Rafting the Grand Canyon

In a few days I leave to go raft the Grand Canyon. My brother and I and some friends are going to be on the water for 18 days with no guide! That is the longest I have ever been on an extended outdoors trip for, and I am very excited about it.

We put in at Lee’s Ferry on December 26th.

We have a company that is packing all of our food for us, so we will not starve, but we will be doing this in the middle of winter, so warmth is my biggest concern. I have many base layers, thermals, insulated mid layers, etc… but am still worried (I have no built in insulation!)

I have decided to bring nothing electronic with me except for flashlights. No phone, camera, iPad, GPS, MP3 player or the like. The choice to bring no camera was tough and I am still considering it. My camera is a Nikon D50, DSLR that takes great photos, but it uses batteries, has an LCD screen, and I think it would break my feeling of remoteness out there. I have a love / hate relationship with technology that I need to work out. The feeling of not taking a single photo out there bugs me – so I may give into this one.

I hope to use this time to draw, read, reflect, and get some perspective on life other than the day in day out experiances that I am used to having. It has been over a year since I did something I thought was crazy.

So here we go again with the crazyness.