The day we ran Granite Rapid would be our biggest white water day of the trip.

We would run Granite rapid, Hermit rapid, Crystal rapid, and what’s known as the gems. The gems are a series of large rapids called Sapphire, Turquoise, Emerald, Ruby and Serpentine. In this 15 mile stretch of water we would hit several of the largest and most dangerous rapids on the trip. 

Because I’m terrified of white water, I decided to ride with Cole and Lyndsey on this day. Cole had already kayaked the Grand Canyon once before and he and Lyndsey were both experienced behind the oars of a raft. 

I was buttoned up from head to toe in rain gear, my rented life jacket swallowing my upper body.

Standing next to Cole and Lyndsey in their sleek dry suits and personal PFD’s I felt like a harbor seal stuffed into a too small lifejacket. My awkwardness contrasted against their competence, and was enhanced by the fact that they are both significantly taller than me. I had my raincoat zipped up to my nose and my sunglasses obscured the rest of my face.

I was a small red and blue cork with only my nose sticking out to reveal the human underneath. 

As we made our way down Granite rapid I clutched the straps of the seat and looked intently towards the 8 foot tall waves of water that our raft was about to slam into. I could hear the clunk of the oars in their stirrups as Cole pulled hard against the water. Lyndsey cheered as he maneuvered us away from the hard cliff face, and into the wave train that petered out into flat water. The boat slowly stopped rocking and we drifted into the flat water again.

The endorphins of running a rapid successfully, hit me and I cheered.

“Great job honey!” Lyndsey said brightly. “Thanks!” Cole said smiling as he casually opened a Coors light.  

One down, eight more to go. 

The next rapid—Hermit rapid—was a HUGE roller coaster of a wave train, with an 18-20 foot wave in the middle that could very well flip a raft end over end at high water. I remember the split second at the base of the wave, looking up and thinking I had never seen so much water in my entire life, before we slammed face first through it and I came out gasping and cold on the other side. 

Each rapid Cole ran calmly, as if maneuvering a two ton raft through unpredictable white water was no big deal. He could have been drinking coffee and reading his morning paper, his face was relaxed and his movements unconcerned.

Our biggest rapid of the day was Crystal rapid. Its reputation preceded it as one of the nastiest carnage inducing rapids in the Canyon. The anxiety I had held in my chest for the last few days squirmed out as we pulled our boats to shore and prepared to scout the rapid. 

I hiked out to the vantage point and looked down to see the most violent pit of water I’d ever seen in my life. 

Crystal rapid is a long writhing stretch of water spanning the distance of a football field. The top of the rapid has a few protruding rocks and shallow water on the top right, so you have to go left in order to miss them. However, downriver maybe 100 yards from there is a hole the size of a small RV that you do not want to hit. The hole itself is a gaping mouth of white water. The glassy surface of the river flows smoothly into this pit of froth until it is pulled upward and then crashes down again on itself with devastating force. The speed at which the water is sucked in, pulled up and then crashes down is startling. 

I stood for a long time, staring into the angry pit of foam and rage, the endless sound of that crashing wave roared in my ears. 

Dalton appeared at my side with a flask of whisky. “Looks pretty violent.” 

I nodded weakly. He handed me the flask. I upended it into my mouth and counted to three before handing it back. 

“Well, I guess let’s do this.” 

Sitting in the boat staring at the water ahead of me, I felt the twisting knife of panic in my chest. Every part of my body was screaming at me to get out of the boat and walk around the rapid, but I sat still and grabbed Lyndsey’s hand. 

She smiled at me while Cole pulled his oars through the water. 

“Can you tell me it’s going to be ok?” I asked in a small voice. Lyndsey looked calmly at me, “It’s going to be ok.” She smiled and Cole began to turn the boat towards Crystal. 

There are a lot of lessons on the river. Lessons about control, going with the flow, being ready for whatever happens. I have never been good at letting go of control. But right here in this moment, I couldn’t control what was going to happen next. As I felt the water begin to pull the raft forward I couldn’t control where Cole was going to push the boat, I couldn’t control the rapids, I could only sit tight and hold on. 

As we crested the horizon line, the eternity of that split-second dragged out. I felt myself let go of my need to control, my anxiety broke, and in we went. 

Cole pulled the boat around to the left of the rocks at the top of the rapid, keeping the oars out of the shallow water so as not to break a paddle. I clutched tightly to my seat as he pointed the nose of the boat slightly right of the Crystal rapid hole. The endless writhing mass of white water bore down on us, that deafening roar getting louder and louder as we approached it. I stared into that terrible white mouth for an endless 2 seconds and… then it was gone. 

Cole had sailed smoothly passed the hole. Lyndsey and I hadn’t even gotten splashed. The roar faded into the distance and all the feeling came back into my face, hands and feet. Cole maneuvered the boat gently through the rest of the wave train and pulled the boat into a large eddy where we could watch the rest of our crew run Crystal. 

“Great job guys.” Cole said cheerily. “We did it.” Cole’s smile brightens his whole being, and he cracks a Coors Light. I collapse on the boat floor in a heap and say, “The anticipation was way worse than the rapid itself. That was awful.” 

Lyndsey says brightly, “Great job honey!” As she pulls out a Truly from their Yeti Cooler. 

Everyone else runs the rapid in good style and the tension in the group lowers significantly. Crystal is one of the hardest rapids on the river, and we won’t have to deal with a rapid of that size for several more days. 

However, it’s not over ‘till it’s over. The rest of the day we have the gems to deal with. 

Sapphire, Turquoise, Emerald, Ruby and Serpentine rapids are a series of smaller rapids that still pack a mean punch. It feels like a victory to be done with Crystal, but the gems can still catch you off guard if you’re not carful. 

After lunch Cole decides to ride his kayak for the rest of the day, which means Lyndsey and I have the raft to ourselves. 

Lyndsey is a tall lean woman with long dirty blond hair that falls below her shoulders. She is tall, thin and straight where I am short, curvy and curly. She is comfortable on the raft where I am awkward, she understands the river lingo and is more prepared than any of us, where as I am doing my best every day to not fall in the river when I pee. 

Cole launches off the boat in his kayak and paddles away while I lay down on the boat and soak up some of the first solid rays of sunshine we’ve had on this trip. 

As we float, we talk about the river, we talk about boys, we talk about our lives back home. Lyndsey and Cole have two dogs, Eddie and Yampa, who she misses very much. I look at pictures of them on her phone and that place inside me that hurts when I see a cute dog begins to ache. 

We start to come upon a rapid and Lyndsey’s demeanor changes. She sits up straighter, her eyes scan the horizon, her mouth sets. “Can you put my phone away?” She hands me a pelican case without looking at me and I scramble to secure the box and its contents. 

The chatty, care-free Lyndsey I have been hanging out with the last 45 minutes is gone, and in her place is all business. “Hold on.” She tells me calmly, as the first of the gems rushes up to greet us. I hold on and look ahead to see the familiar crash of endless waves and white water. 

Lyndsey pulls the oars back, spins the boat around and then begins to push with all her might as we crash and rock through Sapphire rapid. Waves crash over the bow of the boat and I am once again soaked through. The rapid begins to peter-out and the water mellows.

The seam of an eddy runs parallel to our boat, this thin rippling line threatens to pull our raft out of the current and into the stagnant water by the shore. I watch, useless, as Lyndsey tries to fight the current and keep our down stream progress. Getting caught in an eddy isn’t usually a problem, but with the size of these rafts and the strength of the current, I’ve spent the better part of an hour trying to pull myself out of an eddy—with no luck.

The last bit of hydraulics from Sapphire rapid gives our boat the slightest nudge too far and we begin—in slow motion—to float away from the current.

“Fucking no!” Lyndsey is straining against the oars as hard as she can while our uncaring rubber raft continues to float infuriatingly away from the current. We are stuck in the large eddy and will have to wait for the boat to do the full 360 degree spin before she can work to get us back out. She throws the oars down and lays on her back. Her frustration and disappointment are palpable. 

I can feel the pain radiating off her like a wound.

“I just feel like I can’t fucking do this.” She says to the sky. Her voice is close to breaking and she throws one arm over her face. 

It’s a surreal feeling to watch someone display an exact emotion that you’ve had when you’re in a completely foreign environment.  

I know the unique pain of imperfection in a male dominated sport. The endless pursuit of trying to prove that you can do it, while also shouldering the responsibility of proving women are more than supportive bystanders. Cole being an excellent oarsmen only makes it worse. Forever comparing yourself to your male partner and measuring yourself up to his successes, leads nowhere except right here. 

My heart ached for her. 

“Lyndsey, it’s ok!” I said nervously. “We just got pushed into this eddy, you didn’t do anything wrong. We couldn’t have seen this coming.” 

I can tell that she’s embarrassed by her outburst, which only makes the surge of emotions more difficult to handle. 

“I’m just so bad at reading the water. I should have seen this eddy coming.” We’re drifting gently back around and she grabs the oars again to start pulling. 

“I feel like Cole would have seen it, and now everyone’s ahead of us and I’m just trying to catch up!” Her voice breaks slightly in the last few words, but she pulls us back into the current and we begin to drift downriver again. Her sunglasses hide her eyes, and she keeps turning her head away from me, I have a feeling she’s fighting the urge to cry. 

“Lyndsey, look.” I say helplessly, “You just can’t compare yourself to Cole. You really can’t. He’s always going to be physically stronger than you. You can’t row like he does, you have to row like…” 

My words trail off, I want to say, like other women do. But I don’t know how other women row, I don’t know this sport, I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t know how to comfort her.

She sighs and pulls the oars out of the water, letting the current pull us gently down river. 

“I think you’re a really good oarsmen.” I say to her turned away face, “I’m not just saying that. Most of this stuff I couldn’t do if you held a gun to my head.” I look back at the chocolatey brown water, “I mean honestly I still can’t figure out how to turn the boats right or left most of the time.” 

She snorts at that. 

There is an awkward silence after that, both of us unsure of how to move forward. Fortunately, the river always provides.

“BEER!” I jump to my feet and point desperately at a small floating can I see three or four yards away from the back of the boat. 

Her pain momentarily forgotten, Lyndsey scrambles for the oars and I lean out over the edge of the boat, trying, willing myself to be taller than I am. 

With approximately 30,000 people making trips down the Grand Canyon each year, there is a lot of carnage. The river will take anything and everything from you, but occasionally it will cough a few things back up. So far on the trip we’d found a bicycle helmet, a basket ball, a broken oar paddle, a tube of zip tech, and every so often, a solitary floating beer. 

“BEER!” I scream again, as if Lyndsey hadn’t heard me. “BEER!” She shouts back encouragingly. Our discomfort forgotten, we turn our undivided attention towards the pursuit of the river beer.

We are on a stretch of mostly flat water, but the hydraulics of the Grand Canyon are unpredictable. Any second now this beer could be sucked underwater into an eddy and be lost to us forever. The water is silty and brown, anything more than 3 inches below the surface will disappear completely from view. 

Lyndsey is paddling upriver, trying to slow our progress in the current as I am doing my best to lean out of the boat and towards this infuriatingly bobbing beer can. 

“Oh shit.” I hear Lyndsey say from her seat at the oars. “What?” I turn around. A small watery riffle lies in front of us. It’s too small a rapid to have a real name, but if the beer gets pulled in, we’re almost sure to lose it. “Paddle faster!” I shout, as I lean dangerously over the edge. For a few laborious seconds she holds us out of the riffle as the beer drifts sporadically towards us in the current.

“It’s happening.” Lyndsey says, resigned to the force of the river. You can only paddle against the current for so long. 

In slow motion I watch as the small metal can pirouettes in place, and is sucked under. Our boat rocks gently up and down and I watch the spot where the can disappeared helplessly. 

“Damnit.” I say, sitting up. 

Lyndsey sets the oars back down and says, “I really could have used that.” 

“Yeah,” I said, “Me too.” 

We float in silence for a while, me staring into the boiling brown water, hoping against hope that the beer will reappear. I scan the water fruitlessly, “If it would just—OH MY GOD.” 

As if presented to us by the hand of God, the beer rose up out of the water not two feet from the back of the boat. 

Never in my life have I tried harder for something so meaningless. Lyndsey strained against the current at the oars, I could hear her pushing with all her might. I hooked my hands through the ropes along the bow, and leaned towards the beer, right arm outstretched. My fingertips brushed the cold metal and the beer spun around slightly in the water. “Come on…” I held my breath and bit my tongue. “Just! A little! Further!” I was kicking the beer with my fingertips now, close enough to touch but not close enough to grab. The opaque brown water threatening at any moment to reclaim what it had given. Lyndsey pulled against the oars, I stretched out the tiniest bit further and… “GOT IT!” 

My hand closed around the cold metal can and I let out a scream of triumph as I thrust the beer into the air. 

“We did it!” Lyndsey screamed. 

I screamed. Lyndsey screamed back. I screamed again. 

“Fuck yeah! That was exactly what we needed!” Lyndsey collapsed and started laughing. I took a good look at the treasure I’d found. 

“Aww man,” I hold the can up to Lyndsey’s face, “It’s a ginger ale.” 

Lyndsey laughs, “I don’t care what it is. That was awesome.” 

The tension of the moment is broken. Our pursuit of the floating beer, the teamwork that came with it and our victory—solely for the sake of our own victory—brings a quiet confidence into Lyndsey’s oar strokes. 

Turquoise, Emerald, Ruby and Serpentine rapids are up next. I stand at the front of the boat and high side (throw my body toward the high side of the boat to prevent flipping) unnecessarily, just to give myself something to do, while Lyndsey expertly navigates the surging white water. A silent companionship is growing between us. Me, supporting Lyndsey emotionally, while she, physically ferries us through the upcoming challenges. 

The last big rapid of the day approaches and Lyndsey and I stare out at the boats ahead of us, trying to see which line to take. 

“The book says go left.” I say, wiping sand off the giant waterlogged guide book our outfitter gave us for the trip. The pages are waterproof, and gather sand like nothing else.

Lyndsey is standing, watching Alex run the right line as I put the soggy book down and join her. 

Alex makes a few awkward motions on the boat, we can’t quite tell what’s going on, but suddenly he stops moving all together. The rapid has caught the front end of his boat in a hole and the raft is taking on water. 

“Oh,” Says Lyndsey. “That doesn’t look good.” 

We watch as Alex tries to turn the boat out of the wave that is pouring into his boat. For a few dangerous seconds we think he’s going to flip, but then he pulls hard with one oar while pushing hard with the other and the boat spins out. He frees himself and continues down the rapid unscathed. 

Doug, the next boat in line, decides to go right instead of left. 

“Yeah,” Says Lyndsey, “I think I’m going to follow Dougs line. I really don’t want to get surfed like Alex.” 

I don’t know what that means but I nod and glance down at the guide book. 

A large pour over on river right should be avoided at all costs. 

I read the words on the page and glance up to see Doug gliding through the waves on river right easily. 

Hmmm... 

The left line is what caught Alex and almost flipped him, and the right line definitely goes. 

Maybe we’re not at Serpentine yet? 

A pour over is a place in the river where the water drops off steeply because of a large rock or other obstruction under water. It kind of looks like a short, fat, waterfall. Alex got caught in one and the pour over trapped him by pouring water into his boat from this ‘waterfall’, trapping him in place. 

“Cole always tells me to pick a line and just commit. So I’m committing.” Lyndsey says as she sits down and puts on her business face. 

I zip up my hood and clench the side of the boat as we head for river right. 

You can see pour overs coming if you know what to look for. A large glassy dome will present itself on the horizon line. It looks beautiful, like you could glide right through the crashing white water on a perfectly smooth dome of water. That is, until you get close enough to see the drop below and the raging hole of frothing white water. 

We crest the horizon line of the rapid, and in we go. 

“I’m going to look out for the pour over!” I yell as Lyndsey maneuvers the boat left around a series of small rocks. 

The roar of the white water is all around us as we begin to really pick up speed. 

“There it is!” I yell and point towards a pour over just to the left of us. There is a two foot drop leading to a pit of froth the size of a VW bug. “I think that was the pour over on river right!” 

I feel relieved as we glide passed the foaming pit and keep heading downriver. 

“Nope,” Lyndsey is staring ahead of us, “THAT’S the pour over on river right.” 

There’s a split second of silence as I turn my head and see what she’s talking about. 

“Oh shit.”

I look directly down river and see a large glassy dome easily the size of our boat. The wave crashing in on itself below is clearly visible from our rapidly approaching vantage point. 

“Oh shit oh shit!” I’m holding on to the front of the boat, staring the drop and the boiling pit of rage straight in the face. 

“You gotta turn!” I shout at Lyndsey. 

“Not yet.” She says calmly. The roaring hole approaches. 

“Go!” I shout desperately at Lyndsey.

“Not yet!” Her jaw is set, her eyes focused.

The white water is so close I could reach out and touch it. I take a deep breath, and instinctively lean back, trying to get away from the hole in front of me. 

“Turn!” I shout frantically into the sound of the rapid, my words are lost in the white noise. 

“NOW!” Lyndsey pulls hard on her right oar while pushing hard with the left. My eyes are locked on the white water below. I feel the spray against my cheek. 

The boat turns hard and… we barely kiss the edge of the hole. The nose of the boat glides gently along the smooth arm of the pour over as the back end of the boat is pulled away from the hole and down into the ever relaxing current. Lyndsey had just turned the boat a full 180 degrees and ran the rest of the rapid backwards.

“FUCK YES!” Lyndsey screams as we rock gently to a stand still at the bottom of the rapid. 

I’m still recovering from what I thought was going to be a near death experience, while Lyndsey has thrown down the oars and is screaming at Cole who has been waiting expectantly in the shallows, “Did you see that?!” 

Her victory is palpable. I am relieved we aren’t dead and I’m blown away by the move she just pulled. 

Cole is paddling up next to us while Lyndsey gesticulates and gives him the play-by-play. The difference in her posture from this morning, the difference in her attitude, and her clean display of competence has transformed her. 

Her excitement from her victory is contagious. Cole is nodding and smiling in agreement, relaying how much he was worried she took the right line and then saw her pull off the move she did. The giddiness of successfully running a rapid begins to bubble up inside of me and I let our of whoop of joy. I start laughing and give Lyndsey a high five. We both throw in a few more loud ‘fuck yeah’s’ and throw our fists into the sky.

Lyndsey is shaking with joy as she laughs and sits down. 

Her oar strokes pull us forward towards camp, the late afternoon sun reflecting golden light across our path. The blue sky is cloudless above us, and the distant orange canyon walls paint a breathtaking picture as we glide soundlessly through the water.

Her sunglasses hide her eyes, and she holds her head high, but I have a feeling she’s fighting the urge to cry.