Bundled in an old black down jacket and cozy wool hat, I looked up from my mug of too-hot-to-drink lemon tea to watch the sun’s reds and oranges fade to blue. It was one of those sunsets I wished would go more slowly. I considered fetching my camera to record the sight. But I didn’t have the heart to miss the show. So I just sat and watched gratefully. Slowly curling smoke from the early evening’s small campfire mingled with the far-off mountains’ changing-to-blue tones.

The building-sized glaciers had a curious blue, opaque, unknown- depth, like fortune telling crystal balls.

The cobalt ice and snow had a pureness that was unfettered by city-common traffic smoke and street grime. There were no errant cigarette butts or soda can trash. There were bald eagles.

The sapphire river we rafted was so cold it induced ice cream headaches if stared at too long.

Bitter and sweet, bright and cool, the crispness of the air tasted like dark chocolate.

Being the Southwest desert rat that I am, rafting through Alaska’s backcountry was like walking on the moon. Pictures don’t do the moon justice.

Alaska is a place of expansive possibility and insight-spurning grandiosity. I’ve been there a few times, and it always hurts a little to leave. The colors stay with me as I plan for my next river trip in Alaska. I know it won’t be very long until I see those blues again.

I miss the Alaska Blues.

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The post Alaska Blues appeared first on River Currents.

This is surprising, of course, to river guides, but even more so to the travelers themselves, who thought to ask about what to wear, what the rapids are like, what’s for dinner, where they’ll sleep, how the, uh, bathroom issues work out, and many other details that have far less to do with how they’re going to cover miles and miles of water over the span of days or weeks.

“Where do I sit?” some ask.

“Which end is the front?” others inquire.

“What if it gets a hole poked in here?” they wonder.

This is all quite natural, so don’t worry. And, there’s no test, obviously.

There are actually quite a lot of details about various river craft that determine how it performs, how comfortable it is, and so on. But, really, unless you’re driving, there are only a few things that should really concern you.

In fact, I’d say these are the only 3 differences you need to know about river boats:

Hard or soft?

Your boat is going to be inflatable, or not. Inflatable rafts are awesome because they’re big and roomy, and they’ll remind you of the bouncy-jumpy-playland fun of your youth. They’re also going to have self-bailing floors — and all you need to know about that is that you don’t have to scoop out the water that splashes into the boat every time you crash through a wave.

If your boat is hard, you’re likely riding in a dory. High-five, because you’re in for an incredible ride. You might be headed down the Grand Canyon, Cataract Canyon or on one of O.A.R.S.’s Idaho trips. These hard-hulled boats originated as ocean-going fishing boats, actually, but they slice up the Colorado like a Ginsu. They also float pretty high, so you get an awesome view from the top of those wave trains you’ll be roller-coastering down.

Oh, and just because you’re still wondering: Those inflatable boats can get punctured, but that rarely happens, and they’re multi-chambered so they’ll never lose all their air from one hole.

How’s it propelled?

You get out of a river trip what you put into it, I think, so the most satisfying boat is propelled by paddles. This means you’ve got the same tool the guide does, and we all work together to get the raft down the river. If this is the way you go, you’ll definitely be in an inflatable raft, as described above.

Want to paddle, but maybe want some help? There’s the oar raft with paddle-assist for this. In this setup, the guide will sit in the back of the raft with two large oars on either side. This gives your boat tons of maneuverability and plenty of power.

Lounging as you float is its own kind of therapy. To get some, climb aboard a full oar rig — probably the gear boat that’s accompanying your multi-day trip — and soak up some sun. Just don’t sleep through the rapids. But, don’t be fooled, even if it’s just the guide rowing, you’re going to have work to do: You’ll learn the art and science of weight management, as you shift around the boat as rapids demand. In a dory, you’ll be on bailing duty, too.

You also might end up on a motorized boat. If you join O.A.R.S. through Cataract Canyon, their 22-foot pontoon rig offers both wild and mild rides, depending on where you sit. This rig gets us into the whitewater in a timely fashion on the 4-day version of this trip.

How many people does it fit?

With any of the rafts or dories, you’re always going to have a guide in there with you. From there, it’s just a function of the size of the boat (or the size of your group, perhaps).

With a paddle crew or an oar raft with paddle assist, there will be at least 4 of you, but maybe up to 8.

On an oar rig or a dory, you’ll be a 3- to 5-person crew.

The motorized raft will fit up to 8 passengers.

If you’ve got an adventurous streak, you can also get some solo time down the river: Most trips bring along “duckies,” or inflatable kayaks, and stand-up paddleboards for you to try your hand at. And, don’t forget about the sea kayaking trips you could be taking, too.

Still have questions about the boats? Don’t hesitate to post them in the comments below.

The post The Only 3 Differences You Need To Know About River Boats appeared first on River Currents.

No one does. It’s why vacations are so important. You’ve got to make every second count.

But you don’t want to be in “hurry up and relax”-mode the whole time.

You want something to do with your family that everyone’s going to like. And it can’t be all tourist-trap-y.

You need some real-deal vacation time.

Well, I’m here to give you the answer: white water rafting.

Seriously. Scenery? It doesn’t get better than a white water river. Fun? Throw buckets of water on your kids all day … ‘nuff said.

Adventure. Relaxation. Great food (no lie, the food is a highlight). A river trip has it all.

Here are 20 reasons why a rafting trip is the perfect family getaway:

1. Incredible value, and all-inclusive price (no extra fees for parking, meals, or ride tickets).

2. Getting hit with waves from all sides is ridiculously fun.

3. If they don’t already, your kids will think you are the god of awesomeness for booking the trip.

4. There are pools between rapids for swimming, water fighting and relaxing.

5. Your guides are just about the nicest, funniest, coolest people on earth.

6. Food is somewhere between incredible and amazing.

7. It’s good for the spirit to spend time on moving water.

8. Two words you’ll never hear on a river trip: I’m bored.

9. Rapids come in all sizes; we take you to the ones that are family-size.

10. You will get at least one photo that will be a guaranteed wall-hanger.

11. The sound of rushing rapids + laughter is one your family will never forget.

12. The family that splashes together stays together.

13. You can push your much-loved family members into the river.

14. Absolutely no iPods, iPads, iPhones, icomputers, or idistractions allowed.

15. If your kids get messy at lunch, just chuck them in the river.

16. Tame enough for mom, exciting enough for dad (or vice-versa, about half the time).

17. Your guides take care of everything for you; your only job is to have fun.

18. Prepping a family for a river trip is easy, and we help by giving you all the info you need.

19. Along with the fun, there’s a lot to learn out on river trips. Families love that part.

20. There is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

Ok, I stole that last one from the “The Wind In The Willows.” But still, totally true.

Fact: Family river trips rule. And those are just 20 reasons. Got more? Throw us a comment.

The post 20 Reasons Why A Rafting Trip Is The Perfect Family Getaway appeared first on River Currents.

You’ve been thinking about it.

You toyed with the idea, last year maybe.

You’ve always thought, “Man, it would be cool to do that,” or “I could totally guide this boat.”

And, you can. You just have to go for it, sign up and do it.

But, if you’re on the fence, here are a few more reasons you should really think about joining us for a whitewater guide school:

• Rippling muscles of steel. You think P90X gets you buff? It’s got nothing on an intense workout of oar rowing and pulling yourself back into a boat. Clinically proven fact: muscular shoulders, biceps and back get you noticed by both men and women.

• Tan lines for conversation starters. If you’re one of those people who could use an icebreaker with strangers, a Teva tan on your feet, mid-thigh tan lines from your board shorts and the infamous PFD-without-a-T-shirt tan will help you make friends fast.

• Culinary mastery your friends can’t claim. That friend of yours that’s always showing off the foodie knowledge? That couple that won’t stop talking about their Thai cooking class? Next time they pipe up, tell them about your new expertise in Dutch oven cooking.

• Calluses that make other people feel lazy. You’ll be shaking hands with every stranger after guide training, just to see their face when they realize you haven’t been sitting at a desk lately, soaking your hands in Palmolive. This will earn you either instant respect or eager cooperation.
  Or they’ll offer you lotion.

• Learning a foreign language. Ever try to hit the river left eddy after Lava Falls, only to clip the hole and watch a custy bail over the tube and swim the meat? No translation needed after guide training. You’ll have your own secret code at cocktail parties ever after.

• Prep for your Emmy speech. OK, maybe you won’t really be winning a best actor award, but you will get plenty of practice taking command of an audience and delivering concise communications. The hardest part of the job is managing group dynamics and coaching people. Guides have to be friendly and authoritative all at once — and you can learn it.

• Earn friends and groupies. Once everyone on Facebook finds out you know how to organize and captain a river trip, you’re going to be in high demand as a vacation accomplice. You get to name your bribery price when that happens.

• Save money on self-help books. You’ll probably never need another Tony Robbins or “Soup for the Soul” book. There’s a certain self-confidence and drive you get when you complete a guide school. You start seeing a familiar looking stud-muffin when you look in the mirror.

Convinced yet? We thought so. Check out all of the guiding and paddling instruction we offer, and sign up to take the plunge this summer.

The post 8 Ridiculously Cool Benefits Of Whitewater Guide Training appeared first on River Currents.

It was early March of 2003 and a blizzard had roared out of the north the previous night, so it took a moment to kick the snow off my boots before stepping inside the boathouse.  There I found myself staring up at a dozen diminutive rowboats that were unlike any kind of watercraft I had encountered.

Most were handsomely painted in bright colors, and several featured squared-off transoms adorned with hand-drawn scenes from the desert rivers of the Southwest: a bighorn sheep, a cluster of columbines, a peeping frog. What struck me most forcefully, though, was that the profile of each boat boasted the simplest and loveliest lines that I had ever seen. Their gunwales swept boldly from bow to stern in a curve that mirrored the rocker of their bottoms, while the profile of their flared hulls set up a pleasing contrast with the rigid ranks of eleven-foot oars that hung from the far wall in neat vertical columns.

A Life-Changing Moment

At the time, I had no idea that these boats, originally designed for cod-fishing on the gale-wracked combers off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, had become legends on the Colorado, where they are renowned for their speed and elegance amid the river’s seething hydraulics. What I did know was that I was entranced. My jaw just hit the floor. And in an impulse that defied logic and common sense, I decided — right there — that even though I was 38 years old, I was going to have to quit my job and somehow find a way to follow those boats into the water-haunted world at the bottom of the grandest canyon on earth.

There are, of course, lots of middle-aged men who flirt with equally harebrained schemes before coming to their senses. So I’m not sure that I can adequately explain why I failed to abandon my own deluded inclinations, except to acknowledge two things that are obvious to anyone who has ever been smitten by the witchery of small wooden boats: the fact that dories are drop-dead gorgeous and that a man who permits himself to fall under the spell of that much beauty is apt to toss prudence and sanity straight out the window.

Which, in a nutshell, is how I became a baggage boatman for O.A.R.S.

Watching The Dories Work

In a typical expedition run by Grand Canyon Dories, the division of O.A.R.S. for which I work, each guide rows an elegant 17-foot dory christened in memory of a natural wonder that was heedlessly destroyed by the hand of man — doleful, elegiac names like the Ticaboo, the Emerald Mile, the Music Temple, and The Vale of Rhonda. But each trip is also supported by two inflatable rubber rafts that haul almost all of the gear and supplies, and that boast absolutely none of the dories’ seductiveness or charm. Unlike dories, the rafts get names considerably less lyrical than those of vanished ecological treasures — specifically, barnyard animals. There are the Ox, the Mule, the Clydesdale, and the boat to which I have developed the deepest and most abiding affection, the Jackass.

During the course of my apprenticeship, which is currently entering its seventh year, I have never been permitted to row a dory. At this point, my best guess is that I probably never will — only the most gifted, un-jackasslike boatmen are ever given that opportunity.  However, through my position at the tail end of the flotilla (mine is almost always the last boat in our running order), I’ve had the chance to do something almost as marvelous as actually piloting a dory. I’ve been able to observe them, study them, and moon over their magic like no one else.

I have watched those boats at all hours of the day and night, along every stretch of river, in every kind of weather. If you spend enough time staring at dories in this manner, sooner or later you realize that they are able to achieve a unique trick of visual alchemy. I’ve never quite figured out how they do it, but through some inscrutable wizardry involving the geometry of their rocker, the rhythm of their oars, and the force field of their own radiance, there are moments when they appear to be suspended not on the surface of the river but on the air itself.

That’s a wondrous thing, to be sure. But what I value even more, I suppose, has been the chance to watch what those dories do to the men and women who row them for a living.

Dory Guides

Although some folks would argue otherwise, dory guides are neither better nor worse than any other kind of river guide in the canyon.  Regardless of which company they work for, every veteran river guide has memorized every bend in the rock walls, every kink of the river, at every water level one would care to imagine. After spending years in this place, almost all guides have also come to regard the river and the canyon as home: the terrain that speaks to them on the deepest level, the landscape to which they most truly belong.

What makes dory guides special, however, is that they have come to understand that the delicate and impractical watercraft to which they have devoted the better part of their lives may stand as perhaps the finest, most eloquent metaphor for the canyon itself: its seductiveness, its fragility, its aura of timelessness and classicism, and its savagely incongruous mysteries. Because when it comes down to it, nothing expresses and contains those elements with greater fluency or concision than a little wooden boat.

The guides who row those little boats know one other thing, too. They know that the canyon, the river, and the dories present an elusive and intoxicating paradox. It is a paradox rooted in the fact that so many of us are willing to go such extraordinary lengths to seize in our fists an object or a landscape that seems to embody wildness and grace, presumably in the hope that doing so may enable us to establish a kind of spiritual stewardship over these things. And yet we invariably wind up discovering that the truth, like an eddy, runs in the opposite direction.

In the end, it is the distillation of wildness and grace that comes to possess us, and we who belong to it.

This essay was originally created for the 2011 O.A.R.S. catalog. For more compelling stories from other renowned writers, request your catalog copy today!

The post The Grand Canyon Dory — A Colorado River Legend appeared first on River Currents.

Trust me. More than a few folks have limped their way to and from the boats, missing hikes to waterfalls and swimming holes because they’re too beat up, eating ibuprofen like candy.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. With a little bit of effort before your trip, you will not only enjoy the hike, you’ll have a pair of legs to take you to some mind-blowing places downstream. Honest.

As for hiking out, the unprepared hallucinate through an eternity of suffering; the fit have a really cool desert trail experience. Your call.

So, having gotten that bit of tough love out of the way, what to do?

The Trail Of All Trails

The Bright Angel Trail follows an old Native American route into the Grand Canyon from the South Rim. It follows a fault line through otherwise impenetrable cliffs for thousands of vertical feet, like pretty much every other route into “The Big Ditch.” Comfortably on the rim, you’re seeing the canyon, but not really getting it. Yet. If you’ve come down the river with us and are hiking out, you get it, for sure. You’ve also been training on all those short river hikes we’ve been taking you on.

You take 300 steps down below the rim, and the universe changes into a wilderness. All of a sudden you get this feeling of vastness. An immensity of rock and desert. And that zig-zaggy thing that goes way down there with the little bugs moving along it until it disappears in the far blue haze? That’s where you’re headed, amigo.

Before you go, take the recommendations in your O.A.R.S. pre-trip package seriously. Take daily walks, in the park, on the beach, or to the market instead of driving. You know the drill. That’s D-A-I-L-Y.

How To Train For It

Start slow, a half-hour or so at a time. Build into an hour. Surely you can afford an hour a day for the trip of a lifetime? It can make all the difference. Pain sucks. Trust me.

Ideally, you’ll be training on hills (or, on the Stairmaster if you live in the Midwest). That’s where the knees come in. And the aerobics. It’s critical to work your heart and knees and hips for the pounding they’re in for. Up and down, down and up. So start several months out, get some good music on your iPod, NPR on podcast, and enjoy the day. It’s a good excuse, anyway.

OK, you’re fit. Now what? In summer, when it’s about a thousand degrees and the sun is baking your brains out, you’ll want a large-brimmed hat, sunglasses with UV protection, a lightweight long-sleeved shirt and the same in pants, and a good pair of tennies (or light-weight hiking boots if your ankles are like mine), with some cushioning in the sole.

Other Things To Bring

Of course, a water bottle is a must, though two liters is sufficient since on the “BA” there are plenty of watering holes where you can refill your bottle. I use a bandana as well, dunking it into the water fountains or creeks (upstream of the mule manure) at every chance. Getting wet and staying wet is the difference between heaven and hell. It takes getting used to being wet like that. But it’s like having a palm-frond fan and being fed grapes, watching all those poor heathens sweat — good desert trick to know.

During spring and fall, you just might encounter snow up on the rim. If you’re hiking you’ll probably stay warm, but not in a T-shirt. Synthetic or wool undies, a fleece for when you stop to snack or pee (and you will stop to snack and pee), and a wool cap. If you’re prepared, it’s stunning.

Did I say snacks? Your car doesn’t run without fuel, and neither do you. Fuel up, don’t get bloated, snack regularly: some carbs for instant energy, a little fat for later, and a bit of protein for the long haul.

If you take my advice, you will absolutely love the most popular trail in the Grand Canyon. If you stuff this in the “I’ll-get-a-round-to-it” pile, you will be thinking of me somewhere along your personal trail of tears.

Did I say trust me?

This essay was originally created for the 2011 O.A.R.S. catalog. For more compelling stories from other renowned writers, request your catalog copy today!

The post Grand Canyon Hiking: How To Survive AND Enjoy It appeared first on River Currents.