Grand Canyon - July 1999 - Page 7

But when it comes to silliness, I think Angie is the Queen.  Here she is showing all of her grace and beauty.  She's modeling the latest in food in her teeth.  I believe this is a Tootsie Roll.  The candy bag started to get hit pretty hard as the trip progressed.  Have to keep energy levels up!

Probably the single most exciting, frightening, powerful and just plain surly rapid on the Colorado River is Lava Falls.  Geologically speaking what happened is that a volcano to the north of the river erupted and spewed forth lots of lava which ran down into the canyon and eventually filled it with a lava plug or dam a thousand feet high.  This plug backed the river up until the water formed a great lake and then eventually the water began to spill over the lava dam.  In millions of years, that hard lava plug was warn away until today where it just pokes out of the river here and there and lines the canyon in places.  But you know it's there.  The river is pinched at Lava Falls by a debris field from a left-hand canyon.

The crux of Lava Falls is lateral waves (waves coming from the shore) from river left, a huge, very ugly hole beside these waves that try to push you over toward the hole, and a tiny sneak on river right that leads down to a whirlpool of water that pitches and heaves against an ugly, jagged bit of lava.  It's a bit scary.  My usual reaction to this kind of rapid is to laugh hysterically.  I think it's a tension tamer.  I've heard as a rule of thumb that you can tell how difficult you feel a rapid is by how often you have to pee.  I think I peed twice on this one.  One step worse is when you have to poop.  That means the rapid is beyond you.  Just upstream from Lava Falls the pool of water lies flat and calm.

Doesn't look that big, does it?  Yeah right

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