My 10-Day Rafting Trip Through Grand Canyon - 2011

This years 10-day rafting trip in Grand Canyon was one of the best ever with an enthusiastic group that was treated to some of the best "earth on show". We had some spectacular weather that was challenging at times but never failed to deliver top notch scenery, waterfalls and comfortable hiking. I still have a few spaces for the trip in 2012. If you've ever wanted to see Grand Canyon with a geologist, check out these pictures from this years trip.

At Lees Ferry, the start of all Grand Canyon river trips, the Kaibab Limestone makes its first appearance above river level (the whitish beds beneath the red Moenkopi Fm.). In just 65 miles it will tower between 5,000 and 6,000 feet above the river. The river drops just 500 feet in this distance but the rocks rise up at an average rate of 70 feet per mile.

The first day on the river with brilliant sunshine

The first appoearance of the Coconino Sandstone above the river at mile 4 below Lees Ferry. The Coconino was deposited as ancient dunes along a shoreline.

 The skies opened up in Marble Canyon and we were witness to the rare treat of red waterfalls!

The pictures cannot capture the sound and smell of this red rain, coming off the upper slopes of Hermit and Supai formations.

 The water poured off the cliffs in great leaps.

 There were literally hundreds of falls within a three mile stretch of the river.

 Our boatmen, Brandon and Amity, admired the show as well.

And then, just as suddenly as it had started, the sun came out to illuminate the recently watered cliff faces.

 From the mouth of Saddle Canyon looking upstream on the Colorado River

Back inside Saddle Canyon - one of my favorite places in all of Grand Canyon

The water this morning was red from the previous days rain

 Can you spot the channel fill of Temple Butte Limestone in the wall of Saddle Canyon? It is shaped like a smiley face and contains Devonian estuary deposits.

The famous "brain rocks" of Carbon Creek Canyon. These are Precambrian age stromatolites or algae fossils. The algae would greow a thin  mat on the shallow sea floor and then sediment would thinly cover the living organism, which then sent more filaments upward to create a new mat. And on and on and on, through time.

A recent flood left behind a strange, black colored deposit on the bed of Carbon Creek that partially buried the vegetation that is growing along the small creek.
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It was very soft and behaved like quicksand when walked upon. Here Laurie, gets stuck within it.

The famous upturned beds of Tapeats Sandstone along the Butte Fault in Carbon Canyon. Some young earth creationists use this outcrop in an attempt to show that the sediment was not lithified when deformed but other explanations (such as ductile deformation) can also explain this arrangement of strata.

These are the rocks that the stromatolites come from - the Galeros Formation in the Chuar Valley

Storm clouds hover near Papago and Zuni viewpoints on the South Rim, September 14, 2011

Clouds within the canyon on Zoroaster Temple

Close-up of Zoroaster Temple

Riding the river within the Granite Gorge of Grand Canyon

Deformation within the Vishnu Schist revealed in a S-bend to the foliation (giant S-bend is found in the fabric of the rock just above river level.

Morning classroom on the river

The moon setting behind the Great Thumb Mesa in Conquistador Aisle

The warm waterfall in Stone Creek

The patio, a quiet paradise in Deer Creek

A sill of basalt that has intruded into beds of the Bright Angel Shale (lower part of the photograph)

Vulcans Anvil is a volcanic plug or neck that remains as a remnant upstream from Lava Falls on the river

A lava cascade comes into the Grand Canyon from the north side of the river near Whitmore Wash. Imaging what it must have looked like to see red hot lava pouring into the Ice Age river.

Opportunities to see wildlife abound on this trip we saw many Bighorn sheep browsing along the rivers edge

On at least five separate occasions, huge lava dams burst catastrophically into the lower river, leaving behind some pretty fantastic deposits. Here, a former channel of the Colorado River is filled with such debris, which can contain boulders as big as 100 feet in diameter and up to 600 feet above the modern channel. These were huge outburtst floods.

The Black Ledge lava flow as exposed near Mile 208 on the Colorado River. This flow traveled 86 miles down the river and only remnants of it remain after it was erupted 600,000 to 650,000 years ago.

Group shot at Travertine Grotto in the Lower Gorge

A black dike within the igneous rocks of the Lower Gorge

This is the remains of Bridge Canyon City where dam builders were surveying the proposed Bridge Canyon Dam.

A backward glance at the far end of the Grand Canyon where it abruptly ends at the Grand Wash Cliffs.

Happy 100th Anniversary to the Kolb Brothers Historic River Trip

It was 100 years ago today that brothers Emery and Ellsworth Kolb began their adventurous river trip from Green River, Wyoming to Needles California. You can peruse a fantastic web site full of information about the trip here. (Note that Chapters 2, 3, and 4 deal with the river trip specifically, but other chapters highlight the brothers other activities at Grand Canyon).

Ellsworth and Emery about the time of their trip from Wyoming to California, 1911-1912

When the Kolbs reached Bright Angel Creek deep within Grand Canyon, they parked their boat and walked 7 miles up to their home on the South Rim. The Kolb Studio still stands and is one of the highlights of a visit to the Grand Canyon.

Photo from deep within the Grand Canyon

An Irene Colored Sunrise from Boston

My friend Jack Share lives in Boston and was able to capture the outer bands of Hurricane Irene as the sun was rising in downtown Boston. Check it out here. Jack's blog, Written in Stone, is good one for you to link into. He doesn't blog daily or even weekly so no need to worry about too many postings clogging your time. His knowledge and explanations of east coast geology are fantastic and the graphics match the stories.

Book Review

Dana Hunter, erstwhile blogger and budding geologist, recently reviewed three of my books on her blog En Tequila Es Verdad. Check out Dana's reviews here.

My 2011 Grand Canyon 7-Day Rafting Trip

My rafting trips in the Grand Canyon have become quite popular and this year I added an additional 7-day trip to my regularly scheduled 10-day trip. A shorter trip is preferred by some people and  allows those with work responsibilities to see the entire canyon in one week. We travel 280 miles - the whole length of the canyon. Every trip is different, with different boatmen, hikes, stops and camps. My recent trip was one of the best ever! Have a look.

This blog is widely read as a geology site and I normally highlight items of geologic interest. You will certainly find that in here but I also include additional camp scenes for those you are considering a rafting trip with me. The dates for the 2012 trips are: 7-day: June 10- 16; 10-day: September 12 to 21.

This particular posting is photo-rich so I will keep the captions short.

There is high water in the Colorado River this summer and our first hike of the trip was 50 meters downstream from the put-in! I had never hiked to this view of the river from the left bank. The Vermilion Cliffs rise in the background. Note the old Mormon road next to the river - this is where the wagons would approach the ferry site.

Here are wagon ruts from the 1800's carved into the Shinarump Conglomerate on our way uphill.

A giant petrified log was found across the trail. This one was over 100 feet in length and four feet wide.

Kaibab Moon Rise - Our first nights camp was along the Fence fault and I took this shot just as the call for dinner was made. Just 3o miles into the canyon, we were already 1700 feet deep within it.

Our first stop on Day 2 was near Stanton's Cave at South Canyon, where a series of Anasazi ruins and petroglyphs are found.

This section of the canyon it beautiful as it runs directly through the Redwall Limestone. Here solutions have created a series of caverns that formed along fractures (both evident here).

A very few of these solution caverns are still active in the canyon today! This is called Vasey's Paradise.

The Grand Canyon is not finished yet and the elements of erosion make for some interesting sights and photographs from the boat.

Spectacular Redwall Cavern at River mile 33. This huge amphitheater was scoured by eddies at extremely high flows before Glen Canyon Dam.

 

Bill and Ann share a quiet moment inside Redwall Cavern. The clean sand felt good on our feet.

 

Group photo in Redwall Cavern

This is an 1871 photograph in Marble Canyon taken by one of Powell's men. 

We recreated the same photo here. Reliving history is a great part of these trips.

We made a fantastic climb up to a granary site at Nankoweap Canyon.

This is the view downriver from the granaries.

From camp on Day 2 I spied an old alignment of the Colorado River before it shifted course. Note the truncated wall just above the center line in the photo. This surface is capped by Colorado River cobbles and boulders. The approximate age is unknown but may be as old as 300,000 years - it sits about 100 feet above the modern river channel.

The next day we climbed up to the Hilltop ruin. This is located in the widest part of Grand Canyon and may have been a lookout or vision quest site some 1,000 years ago.

Looking upstream from Hilltop ruin on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon.

Scouting Unkar Rapid - from 300 feet high!

"Bleached" circles can be found everywhere in the Dox Sandstone in this part of the canyon. They are a curiosity and formed when otherwise oxidized rocks (red) become reduced. These are spheres but have the misnomer of reduction spots.

The upper Granite Gorge is one of the most incredible defiles in all of Grand Canyon. The river has been very efficient at cutting through these resistant rocks.

The New York Yankees have their symbol in pink granite dikes near Crystal Rapids. I do not have a waterproof camera so there are no pictures of whitewater in this blog posting.

Preparing dinner at our 3rd Camp near Shinumo Creek.

The bar-b-q is blazing.....

...Rachael gets the salad ready......

....Carolyn grills the chicken.....

....and Jake and Rachael share a tender moment.

More pink dikes in the Vishnu Schist. These dikes were liquid magma when they were intruded into the solid but deforming schist. All of this happened 13 miles in the ground.

The river has sculpted some pretty incredible features as it attacks the riverside rocks.

The Wheeler fold near Elves Chasm has bent strata in the Tapeats Sandstone. Rocks can behave like putty when put under deep burial for millions of years.

Huge aprons of travertine reveal that springs once spilled into the river corridor. This travertine flowstone can be seen everywhere along the river near Elves Chasm.

Elves Chasm is a well-known and well-named waterfall in the canyon. This is the only active spring today but the area once held thousands of springs!

Close up of the Tapeats Sandstone in Elves Chasm. Note the pink feldspar grains - these were incorporated into the sandstone as the sea rolled over a surface of Zoraster Granite.

Bill admires the Great Unconformity in Blacktail Canyon. Here the Tapeats Sandstone buried a surface cut into the metamorphic rocks about 525 million years ago. What a great stop.

River view in the middle Granite Gorge. The gold colored boulders belong to a limestone bed in the Bright Angel Shale. This bed can be traced through more than 1/2 of the Grand Canyon. I always point this bed out to river travelers when it first appears and they can watch it rise and fall beneath the river channel as the rock layers are warped.

A unique and seldom seen view of Randy's Rock from the right hand bank. This large block of Tapeats Sandstone fell into the river channel but has not yet been removed by the river.

Beautiful morning on the river.

The middle Granite Gorge contains some of the darkest rocks seen on the trip. These are part of the Brahma Schist, metamorphic basalt lava flows about 1,750 million years old.

The mouth of Havasu Creek in Cataract Canyon. The water is especially blue here due to the dissolution of Redwall Limestone in the subsurface.

Group crossing over Havasu Creek on their way to the swimming hole. The water was warm!

Havasu Creek in the Grand Canyon.

Bill and Sharron pose in front of an ocotillo at Havasu Creek.

Where blue Havasu meets the red Colorado!\

Pumpkin Spring is the only hydrothermal hot spring in Grand Canyon but at this high water level it was completely underwater.

Mojave Desert vegetation is found in the Lower Granite Groge in Grand Canyon.

Fluted schist in the lower Granite Gorge. This forms when a pebble or cobble get trapped in a depression and the river causes it to swirl around and chisel out a flute.

Strata in the lower canyon can be confusing with so much limestone. But its good to have a guide.

Rachel doing a reading on the boat.

The "Lake Mead Formation" is exposed now that lake water is so low in the reservoir. 280 miles! What a trip. I took over 400 photos and these are only 50 of them. Thanks to all for participating.