Grand Canyon Winter Rafting - Horn Creek Rapid (8) Carnage

This video was from our low-water, 25-day January trip through the Grand Canyon. Flows ranged from 5000cfs - 9000cfs, so this run was somewhere in that range. The blue boat I'm rowing in the video is a 14-footer.

This was day 10 of our trip. Out of our 6 boats, every boat tried to make the move from right to left, and every single one ended up hitting the big hole at the bottom. The other groups we talked to reported similar results, so it seems like the low-water line that people have more success with is by splitting in between the two 'horns' at the top of the rapid. We had heard that the low water level removed the possibility of this line, but we encountered groups that split the horns and had success.

Anyways, here's what happened. In my run, I realized pretty quickly that I set up too far towards the center of the river, and didn't give myself space to get enough leftwards momentum - however, it was too late to do anything about it, so I went with it and hoped for the best. If I were to do it again, I'd start further towards the right bank, and that would've enabled me to charge left much harder. Oh and apologies for all the cursing, I was definitely pretty adrenalized from my spicy run.

The boat that flipped had 2 people on it, and one of the swimmers got caught between the boat and the rock at the bottom right of the rapid. This swimmer ended up getting a puncture through his bottom lip, either from biting through it or having a shard of the now-broken carbon fiber spare oar go through.. either way, not a good time. Luckily we had plenty of medically trained people on the trip, including an ER and an ICU nurse, so they got it cleaned really well and it healed super fast.

In the end, everyone was ok, but a little shaken up due to no one making the intended line and seeing/experiencing a bad swim. We went on to have an awesome day the next day running Granite, Hermit, and Crystal, and morale was quickly boosted by the sheer beauty of the place we were in.