The third day it was very overcast and not very warm as we started out. I think a lot of us had our rain gear on for warmth, and just case we hit any white water (the Colorado in the Grand Canyon is about 47 F). After a little ways and about 10 miles, we parked at the entrance to the Little Colorado and took a short hike along the LC to a place where there are some great ledges to hang out, and a few very small rapids that you can swim.
We put our life jackets on upside down as diapers and floated through the water that I remembered being much warmer :P
Probably because the sun wasn’t really out. I made a few solo runs and helped Jan go through once.
Then I began gathering people to make a train through the rapid. You float in a line holding onto the feet of the person behind you.
This gets tricky loading sometimes because there is a fairly strong current that is trying to pull you along as you are linking people together. I think our biggest train in 2007 was like 15 people, which gets to the point where you are still trying to add people onto the back and the person in the front is like, um, IN the rapid here, we need to go!! The first run we did this year had Karma 4 in the front (which means you are sort of steering) and after going through the rapids she bounced off a rock at the bottom, feet first, but it almost flipped her over- she said it was almost a keg stand off a rock, and christened it Karma’s rock. Somewhere we got a picture of her later standing on her rock. We improved our steering a little bit in future runs, although everyone including myself had a few scrapes.
After an hour or two, we headed back to the rafts went another mile or two and stopped for lunch at crash canyon. It was familiar; we have definitely lunched there before. It was actually raining at that point, although not super hard. I found a place to climb under a ledge while lunch was being set up. The spot was a great place to look for lizards, because I remember a lot there from last trip, but alas, they weren’t a fan of the rain and cold and were nowhere to be found.I got mom to take a picture of me on the ledge, after Matthew went to get a sandwich (he came up with me, or rather found me up there and joined me).
I eventually came down and got lunch, and then waited under an overhang while the boatmen cleaned up lunch. As we set out again, it really started to rain. Mark told us to keep our happy hats on, and that he would do his best to skirt some rapids so we wouldn’t get more wet and cold. We squished almost all of us in the tea room minus the karmas, and we were all decked out in raingear and everything else we had in our day gear. Even the boatmen had on huge rain jackets- it was the most clothing I ever saw them wear, they usually were in shorts, flip flops, and some sort of t-shirt.
Matthew didn’t have his raingear in his daygear, and he was like, I’m fine. Later Kathy was like, he has no idea how hypothermia works. Mark took off his own sweatshirt and made Matthew put it on, and then fashioned a trash bag vest to keep him sort of dry. We had him huddle in the middle of the tea room and put another trashbag over his legs, and he kind of squatted there for a while, probably not comfortable, but not complaining about the new layers of clothing either.
A few miles and maybe 45 minutes to an hour later (which I know seemed like longer), we stopped at Tanner Canyon. We were having an internal debate in our raft of whether or not to hike or just make camp early, but Mark only heard part of it and decided we were hiking. The worry was that while some of us could warm up while hiking, those that couldn’t or didn’t want to hike would just get colder. I think it worked out in the end though; I hiked with a bunch of people, and those that stayed behind hung out under the lunch tent that was re-erected and shared funny stories about practical jokes and such. Our whole group (us 5) started the hike, with the Karmas and I think Jan turning back in the beginning when it got rocky. Mom made it up a little ways to where some stone pictures were (hieroglyphics? Stone carvings? Not really sure what to call them here.), and then headed back down.
About 2/3 of the group made it to the clearing where we had a good view of the river and what looked a little like a delta- one of the wider places at canyon level.
There was some anasazi artifacts including a piece of pottery and what looked like some remains of a dwelling, although it’s very hard to tell the difference between that and some of the rock layer in that part of the canyon. There was also a stone that was used to grind corn with a rock- I need to look up the name for this.
Wandering back into the side canyon, and down a small bit, there was another grinding rock and lots of pieces of pottery.
Mark told us that there used to be tons more but people kept taking it, and asked us please to not take it. He was like, what’s it going to do, sit on your dresser? People, generations after us, need to see this stuff. We went further into the side canyon, until we almost did a u-turn back in the direction of the river, but into this almost slot canyon – wider than a slot canyon, but recently carved by water, not much growing there- that went down- it was a little slick, and several people were like, are we coming back up this way? Mark was like yes, and they were like, ok, that’s all I needed to know, and they didn’t go any further. People on this trip were great about knowing their limits and not complaining when they reached them.
We stopped somewhere between halfway and 2/3 of the way down the slot canyon, complete with some fresh pools of water from the rain, and saw a ledge in the canyon that had more grinding stones and… corncobs. That were like… 800 years old. Very small, and we didn’t touch them of course, but wow. It was really cool to see.
Sliding down a few of those ledges did in my raingear, which I was still wearing along with my life jacket for warmth. We climbed out and made it made to the rafts with no incidents.
Chatting with Parke (one of the guides) later on in the trip, I asked him if the hikes and the trip ever got boring, and he said that each trip was different, and that he had never done the Tanner hike before. ! Mark wanted to take our group, and specifically the Beans, somewhere they had never been, since they have seen so much of the typical sidehikes in the canyon. Most people like to hike to places they can play, like waterfalls, and this hike would also be miserable if the sun was blazing, which of course it wasn’t.
We got back on the rafts, more warmer from the hike, and went another hour-ish before we camped below Nevill’s rapid. This time there was no question about putting up tents, since we were cold and wanted to make sure that we kept at much stuff as possible, including ourselves, dry. It had stopped raining by time we camped though, which was great- my one wish was to not have to pitch the tents in the rain, because then they would be wet to start with. Even if it only paused for 5 minutes, I think I would have been happy. But it stayed dry that night and finaly began to sort of clear up, although it was cloudy some that night. I think we had seared tuna which was really good. The tents were great for warmth even though I don’t think it rained. 
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