Even for the crew it took a couple days to get back into the swing of living on the river, and a bit longer for the customers. Although the weather report Duane had seen back in Flagstaff was getting increasingly stale, the weather continued fairly nice.

One of the things that a trip leader had to do was figure out where to camp each night. None of the campsites were reserved; it was a “first come, first served” arrangement. That was one of the reasons Duane, and most trip leaders for that matter, liked to get on the river early in the morning so they’d be fairly sure of winding up roughly where they wanted to be that evening. Nothing cast a pall on a day like having to float onward into the late afternoon past places that were already full, then accept a marginal site and have to rush around to get camp set up and dinner made and cleaned up. Some places it didn’t matter, since there were plenty of options available, but in other places they had to be on their toes to grab the only possibility in miles. It was always something that made a trip leader nervous.

Like the other trip leaders, Duane had places he liked to stay, and others he couldn’t care less about. For example, there was one place about a hundred miles down the river from Lee’s Ferry where the White Team would stay if at all possible, mostly because some interesting things had happened there, including Preach proposing to Crystal. Duane thought it was all right but preferred to give it a pass if possible.

In the first part of the trip the places they stayed generally were about the same each run, although they might vary by a mile or two each trip. Most Canyon Tours trip leaders liked to spend the second night out somewhere around North Canyon Rapids, about twenty miles below Lee’s Ferry. However, the favored campsite for the next day, twelve miles farther on, was one of only a few possibilities in miles, so if they found it full they then had to drift on another two to five miles to less-appealing campsites. Where they wound up that night tended to shuffle things up a bit, and usually had a lot of effect on where they spent the next few nights.

As luck had it, getting on the river early the third morning out meant that they managed to beat a private party into the preferred campsite by only a few minutes, which meant that Duane could keep the next few days pretty close to his mental plan. That meant the trip wound up in one of several campsites he’d targeted for the next night near Harding Rapids, about forty-four miles from Lee’s Ferry. They made a short run to Nankoweap the next day and took a lazy afternoon there so people would have plenty of time to climb up to the Anasazi granaries, one of the postcard views of the trip. They made a run to Lava Canyon the next day, which allowed plenty of time for a stop at the mouth of the Little Colorado River, another one of those places to not be missed.

The Little Colorado flows a bright turquoise as the result of mineral deposits upstream, and it’s a lot warmer than the main river, which always made swimming appealing. There are also some tiny rapids that it’s fun to float through wearing a PFD upside down, over the butt with the legs through the arm holes to provide a little padding from the hard rocks, and most of the party took advantage of it. A couple of the women in the group broke out in swimsuits that were easily as radical as some Michelle would wear places other than the river; she tended to keep it relatively modest – for her – when she was being a boatman.

After lunch Duane took the opportunity to recite Major John Wesley Powell’s most memorable lines about the Canyon, recorded during the first trip down it. Like any good boatman, he could do it from memory: “‘We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown. We are three quarters of a mile in the depths of the earth, and the great river shrinks into insignificance as it dashes its angry waves against the walls and cliffs that rise to the world above. The waves are but puny ripples, and we but pigmies, running up and down the sands or lost among the boulders. We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise above the river, we know not.’”

So far everything had been pretty routine, much like any other trip, but the next day things got a little screwy. Normally Duane liked to make the next day’s run a little on the short side so people could get prepared for the heavy water in Adrenaline Alley, the fifteen miles or so below Phantom Ranch, where trails ran down from the South Rim. The problem was that there were few campsites in this area, so it had to be approached with good planning. Given a choice, Duane preferred to stay at one of two sites near Nevills Rapids, but both of them were filled with other parties, and he had to press on into an area where opportunities to stop were more limited. They drifted on to a perfectly good site just above Hance Rapids and found it open, which was a relief since the next possible stopping place was a lot farther than he wanted to go that day.

Given a choice, Duane would just as soon not have stopped at Hance. Although two other rapids on the river – Crystal and Lava – were generally agreed to be tougher, Duane felt that Hance was much the most intimidating. Lava, though tough, was mostly one quick drop, and Crystal could be snuck past through somewhat calmer waters, although boatmen rarely took that route, preferring to give customers the thrill ride. At Hance, there was no choice – they had to take the tough route. Camping just above Hance meant that the party had all night to for the intimidation caused by the rapids to build up, and then they’d have to hit it first thing in the morning, getting severely wet while temperatures were still on the cool side.

Although Duane and Michelle, along with the other boatmen, had little doubt about getting through Hance successfully, the customers did not universally get that message. Duane tried to calm some nerves by reading from the journal of Major Powell’s run of the river over a hundred and thirty years before. On that first trip down the river they’d concluded that there was no way they could portage around the rapids, so they had no choice but to run them. Duane went on to talk about how much harder it had to be for the explorers, in primitive and ill-handling boats and not having any idea of what they were facing.

“It had to have been a lot harder for them, not knowing if it could be done or not,” he said. “It’s a lot easier for us. Not only do we have rafts that are just about ideally suited to do this, but also, if you add up the trips that we boatmen have made down the river the total is over a couple hundred with never an accident.”

“Yes, it’s going to be rough,” Michelle added. “And there’s going to be more rough stuff to come, but nothing we can’t handle because we know we’ve all done it before. After you get done with it tomorrow morning, you’ll know you can handle it too. The next couple days are the best part of the whole Grand Canyon, and it’s the part of the trip you’ll remember the best.”

Even with their trying to prepare the customers, it only worked so well, and there were obvious nerves as the tiny campfire died down and people headed to their sleeping bags. As usual, Duane and Michelle were among the last to get to theirs, and snuggled together the way they usually did. “I sure wish we’d been able to stay up by Nevills,” he whispered. “That way people could be a little warmed up before we got here. But I guess we have to take it like it comes.”

“Yeah, there are going to be a few people real nervous in the morning,” she agreed. “I wish we didn’t have to run it first thing, but at least we’ll get it over with.” They talked for a couple minutes about people who seemed to be having the worst cases of nerves, and agreed to talk about them again in the morning. Then their talk turned to other things, and since they happened to be a little more isolated from the rest of the group than they usually managed, they took the opportunity to get a little more personal. It was the first time they’d managed to make love on the river since the trip started.

Morning came all too soon, like it usually did for boatmen. It was the normal practice for the first on the crew to wake up to get the others up, and while occasionally everyone overslept after a tough day, it didn’t happen very often, and the previous day had not been a tough one by any means. Well before dawn the boatmen were all up and around, getting things together for breakfast. Usually Duane took the opportunity of the crew being up before the customers to call a short, informal crew meeting, and it seemed more important than normal today. “I didn’t want to do it this way, but we have a tough one right off the bat,” he told them. “And we’ve obviously got some customers who are on the nervous side. Make sure everything is tied down tight and there are no loose lines where customers could get tangled in case of a flip or a washout. You all know the preparations that have to be made for heavy water, and we might as well stay pretty buttoned up until we get below Sockdolager, because we’re going to get there in a hurry. Michelle or I will inspect every boat before we get going, and we’ll inspect each others’, as well.”

“How far are we planning on going today?” Terry asked in the thin pre-dawn light.

“Probably the first place we can get in below Phantom,” Duane replied. “The odds are we’ll have to run Horn Creek, but maybe not Granite. We’ll make the usual long stop at Bright Angel so I can call the office, and anyone who wants to can hit the canteen, so it’ll be a good place for lunch even if it’s a late one. We’ll pass out snacks mid-morning to help tide people over. Any other questions?”

There weren’t any to speak of, and apparently no one felt much like talking more than necessary, anyway. They turned to making breakfast, firing up the big propane burner to make hot water for coffee. It was very noisy and loud enough to wake up the customers and get them moving. Soon it was getting light, and people were standing around sipping at their cups while waiting for the final preparation of breakfast to be made.

The coffee was very strong; early on the trip he’d made a point of having a small piece of pumice in his cup, to prove that it was strong enough to float rocks. That had been a good joke to get the morning going, but everyone seemed a little subdued today. From what Duane could pick up from people standing around, there was still a lot of nervousness about Hance. Better to have it over with, he thought.

He and Michelle were busy as always helping get breakfast served. After the customers had been through the line he got a plateful for himself and started in on it, eating standing up. He was pretty well through the meal when he noticed Michelle had very little on her plate and hadn’t even eaten much of that. “Dieting again?” he teased.

“My stomach’s feeling a little rocky this morning,” she replied. “I think I got a little touch of that bug a couple people had upriver.”

“Could be,” he said, not worrying much about it – Michelle was one of those people who didn’t get sick easily, or pick up the bugs going around very often. “A couple days ago I thought I might have had a touch of it, but I seemed to get over it in a day or so.”

“I’m not too worried about it,” she smiled. “And you’re right, I probably should eat a little more. I don’t think people are quite as nervous as they seemed last night.”

“Yeah, get this one out of the way and the rest of the day ought to go pretty well,” he nodded.

It took an hour or more to finish breakfast, get the dishes washed, and get things packed up. Everyone was a little more serious about making sure everything on the rafts was exactly right. There was still some nervousness as people climbed aboard, but no one acted like they wanted to walk the admittedly tricky rocks above the rapids, which Duane took as a good sign.

“All right,” he yelled as they were getting set to go. “I’ll take point and pull up in an eddy below the drop. Everybody else, one at a time. Michelle, take sweep. Everybody hang on tight and enjoy the ride.”

He took the line that had tied the raft to the shore, coiled it and hanked it up, then scrambled aboard, giving the raft a good shove as he did. He had to hustle to get on the oars and get on the water, and he only had a few seconds to get the raft into the position he wanted to start the run, which was left of a big rock in the middle of the river. The raft floated down to it quickly, then the nose dropped as they went over the lip of the run.

As always, Hance was a wild ride. The bad part of it was near the top and the raft bucked spectacularly as it went flashing past rocks and over a couple of big backrollers. It settled down a little after that, but there were some secondary drops that kept things thrilling until they were flushed out the bottom, still in good shape although with some passengers a little blue in the face from holding their breath.

Duane found a place toward the end of the drop where he could pull into an eddy and wait for the rest of the rafts to come down the rapids. He wasn’t concerned about their being able to make it successfully, but waiting to be sure was always a good safety measure. One by one the other rafts made their runs and went past them, all of them running clean. It only took two or three minutes before Michelle made her run in the last raft. Duane leaned back to watch; he always liked to watch her come down through big rapids since she usually made an effort to make the ride extra thrilling. Back up the river, people had been told if they wanted a wild ride to get on her raft, and those who had listened had been rewarded.

Once again, she made a wild, but safe and clean run, except that toward the end she was edging her way out of the wildest water and more or less toward the eddy he was waiting in. As soon as she could, Michelle started to pull on the oars to join him in the eddy. Her raft bounced hard against his; he and a couple passengers reached out to grab it to hold the two together. He started to ask what was up, but he could see her scramble over to the far tube of the raft and hang her upper body over the side. In only an instant everyone could hear the sounds of her vomiting.

That was a little surprising to Duane. Michelle just didn’t get motion sick, especially from rapids – it was one of those reasons that people sometimes called her “Alien” since she seemed immune to such human deficiencies. He told the customers to keep holding on, and scrambled over onto Michelle’s raft, mostly to let her know he was there.

It was all over with in a minute or so; Michelle sat up, looking a little flushed. “You going to be all right?” he asked gently.

“Yeah, I think so,” she replied breathlessly. “Give me a minute. I guess I had a little more of that bug than I thought.”

He sat close to her for the next minute or so, and he watched as the color returned to her face. She took a swig of water from her water bottle, swished it around in her mouth to get rid of the bile taste, then spat it into the river. “I guess that’ll teach me to eat Duane’s scrambled eggs before I run Hance,” she announced to the customers.

“Are you up for it now?” he asked.

“Yeah, we might as well get going,” she said. “I’ll be OK.”

Duane glanced down the river; the other three rafts had found a calm spot and were waiting for them. “All right, we’d better get moving,” he said as he scrambled back to his own raft. “Sockdolager isn’t far, and I’ll take point again.”

“OK with me,” she replied, a little wanly.

In seconds they were under way again, with Duane getting into the faster water to pull ahead of the rafts waiting for them. Really, it had just been a minor incident, but motion sickness on the river, notably with vomiting, was pretty rare, especially early in the morning. Not that it didn’t happen; Jim had a story from when he’d been running the more stable motor rigs about a woman who had been so continuously motion sick and frightened that she’d had to be helicoptered out at the Little Colorado. That was well before they got to most of the big stuff. Some people just couldn’t handle it, and that was that.

But that didn’t apply to Michelle. The only time Duane had ever heard of her blowing her cookies was a story that went around from one of the sailing trips she’d taken in the Bahamas. Scooter, Jim, Mary, and Dave had been with her, along with Randy from Spearfish Lake. Randy had contrived to get Michelle incredibly drunk, at least for her, then the next morning Randy had cooked a breakfast calculated to get her to blow her guts. It had been retaliation for when she’d pulled the same trick on him earlier the same trip, and it had been the last time she’d ever tried to show off with binge drinking.

Probably it was just like Michelle had said; a stomach bug that had made its way lightly through the party for a couple days upriver. It had been so mild that it was hard to tell if it was actual sickness or just nervousness, and he’d pretty well figured it was the latter, given some of the people on the trip who had the problem. He really hadn’t thought much about it, just like he wasn’t very concerned about this.

In any case, he didn’t have much time to think about it. Sockdolager was only a mile and a half downriver; like Hance, it was a top ten for difficulty, although not quite as difficult. Though it wasn’t Canyon Tours policy, Duane made a point of stopping to get out and scout the top tens before he ran them, and it was especially good to do it with a new boatman like Terry, whose rowing skills so far seemed solid even though Duane wasn’t totally sure of them. They pulled in to a landing on river left; the boatmen and a couple passengers scrambled up the rocks to get a good look at it.

They didn’t need a long look; Sockdolager was a little simpler than Hance, and seemed to be much the same as it had the year before. Partly to get to know Terry a little better, Duane asked him about the line he planned to run, and Terry came up with the same answer that Duane would have given.

As they made their way back down the rock pile, Duane got close enough to Michelle to be able to talk to her in a low voice. “You OK, now?” he asked.

“Yeah, blowing my guts seemed to get rid of the problem,” she nodded. “I hope that’s the end of it.”

“If you have any more problems, let me know,” he told her. If there was a real issue, this was no place for it; the next couple days would be tough, and Erika, while a good kid, wasn’t enough of a boatman yet to be able to take over for a sick oarsman, at least around here.

“I’ll be fine,” Michelle smiled. “The worst part about it is that it’s not going to help my reputation. It’s going to go up and down the river that I blew my cookies at Hance.”

“Well, it’ll just prove that the Alien is human after all,” Duane grinned, then changed the subject. “I think Hance managed to flush all the nerves out of some of our more-timid passengers. They look like they’re ready for this.”

“They made it through without barfing, and I didn’t,” she laughed. “That ought to prove something to them.”

Once again Duane took point going down the rapids. While not quite as bad as Hance, Sockdolager was still a rough ride, and Duane couldn’t help but be concerned about Michelle. His own run went without incident, and once again he pulled up in an eddy below the drop to wait for the rest of the party to come through. Everyone made it fine, with something less than minute intervals between rafts; as before, Michelle was the last one through. Duane still watched her run with a little concern, but was relieved when she went right past him. Apparently she hadn’t had any problems this time.

I sure hope that’s the end of that, he thought as he picked up his oars and began to move down the river again.

To be continued . . .

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