I just got a phone call, in Western River’s main offices, from a guest whose memory was sparked about a Grand Canyon 7 Day Rafting Trip he’d done in 1966. He stumbled onto our website while doing an image search in Google and thought he’d give us a call… He talked of his trip leader, Jack Curry, the first owner of Western River–and the man who put the J in J-Rig (apparently referred to as J-Boats back then).
He talked about the hikes to beautiful waterfalls, getting dehydrated- and reydrated with powdered TANG, along the trail, and how the guides cared for him in every detail on that hike. “I remember it like yesterday, amazing isn’t it?” He kept saying with fondness. He recalled a large mud flat where the group did a little mud-slinging and sliding…asking if we had the video footage of that, since he noted that there was a small video crew on the trip, doing a promo video for Western. (I’ll be looking for that footage from the archives).
His trip was a bit unique, in that he hiked down from the rim to Phantom Ranch and floated seven days to Lake Mead. I told him he’d missed out on the beautiful section of canyon from Lee’s Ferry to Phantom Ranch- which may have got him thinking about doing another trip with us as early as this summer (he’d better hurry). I also told him, with pride in the way we care for the canyon, that not much changes down there–that if he were to come again, the parts he saw would probably all look very much the same today as it did 44 years ago.
Oh, and apparently the food was just as good back then as it is today on a Western River Expedition… I wonder if the menu is exactly the same today as it was back then?
