Chapter 12

The maelstrom of muddy, surging water before us was unlike anything I’d seen in my life. I saw a flow of water that reminded me of the Banzai Pipeline on north Oahu. This wasn’t whitewater rapids. It was a brown, churning, frothy boiling whirlpool-like hurricane conceived and designed by Satan himself.

The last words I heard as we entered the Charbydian, turbulent vortex came from Katie.

“Fuck me!”

I knew that wasn’t a second invitation to sample her holy of holies.

I’m not sure how often rafts go airborne on the Colorado, but that was our experience with Granite. It flung us to the right, which sucked for us seated on the right since we were gravimetrically torn away from the protective side of the raft.

But our trouble was short-lived as we got sidetracked into a swirling eddy that spun us, in slow-motion, and mostly out of control, through the rest of the rapid.

Our respite was short as in rapid, excuse the pun, fashion we smashed our way through Hermit and Boucher. Both provided some chills, as cold, fifty-degree water drenched us, and thrills, as we sped through this rollercoaster water ride complete with screams of terror.

Just as we all looked around and smiled and thought “We got this!” we entered the realm of Crystal Rapids. On a revised scale of 1-10 as some use for the Canyon rapids, on a calm day, Crystal was a 7. On a bad day, it was only one of two rapids in the whole 230+ miles of river in the Canyon that got rated a 10.

Today, she was an 11. Maybe a 12. On the Class scale, Katie announced “Six” and for the first time, I saw doubt in her eyes.

I’m quite confident that if I had any liquid in my bladder I’d have pissed myself. The speed of the water was bad enough, causing various cross-currents, dips and plunges, and odd vortexes that seemed to defy gravity and logic. What made it worse were the large boulders that stood guard.

Jake and Katie started screaming orders, struggling to be heard over the roar of the rushing water. Despite aching muscles, we all worked in unison, paddling left, holding, reversing, whatever they barked out, we quickly shifted gears, quite honestly scared for our lives.

In the end, it didn’t matter. Inexperienced rafters shouldn’t be put through such trials, and we were no exception.

We hit the largest of the boulders and it spun us around one hundred eighty degrees, so we were now traveling through some of the highest-rated rapids on the North American continent ... backward.

We were fucked.

Our blind terror was short-lived. When you’re running a gauntlet backward, all orders have to be reversed, and someone gave a wrong order because instead of spinning us around once more, we stayed facing backward, which did give a kinda’ unique travel perspective, but did nothing to protect us from the onslaught of the worst that Crystal had to offer.

Being blind, that is, looking in the wrong direction, I didn’t see what we hit, but it must have been big because we slid up the side of it and were close to being vertical when Jamie flew out of the raft and into the churning river, screaming as she passed by Rich, then slamming into another rock, face down in the water.

I get chills to this day when I think about the courage displayed in the next couple of seconds.

There was no time to think; he reacted on some basic level of instinct that only a parent develops. Rich grabbed the nearest life ring and jumped overboard into the raging rapids, getting separated from us immediately as our raft miraculously didn’t tip but instead got shunted through a narrow passage. But no Rich, and, no Jamie.

The shouts of “MAN OVERBOARD” resonated, and just like that, we were out of Crystal and once again flowing smoothly, albeit fast, but for all intents and purposes, safely. Our raft had sped away from Jamie and Rich, who must have gotten caught up in some eddies. We hoped.

All the while, Jamie’s parents were screaming and pointing, and then Jake blew past them, running toward the back of the raft and then launching himself into the river.

Katie started barking orders and at first, we were all sorta’ frozen in time, not paying attention. With little time to waste, I watched out of the corner of my eye as Katie reached under her vest and pulled out a snub-nosed pistol, firing it into the air three times rapidly. THAT got everyone’s rapt attention.

“GODDAMIT! Pick up your paddles and get us over to that beach on the right!” she said, pointing to a large, sandy area, then putting her pistol away and grabbing a spare oar, taking Rich’s position.