The Best Grand Canyon Velocity Runs, Ranked (Not By Velocity) – Journey Journal


Final week I misplaced the Grand Canyon allow lottery for the twelfth 12 months working, which obtained me occupied with the good sneaks of Grand Canyon historical past. Amongst them was the late Fletcher Anderson’s solo descent in about 1977. The run journey took Anderson about 49 hours, which on the time was the quickest anybody had ever run the 277 miles from Lees Ferry to the Grand Wash Cliffs. That obtained me occupied with pace runs.

Kenton Grua, Rudi Petschek, and Steve Reynolds additionally didn’t have their paperwork so as after they rode an historic flood by means of the canyon in a mere 36 hours and 38 minutes. That run, in a picket dory for chrissakes, was so off-the-charts cool, so epic in scope, and so packed filled with larger-than-life characters that Kevin Fedarko wove it into one of many nice river-running books of all time. The Emerald Mile got here out in 2013 and sparked a revival of Grand Canyon pace makes an attempt, some quirky, many ill-advised, and each single one among them cool.

Grand Canyon pace runs are sometimes ranked by elapsed time, which makes eminent sense however misses the purpose. Right here then is an entirely subjective checklist of Grand Canyon pace runs, ranked solely by how cool I believe they’re.

9.
Who: John Weisheit, John Williams, and Clyde Deal
What: Motorized inflexible inflatable
When: 1993
Why: As a result of the Issue bailed them out
Velocity Rank: 3* (35 hours, 43 minutes)

In the summertime of 1993 these three boatmen charged by means of the canyon in a inflexible inflatable sport boat with a 50-horsepower outboard hanging off the strict. They averaged 23 miles an hour till Bedrock Speedy, the place they smashed the motor on a rock. Limping downstream they occurred throughout none aside from Kenton Grua, who’d skippered the oar-powered Emerald Mile to the pace document 10 years earlier than. Grua helped the trio restore the motor, and so they went on to beat the dory’s time by 55 minutes. It’s attainable that one other motorized craft has gone quicker since. I don’t know and don’t actually care. These guys made the coolness checklist as a result of Kenton Grua bailed them out.

8.
Who: Ben Orkin and Harrison Rea
When: January 2015
What: Epic 18X sea kayaks
Velocity Rank: 4 (37 hours and 48 minutes)

One January night time in 2015, Ben Orkin and Harrison Rea bolted ATV headlights to carbon-Kevlar sea kayaks and took off in pursuit of The Emerald Mile’s document. Although comparatively new to the canyon—Orkin had been down seven instances earlier than, and Rea simply as soon as—they have been on tempo to beat the dory’s mark till morning introduced them to Crystal Speedy at mile 98. Rea ran straight into the identical gap that had upended The Emerald Mile 32 years earlier than. He cartwheeled a number of instances, hitting a rock that cracked his delicate kayak. After repairs, the duo completed in 37 hours and 48 minutes—slightly greater than an hour behind the The Emerald Mile’s document, however simply the quickest kayak descent as much as that point.

7.
Who: John Mark Seelig, Robbie Prechtl, Jeremiah Williams, Matt Norfleet, Kurt Kincel, Justin Salamon, Lyndsay Hupp, and Omar Martinez
When: January 2020
What: 40-foot, 7-oared inflatable Frankenstein
Why: The brotherhood of the misplaced trigger
Velocity Rank: 5 (37 hours and 55 minutes)

This was the crew’s second attempt to declare the pace document in an oar raft. Their 2017 try was derailed in Lava Falls by a splintered body and punctured tube. Nonetheless, with a average circulate of 20,000 cfs pushing them alongside, they’d held a record-beating tempo for 180 miles. That was no small feat, on condition that the kayak groups have an inherent effectivity benefit, and The Emerald Mile had an historic flood to journey.

The 2020 crew, made up largely of members of the U.S. Whitewater Rafting Staff, knew that to have any probability on the document, every part must go excellent. They tweaked their 40-foot cata-raft with monster-truck mild bars and sliding-seat oar rigs, however the water stage was all the time going to be a roll of the cube. It got here up snake-eyes: simply 14,500 cfs, and dropping. The low circulate successfully doomed the hassle earlier than they’d even began. They went anyway, and for all the correct causes.

Rainbow Riders: This eight-person, seven-oared Frankenstein holds the document because the quickest inflatable ever to run the Grand on human energy. Forest Woodward picture.

By the point they reached Lava Falls the moon was overhead, fats and full, casting exhausting shadows in its silvery mild. “It felt prefer it was the center of the day. It was breathtaking,” Seelig mentioned. “We might see from shore to shore, we might see the partitions, we might see each single characteristic. It was wild.” This time their line by means of Lava was excellent, and so they completed with the fastest-ever time for an inflatable boat.

6.
Who: Bob and Jim Rigg
When: 1951
What: Picket dory
Why: The primary true pace descent
Velocity Rank: 7 (52 hours and 41 minutes)

In 1951 brothers Bob and Jim Rigg of Grand Junction, Colorado made the primary continuous pace run of the Grand Canyon. Launching their picket dory right into a roaring circulate of 43,100 cfs, the brothers completed in 52 hours and 41 minutes.

5.
Who: Walter Kirschbaum
When: 1960
What: 14-foot home-built muslin kayak
Why: First to kayak all the Grand Canyon with out portaging
Velocity Rank: Unranked (6 days)

When Walter Kirschbaum first inquired a few allow to run the Grand Canyon, he was summarily denied as a result of in 1959, nobody on the Park Service thought a kayaker might survive within the canyon. Based on Grand Canyon historian Tom Martin, the request culminated in a 30-minute shouting match between NPS Ranger Dan Davis and Kirschbaum’s legal professional good friend Ty Dines, and a problem of types: If Kirschbaum might run Cataract Canyon in his kayak, he was welcome to aim the Grand.

Kirschbaum promptly made the primary kayak descent of Cataract Canyon, which he mentioned required extra talent than any fast within the Grand Canyon at 40,000 cfs. He did this in a 14-foot kayak he and his spouse Ruth constructed of their Denver house and lowered out of their attic window. It was product of muslin and resin, with no seat or footpegs. Although his wasn’t a pace try per se, Kirschbaum paddled that lumpy pink cigar by means of the Grand Canyon in six days flat, changing into within the course of the primary to kayak the Canyon with out portaging and the one individual ever to take action earlier than the earlier than the Glen Canyon Dam.

Element of the kayak Walter Kirschbaum product of wooden, muslin and resin, and used for the primary descent of the Grand Canyon, Cataract Canyon and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, amongst others. Screenshot from a Tom Martin video.

4.
Who: Ben Orkin
What: Epic 18x sea kayak
When: January 2016
Why: Velocity and Resilience
Velocity Rank: 1 (34 hours, 2 minutes)

A 12 months after his near-miss with Harrison Rea, Ben Orkin returned to Grand Canyon for a solo crack on the document. Once more he used a carbon-Kevlar sea kayak outfitted with lights and stocked with 36 vitality bars. This time nevertheless, he acquired a shock on the put in. It was an e-mail from Ben Luck, one among a quartet of kayakers who had simply surpassed The Emerald Mile’s 33-year-old document. Orkin noticed the message a couple of minutes after midnight as he was making ready to launch. It learn: “Wished to let you already know {that a} group of 4 of us put in on Thursday and accomplished the river in 35 hours. Simply felt like you must know. Better of luck on the market.”

Orkin didn’t even know anybody else was making an attempt the document. Now the goalpost had moved greater than an hour and a half within the unsuitable path. He took off at a blistering tempo, and by halfway was on monitor to beat the brand new document by about two hours. However there’s a purpose the identify Lava Falls is heard so ceaselessly in speed-run chronicles. It comes after 180 miles, across the second midnight of most makes an attempt—the Grand’s most formidable fast, at the hours of darkness, with 20 or extra hours of amassed fatigue. Orkin flipped within the entrance wave, missed his roll and felt his boat getting plastered in opposition to an notorious boulder referred to as Cheese Grater Rock. He kicked out of his boat and washed right into a swirling eddy, the place he spun for 20 minutes earlier than lastly mustering the power to kick to shore along with his waterlogged boat.

The mishap value Orkin about an hour, however when he checked out his watch he realized the document was nonetheless in attain. He paddled the final 97 miles in about 13 hours, passing the Grand Wash Cliffs within the all-time document time of 34 hours, 2 minutes.

Orkin after his record-setting Grand Canyon cannonball. Picture by Mari Orkin.

3.
Who: Fletcher Anderson
When: Circa 1977
What: Fiberglass wildwater racing kayak
Why: The OG kayak pace run
Velocity Rank: 7 (49 hours)

In 1978, The Mountain Gazette revealed an nameless narrative titled “The Massive Sneak,” telling of a bootleg solo kayak run by means of the Grand Canyon within the unprecedented time of simply 49 hours. The journal teased the story within the desk of contents as follows: “Through which our nameless writer kayaks the Grand Canyon and not using a allow, breaks the solo document, eats freeze-dried meals with out water, has some fascinating hallucinations and lives to inform about it.”

The correspondent was Fletcher Anderson, a marathon skier, climber, kayaker and all-around character out of Telluride, although his identification remained an open secret till 2005, when the aircraft he was flying clipped a gauging cable over the Snake River in Wyoming. After his demise, the Gazette re-published “The Massive Sneak” below Anderson’s byline. Paddling a wildwater racing kayak, Anderson made the run in lower than half the time set by his good friend and mentor Walter Kirschbaum. Whereas the exact date of the run stays in query—Anderson was intentionally imprecise about that and another particulars—there might be no query that his under-the-radar solo sprint is likely one of the coolest pace runs of all time.

2.
Who: Kenton Grua, Rudi Petschek, and Steve Reynolds
What: Picket dory, The Emerald Mile
When: 1983
Why: They set a pace document that stood for almost 33 years – in a dory
Velocity Rank: 4 (36 hours, 38 minutes)

In 1983, as Lake Powell threatened to overtop the dam and engineers launched as a lot water as they dared into Grand Canyon—some 72,000 cubic toes per second—three Grand Canyon boatmen placed on to the maelstrom in The Emerald Mile, a once-wrecked picket dory rebuilt by the mission’s instigator, the late Kenton ‘Issue’ Grua. They took turns rowing day and night time, and completed the 277 miles from Lee’s Ferry to the Grand Wash Cliffs in 36 hours and 38 minutes.

Simply as Harrison Rea would many years later, they plowed straight into the doorway gap at Crystal—a monstrous hydraulic at common water ranges, now morphed into virtually unimaginable proportions. In his best-selling e book in regards to the exploit, Fedarko described the wall of water that greeted them: “Easy and unblemished, it rose cleanly for nearly 30 toes, and inside its whiteness there was a facet of deep inexperienced. However the high wasn’t glassy. It was enraged and seething—a churning fury created by the wave’s breaking apex.”

Or, as Grua later informed informed his good friend Lew Steiger, “It wasn’t a daily gap. It was perfection in a gap.”

The dory cartwheeled and pirouetted, scattering the three males and their possessions into the river, which lastly shunted a lot of the items right into a boiling swirl known as Thank God Eddy. There they righted the dory and peeled again into the flood to complete the most-storied Grand Canyon descent of all time.

1.
Who: Staff Beer, a/ok/a Matt Klema, Nate Klema, Ben Luck and Ryan Casey
When: January 2016
What: Plastic downriver kayaks (3 Pyranha Speeders and a Notion Wavehopper)
Why: Sportsmanship, and fried hen
Velocity Rank: 2 (Matt Klema in 35 hours, 5 minutes)

The Emerald Mile’s pace document would stand till January 2016, when a crew of underground kayaking legends pulled a allow and made an off-the-couch pace run in borrowed kayaks. Scooping water straight from the river and fortified with a three-pound bucket of fried hen, all 4 members of Staff Beer beat The Emerald Mile’s mark, with Matt Klema first throughout the road in 35 hours, 5 minutes.

The run itself supplied little drama. Not one of the quartet a lot as rolled, and aside from their uncommon alternative of power-food, the descent was as nondescript as any moonlight run by means of a six-million-year-old gash within the earth’s crust may very well be. Simply three days later, Orkin would decrease the document to 34 hours, 2 minutes, but it surely’s what occurred in these three days that makes Staff Beer’s pace descent the good of all of them.

Matt Luck’s borrowed kayak was inscribed with this quote from Aldous Huxley.

First was their e-mail to Orkin alerting him of the brand new time to beat. Subsequent was their response when Orkin beat their mark. “It’s good for everybody,” Matt Klema informed author Zak Podmore, who broke the information. “[Orkin] will get the quickest time and we obtained to interrupt the [Emerald Mile‘s] document. And extra importantly, we obtained to have this superb river expertise.”

River journeys have a means of placing issues into perspective. “We knew that any person was going to be quicker ultimately, so what’s the distinction if our document lasted three many years or three days?” Luck mentioned. “We crushed what we went down there to do in borrowed plastic boats with our greatest pals — and we did it straight off the sofa in true Staff Beer model. That’s what issues to me.”

Now that’s cool.

* Should you use a motor, you get an asterisk after your time. Additionally, pace rankings embody solely the journeys on this article and are usually not complete. For instance, Grua, Petschek, and Wally Rist made a dory run in 1980 in slightly below 48 hours, and the USA rafting crew clocked 37 hours 24 minutes of their 2017 try.



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