Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

From June 28th through July 3rd, I had the privilege of being on a raft on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. This was part of a family trip “for the guys.” On a trip put together by my father-in-law Allan, his two sons, me (a son in law), my three sons, two other grandsons, one grandson-in-law, and one great grandson spent five days and five nights on the Colorado River. These blog posts are part of the story.

The one thing that defined the trip through the canyon on the river in a physical sense was the temperature of the water. The water in the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon comes out of the Glen Canyon Dam. That dam is 700 feet tall. Lake Powell, behind the dam, is about 130 feet deep. The water from the dam into the river comes from the bottom of the lake.

The water is cold. The guides told us that at Lee’s Ferry, the starting point, the water is 45 degrees F. Sitting in that water is the same as sitting outside in your underwear on a 10-degree F day. I wasn’t able to measure the temperature of the water and I have never sat outside in my underwear on a 10-degree F day. I do know that the water in the river was cold. Several years ago I underwent weeks of physical therapy on one of my feet. I would put an ice bag on my foot every night. There was a cycle of pain and then numbness from the ice bag. When I stood in the river ankle deep, I experienced the same cycle. My feet went numb in less than five minutes.

This was the main disappointment to me of the trip. We were on a river, but I would not jump into the water. It was just too cold for me.

The guides told us that the water temperature rose one degree for every 20 miles south that we traveled. We traveled about 200 miles, so the river would have been about 55 degrees F on our last day. We did jump from the raft into the river on the last afternoon. It was still cold, but refreshing. The refreshment was due to…

The hot sun – blazing hot. Every day we reached 100 degrees F. My guess is that on the last day we reached 110 degrees F, but, as everyone says, “it is a dry heat.”

My biggest concern, after avoiding falling into the water, was avoiding sun burn. I wore a long-sleeve shirt everyday. I wore a hat all the time. I carefully applied large quantities of sun block twice a day. I am happy to report that I experienced no sun burn during the week.

Per the dry heat – yes, it is dry. I read that the relative humidity rarely goes about 5 percent. This is weird for someone from Louisiana where a dry day is anything below 50 percent humidity. It is easy to dehydrate in dry heat. You perspire, but your perspiration evaporates immediately. It is easy to assume that it “isn’t that hot” when you are not covered with perspiration. That is a bad assumption. The salts from your perspiration cake your face and the rest of your body. One morning I washed my face and washed my face and washed my face for five minutes before I removed that salty taste.

Washing your body? Yes, it needed it to remove all that salt. How did I wash? Not very well. Some of our hikes into side canyons revealed relatively warm water. I would submerge myself. One evening I recall standing knee deep in the water and actually using soap. I was able to splash enough cold water on me to rinse the soap. That only happened one evening.

On the last afternoon (more about that in a later post), with 110 degree F heat and a hot wind of 30 miles per hour, we did jump from the raft into a calm section of the river for about five minutes. That was great. That was my hope for the entire week. Alas, that hope was not fulfilled.