The Full Canyon

Towering Red Walls, the Milky Way…the Ultimate Escape

Each day will be full and varied, your nights spent on sandy beaches beneath a canopy of stars bracketed by towering canyon walls. Some days will be spent mostly on the boats as we run the river’s booming rapids. Other days we will take extended side hikes or short excursions to ancient Native American ruins, hidden canyons or gushing springs. Redwall Cavern, the Little Colorado, Elves Chasm, Deer Creek Falls and Havasu Creek are among the greatest attractions.

Entering the inner gorge, we encounter some of the oldest exposed bedrock on earth, exquisitely polished schists and granites nearly two billion years old. Further on we see evidence of immense volcanism in the diamond-hard black basalt around us. Here lava flows dammed the Canyon creating a lake that extended into southern Utah, only to be eventually worn away by the restless river. This is also where one of the Canyon’s more famous rapids, mighty Lava Falls, is found. Eventually the lower gorge closes around us as we take the final plunge through rapids to the head of Lake Mead 240 miles and 100+ rapids from our starting point.