Welcome to Crystal Rapid Grand Canyon

Mike Peterson (that is me, a few years ago folks. Under the yellow helmet is Jason Kayne) going through the hole in Crystal Rapid, considered by many to be the second most difficult rapid on the Grand behind Lava. I can tell you that this wave made my spare oar stand up and take notice.

This was the third time I had been in the middle of the fray. The first time I watched everyone else take the extreme right run and it seemed like the fun was still a little ways out and I could still stay out of the meat. I was too far out on the tongue at the top and the water just pulled my boat, as I upstream ferried trying to escape, right into the current. I was just trying to get to the edge of the big stuff for a look see... but the best laid plans of mice and men. I had two passengers in this boat both of them in the front and as I realized there was no getting away from the pull of the river I Yelled with all the confidence I could muster "Hold on Boys we are going for it!" As I took huge powerful long strokes to push up the wall of water at the top of Crystal (not pictured here as this is about half way down Crystal and there is only one hole below this which is quite a bit smaller than this hole) my confidence turned to humility as my boat was on the side of the towering wall of water and we were still climbing at pretty close to a 45 degree angle. I pushed on the oars with all my might to get those last needed four or five feet. What I remember to this day was how quiet it was was on the side of that wall of water that was taller than my 16 foot hyside. There was no roar of the river, the noise either being blocked out by the wave or absorbed by it, yet you could feel the power a million years in that wave. The water was still clear as there had yet to be a monsoon storm and the release was at the highest I have to this date run the Canyon. At 18,000 to 22,000 cfs that wall of water was as smooth as a baby's butt (and just as full of surprises as I was to find out). I believe it that was the calmest place I have ever been. I was a peace with the world and my soul and all the memories I have of life being in harmony with the world, that was it for those 6 to 10 seconds. They will always be etched in my memory.

As we crested the top of the wave, though there was a sense of relief in topping the mammoth standing wave, I could hear all hell break loose. The crashing laterals, the hole pictured here descending to the rocky bottom of the river, frothing and splashing then the wave curling back on itself and the rumble of the rocks underneath us transported us into a hyperbole of audio and physical churning, chugging, whipping, dipping, splashing water that is as historic and well know among rafters as is the Redwood Forest of Northern California to car traveling tourists or the half dome of Yosemite to hikers. We sped like a runaway train smashing through the hole and for the first time in my rafting career I was totally immersed in the wave that crashed back upon the hole and I wondered for a split second if I had flipped. As I emerged from darkness, still upright, the raft exploded into cheers and hoorays as I rowed on down the river. What a life changing experience!!

The next time I took the hole I was in a 18 ft'r and it seemed almost anticlimactic.

But the time pictured here (picture taken by the Barnes family) was again as memorable as the first only I came in to the current below the wall of water and as you see the rest is history. The other two times down the canyon I have kept very right doing the backwards pull in around the rock on the top right then staying away from the turmoil and the rock on the right bank.