Cataract Canyon

A few weeks before the wedding I was invited by my roommate Willi to go on a 3 day river trip down Cataract Canyon.  It is an annual trip for her mom and all her girlfriends and somehow I got lucky enough to tag along this year.

 I had no idea how much fun floating down a river with 10 ladies (9 of whom I had never met) could be.

As you can see, these ladies aren't just your average female...  Things got a little crazy by the end of the night.

 The most memorable part of the trip was when we floated alongside the boat for part of the river.  We were doing synchronized swimming... where one of us would make a move and the rest would follow.  It was Marrianne's turn right as we were floating over a VERY shallow part of the river... She stood up and then screamed as she tumbled into the water...  I, thinking that this was her move for the present activity (and an awesome move at that), proceeded to get up and do the same... Screaming as I leaped into the water, belly first.  It was so fun, that I just kept doing it... laughing hysterically as I watched everyone else do the same... Flopping into the water, belly first, screaming... looking like salmon swimming up stream.  I later came to find out, that the belly flop was in fact, NOT Marrianne's move.  It was an accident.  She had tripped.  But since I randomly got up and started belly-flopping all over the place, everyone else followed my lead. Leaping down the river.  By the end, all of us were laughing so hard that we couldn't stop... Really.  I couldn't stop, even though I wanted to so bad.  My belly was aching and my throat was sore but the laughter just kept coming...  I also have this problem where I laugh a little bit like a man... and so other people, when hearing my laugh, tend to laugh AT me... and then I laugh at their laughing, and it is a VERY vicious cycle.  I'm pretty sure we laughed for about an hour straight... and I'm almost positive the rest of our group thought we were indeed CRAZY. 

Reenacting our belly flop

Me... reenacting my mistake...I'm really glad everyone decided to follow along, otherwise I would have felt really silly being the only one falling down the river over and over again.

Panda (Willi's mom, and yes that is her real name) took us on a different hike than the one our guides were going on.  This was her 30th trip down this same river so she likes to mix things up a bit.  I'm not sure how they found this, but we ended up crawling through a crack in the rocks and then climbing up to over look the river...  It was pretty awesome.  

Willi and I at the top

Teddy, Chani, and Panda hanging out on the boat...

The river was REALLY low this year, but we still had ourselves a good time.

The paddle boat... Only 2 people fell out.  One being our guide Matt.  He managed to get knocked off the boat on the the biggest drop AND get back in the boat a few minutes later without any of us even knowing... oops. 

Our guides were awesome.  It was Libby's first time doing Cat and she did great.

It got just a little muddy at our last camp spot. 

Our whole group... we had Indiana Jones and his family with us, a preacher and his wife, a grandma named Phyllis and her grandson named Dwight (and no, I'm not joking), Scuba Steve, our 5 guides, and all of us Crazies. 

 

Our last day we stopped at Dark Canyon.  We didn't get to go very far up because we were short on time, but it was still awesome...  

So glad I got to tag along this year... and MAYBE, just maybe... my salmon stunt will land me a spot on next years trip.