In late August, 1979 a group of about fifty of us from the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory* of Columbia University took a nine-day rafting trip down the Colorado River, from Lee's Ferry, just below the Glen Canyon Dam, through the Grand Canyon, to Pierce Ferry on the eastern end of Lake Mead.

I have no journal from this trip. These notes are from April, 2010, when I scanned my slides from the trip, taken 31 years before.

Dallas, Mike Steckler and I, all then graduate students at Columbia, drove out in Dallas' and my little Mazda 323 sedan. The drive took 5 days; we stayed with relatives in Edwardsville IL and Denver CO on the way.

The trip was led by an outfitter named Cross Tours, whose proprietor was "mad most of the tine, but Cross all the time". Our group used three of his big rafts, each opearted by a guide. Each raft could hold up to twenty people, plus plenty of gear. The rafts were powered with a small outboard engine, so we did no paddling on the trip. In stretched of flat water, we just relaxed and watched the scenery. In the rapids, we held on for dear life. The water temperature, especially near the start, where it came out of Lake Powell, was very cold, in the mid-forties, Fahrenheit. Yet the air was often very hot, well above 100 Fahrenheit at times, especially during sunny afternoons. We were alternately frozen with cold spray and roasted.

We had one close call during the trip, when one of the rafts became hung up on a large rock, mid-river. The force of the river was so strong that prying it off was very difficult for the guides, and took several hours of effort. We hauled the raft over to a beach and the guides spent several additional hours sewing and glueing a large rubber patch onto the torn side of the raft, and reinflating it.

Among the more memorable sights along the Grand Canyon were: Vasey's Paradise, an oasis around a spring that roars out of the rock face of the canyon wall; Redwall Cavern, a very large alcove scoured by the river into the sandstone of the canyon wall; Lava Falls, one of the larger rapids formed where an ancient lava flow from a volcano at the crater's rim flow down into it and dammed the river; and Havasu Canyon, with its many waterfalls, some of which are from beautiful pools impounded by travertine terraces.

*Subsequently renamed the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.