Скачать или смотреть Rafting the Grand Canyon | Lees Ferry to Diamond Creek - Oct 2025

Below the Rim

From October 2 to 19, Mike and I rafted the mighty Colorado River, traveling 226 miles from Lees Ferry to Diamond Creek through the Grand Canyon with OARS. Eighteen days of river rhythms, red walls, and raw beauty that can’t be captured, only felt.

A few days before we left, I completed my Grand Canyon quilt, designed by Stephanie Forster. From choosing each color to stitching the front, back, and border, the project took about 30 hours to finish. The back was custom-designed with my husband, Mike Woods, featuring a light blue river that traces the path of the Colorado. We plan to draw in the details marking each campsite, memorable rapid, and canyon—a stitched map of the journey that shaped us.

We shared the adventure with ten incredible companions, most from Juneau, Alaska, whose humor, kindness, and stories added another layer of magic to the canyon. Together we moved as a small tribe, sharing stories, hiking side canyons, eating meals together, and laughing our way downstream.

Each morning began with the hush of the canyon waking, the scent of coffee mixing with silt and sunrise. Days unfolded through rapids that roared and whispered lessons, echoing Buzz Holmstrom’s words: “Every rapid speaks plainly just what it is… if only one will read and listen carefully.”

We hiked more than forty miles through side canyons and up steep trails, each step a reminder of the body’s strength and surrender. By nightfall, our muscles ached in the best possible way, and we melted into the sand, the ground holding us steady for deep, dreamless sleep beneath a billion stars.

Down there, beneath the rim, life slows to something honest. The uncertainty, the worry, and the sweet relief after each rapid became a kind of meditation—a reminder of respect, humility, and awe. The canyon doesn’t ask to be conquered. It invites you to listen, to surrender, and to remember how small and grateful you are to move through such wonder.

Nights by the campfire, under more stars than sky, watching the moon rise and cast its light across the canyon walls, brought a deep calm. It was a feeling that the world above might keep spinning, but below the rim, time belongs to the river.

Thanks for watching!
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Music by Peter Lefebvre, Zeke Lauck, and Stephen “Spoon” Witherspoon
Recorded during our August 2024 OARS Grand Canyon trip.
Thank you for filling the canyon with your sound and spirit.