The Full Grand Canyon

Experience the Grand Canyon’s Greatest

We will start our trip bright and early the next morning, traveling at an easy pace, with time to stop and explore the many unique features of this grand canyon. Redwall Cavern, the Little Colorado, Elves Chasm, Deer Creek Falls and Havasu Creek will be among the places visited (visit the Photo Gallery for a look!). 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.

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 perhaps short excursions to ancient Native American ruins, hidden canyons or gushing springs. Each day will be full and varied, your nights spent on sandy beaches beneath a canopy of stars bracketed by towering canyon walls. 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.