Grand Canyon GigaView Day 15 - Running Lava Falls

We scouted Lava Falls for over an hour and a half. Each of us had a different gut feeling of how we wanted to run it. None of us was confident of success. It is a scary thing to enter a rapid that you know could have its way with your boat. Kevin went first, starting well, but getting rocked in the intersection of two lateral waves we called the "V". An oar was torn out of his hand and he missed a couple of stoked, turning sideways to the massive wave in the lower rapid. He came through upright.

The next boat to run Lava was Peter in 14ft "Toby". Renee and Cathrine road with him to provide some more momentum to the little boat. Peter went left of the "V", but hit one sideways and was flushed out of his boat. His passengers quickly became his rescuers and pulled him in just in time for Toby to hit the biggest wave in the Canyon, with all three of them low siding on the back end. It seemed that it would flip end over end for a moment before it was over.

Thomas and Christy ran third with stern pointed downstream and managed to come through without issue. The videographers ran last and were hit with the full force of the storm when on the lip of the rapid. For a half hour, they waited in the last eddy, until realizing that the wind and rain were not going to let up for some time. They pushed back out into the current. They were off their line, running the ledge hole and coming through upright on a center run of Lava Falls.

In eddies down below, we breathed relief and met at the beach below. Freezing in the rain and soaked from the rapid, we grabbed a premade jug of Bloody Marys and our snack box and headed for the shelter of a lava cave. The celebration of having surpassed our greatest obstacle began and did not end until the sun rose again.

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