Colorado River
Grand Canyon
July 2006


Crew Itinerary The Trip


I created a slide show from the first round of pictures people sent around. It was designed to have a narrator talking about the pictures it contains. I wanted to get it on the internet so people could look at it even without any narration though. So I put it into Power Point and had that program create a web page for it. Here that is if you want to look at it. It will probably stay here until I get the rest of the page built.

The section below is a little on the logistics of planning the trip. I am including it here mainly because I found it very difficult to get advise on how to plan such a long trip for so many people. While I had organized many week-long trips for ten or twelve, those were around 60 people-days on the river. This trip was 288 people-days - many times larger than anything I had done before.

This "Planning" section may be boring for many, so if you want a river-log or things of that natrue check out the links at the top of this page.

Planning

I e-mailed Andrew, who I met on a WEA backpacking course two years ago, in January to let him know it was time to apply for rafting permits. He responded by asking me if I knew anyone who could pilot some boats for his friend's Grand Canyon private trip in July. I quickly replied "Oooh, oooh, me, me, me." I suggested that I plan the trip and do all of our food to save on costs. The permit holder had never met me, but trusted Andrew's judgment enough to trust me enough to get the trip organized. I immediately started getting the logistics planned.

The first thing to do was to get the crew put together. There were 16 spots available on the permit. Leo, the permit holder, invited his wife and two daughters as well as a long-time friend from his teaching career and his wife. Leo was Andrew's graduate advisor, and he would invite along two more of his former graduate students. Andrew's wife would be there, as would his brother and sister-in-law. One of Andrew's friends with paddling experience would also come. That left three positions for me to fill with competent rowers. I was one and Larry was another. Scott, who I'd met the year before on my week-long trip on the Green through Desolation and Gray Canyons.

A few weeks later, when everyone had had time to arrange vacation time and a deposit was due, Andrew's sister-in-law and one of Leo's daughters had found they could not get enough time off for the entire trip. They would hike out from Phantom Ranch. We were able to invite two more experienced paddlers for the 'post-Phantom' half of the trip: a good friend of Andrew's brother and Scott's wife Dana - who had also been on my Green River trip the year before. Our crew was now complete. Check out the gang here.

I would bring my 16-foot NRS River Cat, while Larry would bring his and Scott would pilot my dad's. After speaking to several people about our needs, I opted for six rafts. We would have to rent three. Concerns about the group's ability to pilot all six created a lot of discussion among us. We ended up settling on six after Leo took a practice run (he'd not been rafting in quite a long time) and felt good about his ability. This would alleviate any concerns about having enough hauling capacity. In addition to these six boats, we would have four hard-shell kayaks and one inflatable kayak along. Two of the hard-shells would be in the water before Phantom, but the other two would ride on rafts until Day 8. The IK was just along for fun.

I contacted several companies that offer outfitting services and several more shuttle services. The two biggest are Canyon REO (River Equipment Outfitters) and PRO (Professional River Outfitters). But there are plenty of others. These include: Downstream Shuttle & Supply, Moenkopi Riverworks, and Concina del Rio. I decided on REO based on their ability to give us what we needed and their flexibility in working with us - especially on the shuttle. They answered all of my questions. I scheduled a shuttle bus - along with storage for our cars - and made reservations for two 20-foot rafts and one 18-foot, as well as a bunch of ancillary gear. We would end up renting our groover system, sattelite phone, water filter, and a bunch of pfd's and helmets.

After getting the basic plan worked out I started working on the menu. This was a major task. There are many factors to consider when planning the meals. These include: how far to go that day (time available to cook and clean - must really be decided day-to day on the river), which day (later days may require dry/can/no-cooler ingredients), what do people need (2 veggies and 2 fish allergies), what's tasty (not too much repetition), what do I have recipes for (need to have a written recipe for everything), what do people want. I had trouble getting much concrete advise other than suggested menu items. Anyone planning a group menu had better ask some questions early in the planning process - here is my query. Turns out there were a couple vegetarians I hadn't known about before. The menu I eventually put together was pretty good. Check it out here. I would prepare four meals and freeze them at home.


Lots of shopping later, I spent a great deal of time repackaging food. The house was trashed for weeks prior to the trip. I was buying one 50-mil ammo can for each day from REO, so each day got its own paper sack until I picked up the cans in Flagstaff. These went into boxes that we could pack away. We had a total of 12 coolers for the six rafts. I had 9 and we were renting three more. The nine I had I organized according to days. We had the following coolers:
  1. days 1-4, wet
  2. days 5-7, wet
  3. days 8-10, wet
  4. days 11-14, wet
  5. days 15-18, wet
  6. days 1-4, dry
  7. days 5-8, dry
  8. days 9-13, dry
  9. days 14-18, dry


Cooler management is a huge issue on summer Grand trips, and I didn't want us breaking into the cooler for the last few days until the last few days. It was also important to keep careful track of exactly what was in each cooler. This way we could figure out what we needed out of any cooler while planning our meal on the river, then get in and out of the cooler quickly to minimize any melting.
I'd heard that REO and PRO both offer to 'deep freeze' coolers on trips they outfit. This is where they put the food in the cooler, put a layer of water in a few inches deep and freeze the water solid, then add more water and freeze it solid, then do this again. When I asked REO about this they said I'd need to get them my coolers several weeks in advance to get this done. I searched all over Albuquerque for a commercial freezer that I could use. A meat-packing place offered to do it for about $200 per cooler. Another place would charge a more reasonable fee, but the Seattle Fish Company of New Mexico offered to do it for free. So here's a small plug for them - thanks!!! I packed the coolers and took them over about a week ahead of time. I was worried when I arrived, but it turned out the food did not pick up the pervasive fish odor in the place.

During this time I also tried to get the crew ready for the trip. This involved a lot of hype in e-mails, which was easy since I was so excited about the trip. It also involved making sure everyone knew what they were getting into. The first e-mail I sent out was just to let everyone know what was happening in general. I put together a packing list and a short primer on dry bags for everyone. I also had the crew read a great little snippet from Mike Dooley (I've saved this to my own site just in case Mike's ever goes down) about expectations on the river.