Department > Adventure Toys
Adventure Toys: PWC Adventure
Jetting the Grand Canyon: Making a Passage on Personal Watercraft
story & photos by Randy Scott
Author, Randy, on Kawasaki and sons Ryan on Yamaha and Eric on Sea-Doo at buoy marking the entrance to Grand Canyon National Part on the Colorado River.
Our convoy of 4x4s kicked up a cloud of dust as we rolled down a winding dirt road in the hot Arizona desert toward the Colorado River. It was a desolate descent, the rocky canyon walls and washes marked by cactus and sage, with an occasional jackrabbit scampering from bush to bush.
We were en route to Pierce Ferry, a no-frills dirt launch ramp so barren and remote that most road maps omit it. We chose this location to launch our personal watercraft (PWC) because it’s the easternmost ramp on Nevada’s Lake Mead and the last road access to the banks of the Colorado River for the next 200 miles. Pierce Ferry was as close as we could get to our ultimate destination — the Grand Canyon. We were coming in through a seldom used backdoor, accessible only by taking off-road vehicles to the water’s edge and boarding watercraft to go upriver into Grand Canyon National Park.
Ahead, shimmering through heat waves in the not-too-distant east, were towering brown, red, and gray plateaus. It was only 8 a.m., and already the air conditioner in the GMC Sierra was hard at work. But that’s to be expected in the desert at the end of June when triple-digit temperatures are the norm. On this particular day, we would see the mercury climb to 112 degrees.
As we approached the launch site, everyone had some degree of trepidation over the impending journey. Most of it had been fostered the night before by a conversation with a local park ranger in Meadview, a quaint little burg 10 miles south of Pierce Ferry, where we rendezvoused and spent the night. After polling the locals on the safest place to eat — there’s not much choice — we pulled into the gravel parking lot of Ken’s Pizza. That’s where we spotted the ranger’s boat — a Mercury-powered Boston Whaler with all the bells and whistles.
Setting up camp on a lonely stretch of beach.
We caught the ranger on his way out, said howdy, and explained who we were and what we were up to. Although we’d done some previous investigating, we pumped him for firsthand information on what to expect along the way. He was amiable, but didn’t paint a good picture as he related how many dead bodies he’d bagged recently, recounting one case where two PWCs collided while jumping a boat wake.
He went on to warn us about shallow water and sandbars hidden by silty, brown murk where the river empties into the lake. (The Colorado River was originally called the Rio Colorado by the Spaniards because of its thick red water.) The silt is so bad on the downstream side of a sandbar that we’d immediately sink up to our chest if we stepped off our craft, he cautioned. And if we’re coming downstream at a good clip and hit one of the hidden bars, we’d be catapulted into the next county. Then also, if we went far enough upriver to hit the rapids, then we should know about hydraulics that can cause the craft to drop out from under you and resurface somewhere downstream.
“By the way, I’m taking the next couple days off,” he further warned us. “So if you run into any trouble, put a message in a bottle and one of the commercial river runners will pick it up and deliver it to me.”
Reassured by these bits of information, we forged ahead.
Long ago, commercial river runners measured off the Grand Canyon in one-mile increments. Pierce Ferry, Mile 280, is the stopping point for river runners who put in at Lees Ferry (Mile 0) on the upper end of the canyon. We talked with a couple of runners as we loaded our boats with gear and were relieved when they said that we shouldn’t run into any trouble. (That ranger was just trying to scare us, right?) After all, we came well equipped. We would be riding five PWCs into the canyon — a Kawasaki ST, Polaris SL 750, Yamaha Waverunner3 and Pro VXR, and a SeaDoo GTX. All are large, two or three seaters touted as touring vehicles.
The water at Pierce Ferry was murky, but nothing like the deep reddish-brown we’d heard about. The river runners showed us a shortcut across the bay through a shallow forest of green twigs and pointed out a rock wall beyond Scorpion Island that marked the entrance to the Grand Canyon.
For the entire length of the Canyon, the Colorado River descends in elevation from 3,116 feet at Lees Ferry to 1,200 feet at Lake Mead — an average gradient drop of eight feet per mile — with more than 160 rapids. If everything went well, we would go approximately 40 miles upriver to the proximity of Separation Canyon, where the last major rapid is located.
Three miles from Pierce Ferry we left the Lake Mead National Recreation area and passed a buoy that read, “Entering Grand Canyon National Park.” We were in Lower Granite Gorge, the lowermost section of the canyon marked by layers of limestone, sandstone, and shale in various hues of red, white, and gray that form the majestic Shivwits Plateau some 7,000 feet above sea level.
A couple of miles inside the national park boundary is Rampart Cave, which has yielded remains of ancient animals — mammoths, horses, camels, and giant ground sloths. Paleontological finds include a two-foot section of sloth skin, with rich reddish-brown hair still intact.
Also in this vicinity, but hidden from the unsuspecting, are the crystal waters of Columbine Falls. And at Mile 273, the border begins between the Grand Canyon National Park (north shore) and the Hualapai Indian Reservation (south shore). The Grand Canyon region has been occupied by Native American culture for thousands of years. When Hoover Dam was completed in 1935, the Overton Arm of Lake Mead inundated some of the most significant archeological sites of the Pueblo culture. While several prehistoric cultures have entirely disappeared, the Hualapai and Havasupai Indians continue to inhabit portions of the canyon.
Stu piloting our jet-powered supply boat.
On the north shore, near Mile 266, is a large crevice with a huge metal framework constructed by the U.S. Guano Corporation in 1958. The corporation had spent more than $1 million to recover bat guano, or manure, for use in fertilizer and medicine.
The ride upriver was sublime. The deeper we journeyed into the Canyon, the more Jurassic it appeared. From the water’s edge, canyon walls ascend rapidly, at times rising vertically hundreds of feet right out of the water. In other areas, small beaches dot the shoreline. Most consist of dark brown, clayish material near the water and rise two to three feet with dusty white tops. The water had gotten clearer here, though it had a definite green tint to it and was considerably colder (about 58 degrees).
We pulled onto a long, slender beach to refuel the PWCs from spare tanks carried in our supply boat — a 17-foot Jet Powered aluminum Roughneck powered by a Johnson 105 Jet Power outboard. We could have gone further on the PWCs, but wanted to lighten the heavily loaded Roughneck.
Initially, when we stepped onto the clay, it supported us well. But the more we walked on it, the suppler it became. Soon we were up to our knees in the thick, sticky goo, and it took considerable effort to get free. The same conditions prevailed at practically every beach we stopped at, though some were worse than others. On one occasion, we sank up to our hips (yet another hazard ranger Rick hadn’t even mentioned).
At Mile 248, 32 miles from our point of origin, we came upon Sunrise Canyon, a beautiful side canyon hideaway that can be explored by PWC or boat when the water level is high enough, which, unfortunately, it wasn’t. However, we did explore some of it by foot and found a set of bird tracks so large they could have passed for a pterodactyl’s, although a fat heron made more sense.
Ryan and Eric blasting up a glassy stretch of water.
Tributary canyons are numerous in the Grand Canyon, most of them following faults in the earth. Boulders washed into the river from these tributaries during flash floods are what have created nearly all the rapids in the Canyon. Prior to the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam, flash-flood debris was regularly swept away in the Colorado River’s large spring runoff floods. Now, with the river controlled by dams, the rapids appear to worsen with time. Although our geologic map indicated several rapids in the section of river we were traversing, we saw nothing more than ripples.
We decided to camp for the night near Mile 244, which is close to Separation Canyon. On August 28, 1896, Major John Wesley Powell, an ex-Union officer in the Civil War, reached what seemed to be the worst rapids of his downriver exploration at Separation Canyon. Three of his party abandoned the expedition and climbed out of the canyon in search of settlements to the north. Never seen again, they are thought to have been murdered by Paiute Indians, who mistook them for prospectors who had killed an Indian woman. Powell and the rest of his crew shot the rapids and continued on.
Some of the camp gear we carried in our PWCs.
Camping in the Grand Canyon is a fantastic experience. After setting up camp and eating a meal of chicken fajitas, we relaxed and took in the spectacle around us. Night falls in degrees here, and the surroundings take on an ethereal appearance. As darkness engulfed our camp and the moon became visible, sunlight still bathed the highest reaches of the canyon walls. The view and quietness were therapeutic.
Despite the disappearance of the sun, it stayed hot all night. The rock walls absorb tremendous heat during the day and radiate it back after sunset. Sleep was difficult. There was no breeze. We kept our tent screens zipped for fear of nocturnal visitors. One of our crew, who decided to take a barefoot stroll during the night, cut it short when his flashlight illuminated a large scorpion.
After breakfast the next morning, we broke camp and began a leisurely return to Pierce Ferry. The current was strong this far up in the canyon, so we decided to drift for a while and enjoy the awesome, serene beauty of our environment.
The return trip was faster and more fuel efficient than our trip upstream — too fast, in fact. We were only miles from the park boundary when the ranger’s intimidating words of advice came to mind and forced a chuckle. I have the distinct impression he simply didn’t want city folk messing with his bit of paradise. Having seen it firsthand, I don’t blame him.
As with any great trip, we wished somehow to prolong the journey and keep the experience alive — which is why we cut our engine, I suppose. Lying face-up on the seats with our heads nestled between the handlebars, we peered upward to savor the vestiges of the Grand Canyon like one savors the final sips of a vintage bottle of wine.
Stopping to explore a tributary canyon with a creek that feeds into the Colorado.