In March and April of 2008 I participated in a fantastic trip. Sixteen years before, Ron Thomas had joined the waiting list for a private river trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. About two years before, he was given a launch date of March 15, 2008. He recruited me as designated alternate leader and we set about assembling a crew and dealing with all the logistical details involved in a 21 day trip without access to civilization and through the legendary whitewater of the Canyon. The first and most difficult problem was finding oarsmen for the rafts. Ron was the only one with experience with rafts. My experience included extended wilderness boat trips, but in canoes rather than rafts. I bought a raft and trained by going on lesser trips. I recruited one of my wilderness canoeing friends, Kerry Luttrell, and he also started to learn to deal with a raft. One other kayaking friend also started, but was ultimately unable to go. We ran Desolation and Gray Canyons of the Green in Utah, the lower Stikine in British Columbia and Alaska, the Chama and Rio Grande (Taos Box and Racecourse) in New Mexico, and, most importantly for training as far as I was concerned, the Upper Salt River Canyon in Arizona.

The rest of the raft crews included Janet Brook, Sharon Luttrell, Lamar Baggett, Mary Nutt and Tim Hankins. Gill Luttrell and Joe Box came with their kayaks. It was good to have a couple of good kayakers along. It added considerable flexibility to the party as the kayaks are much faster and more maneuverable than the rafts, although the rafts did have to carry their gear.

We had three rafts, an 18' cataraft, a 16' cataraft, and a 16' self-bailer. Ron and I own and rowed the catarafts. The self-bailer was rented and rowed by Kerry. When I say "rowed" here, I mean rowed in the major rapids and maybe half of the rest. But the passengers did much of the rowing in the calmer sections.

This was my first trip through the canyon, but I can hardly imagine a better time of year. It was the end of winter at the start. We had a bit of snow on our second day. Over the next 3 weeks both because of the time and because we were losing altitude, spring was breaking out all around us. It got warmer, but not hot, the days got longer, and flowers were coming out all over the place. The commercial and motor trips don't start until April, so all of the boating groups we met were private oar parties which are basically silent.

There are very few photos of our boats in the rapids. With only 3 rafts, we all wanted to go through together for safety. That meant I was rowing rather than taking photographs.

I made a web show shortly after the trip, before I had much opportunity to do any post processing. Now, 2 years later, I am finally replacing that show with one based on the processed images.

Most of the photos were taken with my Pentax K10D DSLR using the DA 12-24mm f4, FA 28-70mm f4, FA 50mm f1.7, and F 80-200mm 4.7-5.6mm lenses. The latter three lenses are left over from when I had a Pentax film camera years ago. The post processing was done in the Gimp. The captions to the photos show the camera, lens, focal length, and exposure information as extracted from the exif data. For many photos, the lens information did not transfer through the postprocessing (especially if starting from a raw photo), but you can generally tell from the focal length and the above list of lenses that I had on the trip.
 
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Sizes: Screen The early morning of launch day at Lee's Ferry.	Sizes: Screen North Canyon.	Sizes: Screen North Canyon.	Sizes: Screen The two catarafts at South Canyon.
Sizes: Screen The view upriver at South Canyon.	Sizes: Screen In Redwall Cavern	Sizes: Screen In Marble Gorge	Sizes: Screen A beach with patterns from the highest waves as the water retreated.
Sizes: Screen Sharon, Kerry, and Tim in Marble Canyon	Sizes: Screen The kayakers and Kerry's raft in Marble Canyon	Sizes: Screen Boat parking at a lunch stop.	Sizes: Screen The view downriver from the Nankoweap Granaries
Sizes: Screen The Nankoweap Granaries.	Sizes: Screen The view across the river from the Nankoweap Granaries.	Sizes: Screen Evening bath time at the main Nankoweap Camp	Sizes: Screen Along the river near Mile 66 with the South Rim visible.
Sizes: Screen A waterfall along Clear Creek	Sizes: Screen The canyon wall along Clear Creek	Sizes: Screen Dinner	Sizes: Screen Sharon Luttrell in the campfire smoke.
Sizes: Screen Tim Hankins	Sizes: Screen A raft from another party in Granite Rapid	Sizes: Screen Evening at 94 Mile Camp.	Sizes: Screen Joe Box playing in the Crystal hole.
Sizes: Screen A group picture at the Ross Wheeler. The people are Joe Box, Janet Brook, Gill Luttrell, Sharon Luttrell, and Mary Nutt.	Sizes: Screen Polished rocks along the river's edge.	Sizes: Screen Lamar Baggett	Sizes: Screen Mary Nutt rowing Ron's cataraft.
Sizes: Screen Elves Chasm	Sizes: Screen Joe Box preparing to make the Elves Chasm jump with Gill Luttrell watching from behind the falls.	Sizes: Screen A California Redbud (I think) at Elves Chasm	Sizes: Screen Beyond Elves Chasm
Sizes: Screen Mary Nutt and Tim Hankins in Blacktail Canyon	Sizes: Screen Lower Blacktail Camp	Sizes: Screen Lower Blacktail Camp	Sizes: Screen Gill and Joe's tent in the morning at Lower Blacktail Camp
Sizes: Screen Deer Creek above the falls.	Sizes: Screen Gill Luttrell and Joe Box swimming below Deer Creek Falls.	Sizes: Screen Creek in Matkatamiba Canyon.	Sizes: Screen Havasu Creek near the Colorado.
Sizes: Screen Gill Luttrell looking very small in a very big canyon.	Sizes: Screen An Occotillo	Sizes: Screen Deposits at a seep area along our layover day hike.	Sizes: Screen Lava Falls, the whitewater climax of the trip.
Sizes: Screen One of many glacier-like lava flows falling into the canyon.	Sizes: Screen Settling in for the night at 185.5 Mile Camp.	Sizes: Screen The flowers of spring.	Sizes: Screen Ben Zuckerman, one of three friends who hiked down Whitmore Wash, rode with us a few miles, and hiked back out Parashant Wash.
Sizes: Screen Looking downstream over our Parashant Wash camp	Sizes: Screen Ron, Lamar, and Kerry in Parashant Wash	Sizes: Screen Ron breaking camp at Parashant Wash.	Sizes: Screen A camp visitor
Sizes: Screen Pumpkin Spring, with the saturation cranked way up. It's colorful in real life, but not that colorful.	Sizes: Screen Eroded rocks near Pumpkin Spring.	Sizes: Screen Gill Luttrell and Joe Box. They had become engaged at 94 Mile Camp and were married in July 2009.	Sizes: Screen The Grand Canyon from the South Rim late on take-out day.