Grand Canyon Rafting
Arizona News

Whitewater Adventure

Westwater Canyon ride will leave you breathless.
By Kerrick James

WESTWATER CANYON, Utah - For many desert dwellers, there comes a time in the scorching Southwestern summer when you simply must find water.

We're not talking drinking or splashing of whitewater here. We're speaking of whitewater, of rapids as big as your house, or maybe just big enough to swallow you up for a few endless seconds - to chill, cleanse and release you from the tyranny of 100-degree afternoons.

One of the best rivers in the West for white water rafting is the famous Colorado. And one of the Colorado’s finest and most accessible rafting sites is Westwater Canyon on the Utah-Colorado line.

Commercial trips into Westwater begin at a put-in site northwest of Grand Junction, Colorado. After an orientation on river etiquette and safety, you don a life jacket and meet the silty river in an 18-foot self bailing raft.

River guides smilingly allow that is self-bailing because you do it yoursellf, and if perchance you aren’t quick about this task while in whitewater, the boat fills up fast- making it sluggish and almost unmaneuverable. This increases the possibility of the boat fipping over in a rapid. After a colective “uh-huh,” everyone practices bailing-with great gusto.

The four oar-driven boats making up our party hold six to eight passengers each. We float merrily downriver, introducing ourselves while observing the sheer ruddy cliffs of Entrada and Kayenta sanstones. Abruptly, a dense black rock appears at the base of the cliffs, and the canyon constricts and deepens into a gorge. This black armor plate is the 1.7 billion-year-old skelton of ancient terra, primarily gneiss and gneissic granites. We drift by sheer walls where the corrosive river has sculpted fluted vertical channels that gleam in the late spring sun.

At midday we stop at the mouth of Little Delores River and hike for 20 minutes upstream. Rounding a bend we spy an arching cascade that fills a shallow pool fronted with a pebbly beach. Meltwater from the snows of thousands of winters has enlarged a fracture in the dense, hard gneiss, and the water is a real skin bracer.

The polar bears among us take showers in the cascade and emerge grinning and shivering and ready for lunch. We partake of a fine repast on a sandbar and contemplate the rapids that now await us.

Westwater Canyon (or Hades Canyon, it’s original name), was once considered unrunable and indeed, was seldom attempted until the early1970’s.

This canyon is too narrow to accommodate the large monster rapids of Cataract Canyon and the Grand Canyon. That’s why we’re traveling in smaller craft that require both the skill and experience of the boatman and the help of the passengers to remain upright.

After detailed instructions on how to lean into the wave, how to swim a rapid when ejected, and how to properly get back in the boat, we shove off the beach. The rapids quickly greet you. We hear the throaty growl of the first rapid almost immediately, and the first blast of icy brown water makes us suddenly thankful for the blistering sun.

Soaked to the skin, bailing for all you’re worth, you notice that the current is much swifter here in the compressed canyon, and the torrent is carrying you relentlessly to Hades, then through Marble Canyon Rapid and Funnell Falls.

The hits just keep on coming, with little enough break between rapids to bail, much less dry out or warm up. Finally, the boatman eddies out of the mainstream, and talk turns to the last and biggest rapid: Skull.
Skull is named for a large and foreboding rock, which both the current and the nature of the hydraulics before it are conspiring to introduce you to. At lower water levels, the rock reportedly has an eerie resemblance to a skull-eye sockets and all.

I don’t see much of Skull Rapid, because being in the nose of the boat means being underwater through much of it. But we miss kissing the skull, and thereby tipping into the hole in the river, and that means we don’t have to practice our swimming and shivering skills much longer because we’re now on flat water.

We make camp at a sandy bank called Coyote Hole, and break out the hors d’oeuvres. A sumptuous steak dinner is followed by a dessert of cakes prepared in Dutch ovens. Tired, full and happy, we fall asleep early.

Wake-up call “coffee!!” is heard just before 6 AM., and the murmur of the river is fine background music for breakfast.

The second river day is a languorous time of floating and daydreaming. In the afternoon the scenery becomes overwhelming both in scale and beauty, as the ocher sandstone of Fisher Towers contrasts with the bright snows still cloaking the La Sal Mountains. Both are reflected in the glassy waters of the river and we have the best seat in the house.

Later, we camp at a lovely place called Onion Creek. After a prolonged happy hour, our crew turns out in elegant clothing and serves shrimp cocktail. The Captain’s Dinner has begun, and a merry feast ensues. Later that night, at something called the “No-Talent Hour,” unprintable jokes and skits bring hilarity and camaraderie to all.

Day 3 involves four small rapids that are runable in inflatable two-person kayaks, known affectionately as “duckies”. The duckies permit an even closer relationship with the river because you’re at water level. I took my turn in the first three rapids, paddling furiously to keep forward momentum, not wanting to turn sideways and capsize.

The final rapid is a Class 3 affair called “Whites”, and luckily I gave up my duckie seat to a newfound friend from Canada. Whites topples both duckies rather easliy, and we recover the swimmers downstream, without incident.

Maybe I'll give Whites a shot next summer, when the river calls again.

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