These are photos from a private raft trip down Grand Canyon between March 15 and April 4, 2008. We ran under a permit that Ron Thomas applied for in 1992 - a 16 year wait!

This is a first cut at editing photos for the trip. I will add text and more photo selection and editing as I have time. Nearly all of the photos were taken with my Pentax K10D and those here are still the in-camera jpgs. I have raw versions of many and will work on them in time. A couple were taken with my waterproof Pentax W30 or by other people.

Trip participants were Ron Thomas, Janet Brook, Craig Walker, Tim Hankins, and Mary Nutt from Socorro, NM, Lamar Baggett (Janet's son in law) from Florida, Kerry and Sharon Luttrell from Nanaimo, BC, and Gill Luttrell and Joe Box from Victoria BC. In one of the trip's major events, Gill and Joe became engaged on March 23 during the trip! Kerry's 60th birthday was celebrated the following day. Gill and Joe paddled kayaks all but one day when we tried to give them enough experience with the rafts to serve as backup. The primary boatmen on the rafts were Ron, Craig, and Kerry. Mary, Tim, and Lamar also did a considerable amount of rowing in the flat stretches and easier rapids.

BROKEN LINKS: I have not yet made a web-specific version of this page, but the full size photos are too large to put on my web site. So any "full size" links will be broken if you are looking at this on the web. The same is true for the movies.
 
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Click on the image for a screen size version. The "full size" version is larger (not available in web versions).

Full size	Group Photo by Grant Gray at Lee's Ferry. The participants are, left to right, Tim, Mary, Craig, Lamar, Sharon, Ron, Janet, Joe, Gill, and Kerry.	Full size
Full size	Photo by Tim Hankins. Craig and Mary in House Rock Rapid. Click "here" for a movie of Kerry running House Rock.	Full size	North Canyon
Full size		Full size	Craig's 16' and Ron's 18' catarafts.
Full size	Mary rowing. Click "here" for a movie of raft flip that we witnessed earlier at 24 Mile Rapid (Georgie).	Full size	Redwall Cavern
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Full size	A Nautiloid fossil in Nautiloid Canyon. The fossil is over a foot long.	Full size
Full size		Full size	My take on the famous Nankoweap photograph. Our boats are those on the right. Another group is parked on the left.
Full size	A wide angle shot at Nankoweap.	Full size
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Full size	Photo by Tim Hankins. Craig and Mary in the 16' cataraft. This was probably taken near one of the larger rapids as I normally was not wearing a helmet.	Full size	The waterfall in Clear Creek. Several of us got showers (no soap) here.
Full size	We encountered several small, but loud, frogs in Clear Creek.	Full size
Full size		Full size	Sheep at Clear Creek Camp
Full size	Clear Creek Camp.	Full size	One of our many good dinners "catered" by Cocina del Rio. We got dinners from them, but provided our own breakfasts and lunches to keep them simple.
Full size	Lamar	Full size	Tim
Full size	Scorpions glow under UV light. Tim and I brought black-light flashlights and got a good demonstration. I should probably play with the color balance of this photo since the actual scorpions appeared more white than green.	Full size
Full size	Horn Creek Rapid. The yellow boat, a 20 foot self bailer, flipped about half way through the rapid. The red cataraft barely visible took out after it and also nearly flipped. The rapid looked ugly from the standpoint of trying to run it. The "horns" are two rocks at the top on the left that are barely visible here and probably only to someone who knows how to read whitewater. You can't go over them. We did opt to go between them and that worked ok. This was one of the most intimidating rapids we encountered, at least at the water level we had. Later we ran Granite Rapid, another big one. Click "here" for a movie of another group running Granite.	Full size	The much-feared Crystal Rapid. But we had especially low water - a weekend flow of maybe 9000cfs and the rapid's fangs were definitely pulled. The big hole to the left of Joe normally is huge and the trick is to try to avoid it. But when we were there it did not look all that threatening. Kerry was swept into it and got surfed, but not flipped. Joe went into it many times to surf or just see what it would do, as shown in the following photos. Click "here" for a movie of two rafts from another group running Crystal.
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Full size	Back to Joe in the hole.	Full size	Click "here" for a movie of Joe playing in the Crystal hole.
Full size	Gill staying close to the right side in Crystal.	Full size
Full size	At the Ross Wheeler, a boat abandoned in 1915.	Full size
Full size	There was an artificial flood of 40000 cfs for 60 hours a few days before our trip. It seems to have built up many beaches and sand bars as intended. But some were eroding fast. There were many vertical walls of sand like this. If you watched for a while at "high tide" (the result of the level fluctuations caused by power generation variations at Glen Canyon Dam), you would see chunks calving off. I don't know how long the new beaches will last.	Full size
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Full size	Lamar	Full size	A water shot. Among the rapids run this day was Walthenberg, a class 6. We scouted so had a chance to shoot the kayakers and another party as they came through. Click "here" for a movie of Gill and Joe running it.
Full size	Mary in raft guide mode on Ron's boat.	Full size	Elves Chasm.
Full size	Elves Chasm.	Full size	Relaxing rafters.
Full size	Sleepy kayakers.	Full size
Full size	Blacktail Canyon.	Full size	Blacktail Canyon.
Full size	Lower Blacktail Camp on March 25.	Full size	Morning at Blacktail. That evening we camped at Talking Heads camp. Click "here" for a movie of the camp late in the setup process.
Full size	This and the next several photos were taken at Deer Creek.	Full size
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Full size	Rafts from 3 parties at Deer Creek.	Full size	Deer Creek Falls.
Full size	Gill and Joe in Deer Creek Falls.	Full size	Matkatamiba Canyon
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Full size	Havasu.	Full size
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Full size		Full size	Fern Glen Canyon
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Full size	Kerry	Full size
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Full size		Full size	"The Thing at mile 179" - Lava Falls. This is the wildest rapid of the trip, rated 8-10 on the western big water scale (1-10). At our relatively low water is was probably low in that range. We stared long an hard at it from the scout, both from above and from water level. From water level, the holes did not look too outrageously big, but the water was incredibly fast. It was clear that the whole trick would be to enter at the right place and keep it straight. There really wouldn't be time to maneuver. If you entered a bit too far left, you'd end up in the infamous Ledge Hole where you really don't want to go. A bit too far to the right, and you are in another nasty looking hole. As you approach the top of the rapid, you can't see anything over the horizon line, so you have to have picked out your markers and stick to them. In the end, we all did what needed to be done and had good runs. Tim, Mary, and Lamar walked around it.
Full size	The Ledge Hole is in the center of this photo. I've seen videos of this hole flipping a raft a dozen times before letting go.	Full size	The "V wave" (the V is not so obvious from this angle, but is at the left end of the hole). There is almost no way to avoid going through it so you just hit it straight and hope for the best. Click "here" for a movie of the the rapid from water level during the scout. You can see the speed of the water, and the cycling waves.
Full size	Many of waves, especially lower down in the rapid, were cycling so the ride you get, and to some extent, whether you get flipped, depended on luck of exactly when you got there, something over which you have essentially no control. The first to take on the rapid was Joe. Click "here" to watch his run.	Full size	For some distance from just above Lava Falls to quite a few miles downstream, there were lava flows entering the canyon and evidence of lava flowing along the canyon. The flows often looked a lot like the glaciers coming off an ice-cap, only they are black and won't melt.
Full size	There were a lot of columns characteristic of lava.	Full size	One of the glacier-like lava flows.
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Full size		Full size	Pictographs at Whitmore Wash.
Full size	At Whitmore Wash, we met Pat Palmer, Ben Zuckerman and Elizabeth, Ben's wife. Pat and Ben are astronomers and Pat spends a lot of time at NRAO where I work. They wanted to hike in at Whitmore and out at Parashant. They hitched a ride with us between the two. We camped near each other at Parashant. This photo shows Liz riding with Ron, Janet, and Lamar.	Full size	Pat on the right riding with Kerry, Tim, and Sharon.
Full size	Ben rowing my boat with Mary riding the gear pile behind.	Full size	Kerry (barely visible), Ron, Tim, Ben, and Pat.
Full size	Liz, Mary, and Janet.	Full size	Ron.
Full size	Mary.	Full size	Pat.
Full size	Tim.	Full size	In Parashant Wash. We walked a couple of miles up the wash in the morning.
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Full size	The hikers on their way up the wash.	Full size
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Full size	Joe Around this time we ran our last significant rapid, 217 Mile Rapid which is a class 5. We set up for Mary to film it from behind me on the raft. Click "here" to watch the result.	Full size
Full size	The takeout at Diamond Creek. By coincidence, the shuttle drivers arrived with our vehicles within seconds of when we arrived. And we had great luck. The drivers had another group of vehicles to shuttle out so we did not have to provide transport for them to Peach Springs. And Canyon Reo, from whom we rented Kerry's raft, was there with a bit truck picking up another party. We were able to return their gear on the spot and avoid carrying it out. Still we had a big load.	Full size	The Canadians hadn't see the canyon from the rim, so we went by the South Rim on the way home. From the river, you don't really appreciate the full size of the canyon because you generally can't see much beyond the inner gorge.
Full size	Gill and Joe, soon to be married.