the scenery at the lake is awesome as seen in the photo below left. When you arrive at the lake, you will also notice a sign saying “Spouting Rock” and pointing up a side trail that takes you up to this waterfall that feeds the lake below.

People often linger for a long time, just soaking up the  atmosphere, and you’ll see people taking photos from all sorts of vantage points, trying to capture the beauty. In fact, you’ll probably being doing that, too!

 One of the most beautiful places I’ve hiked was Antelope Canyon, a pair of slot canyons on Navajo land just outside Page in northern Arizona. Visitors can simply walk into Upper Antelope Canyon with no stairs involved, but it requires a bumpy, dusty ride up a dry sandy riverbed on a Navajo tour truck aptly nicknamed a  “shake and bake.” Here are a couple shots...

Lower Antelope Canyon is right along the highway just out of town, but the entrance to the canyon is quite unique as seen in the photo below where we are seemingly entering a crack in the earth. 

The stairs are right there so it isn’t dangerous, but as you walk the half-mile or so within the slot canyon, you keep descending, and at the end you have about three stories of metal stairs to climb to emerge back on top, and then you hike back to the parking lot. As you can readily observe, the scenery is breathtaking! This is a canyon, not a  cave, so a bit of sunlight enters from the narrow slot high above your head, and like Upper Canyon, the lighting changes as the sun traverses the sky...

...making the rocks appear to change color.  If you look closely, you can see bits of sunlight in these two photos. More beams of sunlight are found in Upper than Lower Antelope Canyon since it has a wider opening at its top. These two magical places will enthrall you as you discover new formations and colorations around every bend. 

The acoustics are phenomenal and Navajo flautists play their handmade flutes for you as you travel through Lower Antelope Canyon. Large rainstorms can put water back into the creek that formed the canyon, forcing the closure of the two sites. You wouldn’t want to be in there when flash floods are possible! As  I recall, the Upper tour was $50 and the lower tour $25 (more for the one when they have to drive you to the location.) Both are wonderfully scenic and both require you to join a tour with a Navajo guide. I preferred the Lower Canyon because it was more strenuous and challenging because of the stairways. It was longer and narrower and had places with tricky footing, and I liked the more intimate closeness of the tight walls and the formations you encountered.

I also hiked slot canyons on several paddling expeditions. Below is the White Cliffs area in Montana’s section of the Missouri River, made famous by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The canyon was an upside-down “Y,” with the two prongs closest to the river. We hiked up the right side, 

...then climbed and crossed over the intervening mountain...

...before returning down the other prong of the “Y.” The scenic white cliffs were awesome and provided interesting climbing and hiking.

Below are photos showing some of the moves needed to continue hiking up some of these narrow, fun slot canyons when you encounter obstacles that blocked your progress. Below left you see me in a side canyon on Lake Powell in Arizona, using the chimney move to scale a boulder clog impeding our progress. 

The next two photos are side canyons we hiked when we kayaked down the Colorado River starting below Hoover Dam. This area is called the Lake Mead Recreation Area and is operated by the National Park Service Here is a woman chimneying to get above a small waterfall...

 In this area they have installed a rope to assist us...

... and elsewhere a 20 foot ladder to assist hikers in hiking up the side canyons. 

Here they placed sandbags to hold the naturally occurring hot spa-type water in a pool for people to relax in as they passed by.  We were tempted to spend some time there, but an older "gentleman" was there already, and he was soaking in the nude, and perhaps in an attempt to flaunt his obvious, wrinkled shortcomings, he stood up as we arrived. We kept hiking and had a good laugh where we were out of earshot.

Several times, as we reached the mountain top where the slot canyons began, we found petroglyphs and pictographs made over a millennium earlier by Native peoples who had lived in the area. 

Finally, on a rafting expedition down Utah’s San Juan River, we left our rafts and hiked up the Honaker Trail (seen bottom left) with one of the guides. 

Then, after enjoying the vista from the top of the mountain, enjoying the river far below us...

...we hiked down the other side, where the other three guides waited after bringing the rafts around the ox-bow of the river (which is a U-shaped bend where the river turns back on itself and returns on the other side of the mountain.) At the top, we saw the remnants of a rock house that had been build in the 1890s by a miner named Honaker who had been mining in the area during Utah’s gold rush. I always find it interesting when the guides relate the history and culture of the areas we were paddling and hiking and I try to imagine what life had been like here back in those days.