Grand Canyon Posse

09/04/2026

There's a feud on the Colorado River that's simmered for near fifty years, and it's got nothin' to do with the rapids.
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Some folks run this river with oars. Others run it with motors. In 1979, the Park Service actually tried to phase motors off the river entirely — five years, and the whole thing woulda gone oar-power only.
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Didn't happen. A Utah senator slipped a rider onto a spending bill in 1980, and by '81 the whole plan got reversed. Motors stayed.
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Forty-some years later, there's still an unwritten rule out there: motor rigs are supposed to holler ahead so rowers can call dibs on the best camp. Common courtesy — when folks actually follow it.
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Plannin' your own trip through this country, rowin' or motorin'? Comment CHEAT and I'll send you my free Grand Canyon Cheat Sheets. 🤠

09/03/2026

Free Grand Canyon trip planning call, first 30 people only — comment PLAN and I'll get you booked. 🤠
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Plannin' a river trip through Grand Canyon looks simple right up until you're staring down put-ins, take-outs, permits, and enough logistics to make your head spin.
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I spent two weeks on the actual Colorado this summer, and now I'm doing this for real — free 30-minute calls, no pressure, just help figuring out whether a river trip's right for you, how many days, what season.
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First 30 people get it free. After that it's $97.
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Comment PLAN and I'll shoot you a link to get booked.

09/02/2026

In 1937 a gas station attendant from Coquille, Oregon decided to run the Colorado River by himself.
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Nobody had done it. Since Powell's expedition in 1869, running that river had meant a crew — several boats, several men, and somebody to fish you out.
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His name was Haldane Holmstrom. Everybody called him Buzz.
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He designed his own boat and built it from a single log of Port Orford cedar. Decked, small, shaped for what he expected the water to do. Cost him somewhere around thirty-five dollars.
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Then he put in on the Green River in Wyoming and started rowing south.
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Roughly 1,100 miles. Three hundred sixty-five rapids. Fifty-two days on the water, alone the whole way — down through Cataract Canyon, through Glen Canyon, and out the bottom of Grand Canyon to Boulder Dam.
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He wasn't a professional boatman. He was a man who pumped gas and believed he could do it.
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The last thing he wrote in his journal, below his final rapid on November 21st, 1937:
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"I had thought once past there my reward will begin — but now everything ahead seems kind of empty and I find I have already had my reward — in the doing of the thing."
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A biography of him carries that last phrase as its title.
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Fixin' to see that country for yerself? 🤠 Comment CHEAT and I'll send over my free Grand Canyon Cheat Sheets.

09/02/2026

You'll hear that rafting Grand Canyon is 277 miles. That's correct. It's also not the whole story.
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Start above it all. Below Glen Canyon Dam there's about fifteen miles of smooth water down to Lees Ferry. That stretch is still Glen Canyon, managed as a national recreation area rather than the park, and there isn't a rapid in it. If you take the float trip out of Page, that's where you are — not in Grand Canyon.
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Lees Ferry is river mile zero. Every trip launches there, because it's the only place for hundreds of miles you can get a boat down to the water.
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From Lees Ferry you're in Marble Canyon. Its own canyon, its own name, and for six years its own national monument — Lyndon Johnson designated it in 1969, largely to block dams that had been proposed for that stretch of river.
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Marble runs 61.5 miles to the confluence with the Little Colorado. That's where Grand Canyon proper begins, geologically speaking.
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So where does 277 come from? On January 3rd, 1975, Gerald Ford signed the Grand Canyon National Park Enlargement Act. It abolished the Marble Canyon monument, folded it into the park, and doubled the park to 1.2 million acres — defining it as running from the mouth of the Paria River, which is Lees Ferry, all the way to the Grand Wash Cliffs.
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277 river miles.
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Both answers are right. Geology says one thing. Congress said another.
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Fixin' to visit canyon country? 🤠 Comment CHEAT and I'll send over my free Grand Canyon Cheat Sheets — handy if you want to see the rims before you get on that water.

09/02/2026

People have died tryin' to run the Colorado through Grand Canyon the normal way — downstream, with the current.

In 1960, a crew of New Zealanders and Americans decided to try somethin' nobody figured was possible at all: runnin' it backwards.

Four little aluminum boats, jet-powered, headin' straight up into the same rapids that have swallowed rafts twice their size.

At the worst one — a rapid so mean it's dropped grown river guides for a hundred years — it took two full days just to get all four boats through, one at a time.

One man broke his leg gettin' there. One boat never made it back at all.

But on July 12th, 1960, the ones that did pulled up to Lees Ferry havin' done somethin' the Colorado had never let anybody do before.

Wanna plan your own trip through this country — the easier way? Comment CHEAT and I'll send you my free Grand Canyon Cheat Sheets. 🤠

09/01/2026

Comment PLAN and I'll get you a sit-down with Stephen. First thirty are free. 🤠
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Let me try and help ya plan this trip.
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You fly into Vegas. No — hold on. Flagstaff's closer to that side of it. Unless yer headed for the North Rim, then it's Page you want. Except that road shuts come December.
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Antelope Canyon's booked three months out. The Wave's a lottery, and a different lottery than Angels Landing. Horseshoe Bend wants ten dollars to park and every drop of water you can carry.
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And Lake Powell's settin' so low the boat ramps keep movin' on folks.
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Hold on. Let me start over.
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You fly into —
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Alright. Truth is I'm a hundred years behind on the particulars, and my maps ain't been right since Coolidge. So I fetched Stephen.
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He lives out here. He's driven them roads, stood in them lines, and he knows which lotteries are worth yer time and which ain't.
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He's givin' a free one-on-one trip plannin' session to the first thirty folks who ask. Number thirty-one pays ninety-seven dollars. Don't be thirty-one.
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Comment PLAN and he'll take it from there. Free of charge, which is more than he does for me.

08/30/2026

08/29/2026

Two things bring most people to Page, and both of them punish you for showing up cold.
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ANTELOPE CANYON
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It sits on Navajo Nation land. You cannot wander in on your own — access is with an authorized Navajo guide, full stop, and that's how it should be.
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Upper Antelope is where the light beams come down through the slot. Lower is tighter, more scrambling, and generally cheaper. Canyon X runs the most expensive of the three.
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Figure somewhere between sixty and a hundred sixty dollars a head depending which one you pick, with a premium on the beam-hour slots.
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If you want those midday beams between March and October, book months ahead. Some operators only open their calendar one to two months out, so start checking early.
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HORSESHOE BEND
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Five miles south of town on US-89. Ten dollars to park a car, five for a motorcycle.
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About a mile and a half round trip on a hardened path, partly paved.
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Two shade structures along the trail and none at the overlook. Bring water and a hat — this is not a walk to take at two in the afternoon in July without thinking it through.
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There's a railing at the viewing platform. Much of the rest of that rim has none, and it's a thousand feet down to the river.
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Fixin' to visit canyon country? 🤠 Comment CHEAT and I'll send over my free Grand Canyon Cheat Sheets. Page is one of the routes in.

08/29/2026

For hundreds of miles of the Colorado River, there was exactly one place to get a wagon or an automobile across.
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It was called Lees Ferry — a boat running on a cable, and near everything moving between Utah and Arizona went over on it. The alternative was driving hundreds of miles around Grand Canyon.
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By 1928 that was ending. A bridge was going up four miles downstream, and the ferry was still running — hauling the men and the steel to build the very thing that would put it out of work.
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June 7th, 1928. High water, a weakened boat, cables worn thin. Three men were aboard along with a Model T Ford when she went over.
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All three drowned.
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Coconino County refused to pay for a replacement boat, which stalled the bridge, since the ferry had been carrying its materials. But the ferry never ran again either way. The only crossing for hundreds of miles simply stopped.
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Seven months later, on January 12th, 1929, the bridge opened to traffic. They called it the Grand Canyon Bridge then. Today it's Navajo Bridge.
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Seven months. That's how close those three men came to never needing that boat at all.
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Lees Ferry didn't stay quiet, though. It's river mile zero now — the launch point for near every raft trip through Grand Canyon, and still about the last place for a long way where you can drive a vehicle down to the water.
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Fixin' to visit canyon country? 🤠 Comment CHEAT and I'll send over my free Grand Canyon Cheat Sheets.

08/27/2026

Comment "PLAN" - one word - and I'll get you a sit-down with Stephen to dial in your Grand Canyon trip itinerary, the real man under the hat. First thirty are free. 🤠
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Here's the trouble with plannin' a trip out this way.
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Which rim? South's crowded. North's got no lodge no more. West ain't even a national park.
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Angels Landing wants a lottery. The Wave wants a different lottery. Antelope Canyon won't let you in without a Navajo guide, and them tours book months ahead.
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Zion won't let you drive the canyon half the year. The road to the North Rim shuts come December. And that drive you figured was two hours is four and a half.
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I'd sort it out for ya myself, but I'm a hundred years behind on the particulars and folks keep tellin' me my maps are out of date.
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So I fetched Stephen.
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He lives out here. He's driven every one of them roads, stood in every one of them lines, and he knows which lotteries are worth yer time and which ain't.
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He's givin' away a free one-on-one trip plannin' session to the first thirty folks who ask. Number thirty-one pays ninety-seven dollars. Don't be thirty-one.
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Comment PLAN and he'll take it from there. Free of charge, which is more than he does for me.