It Takes A River: A 135-Mile Journey Down The Colorado

Each spring, a group of UC Davis student scientists and their professors take a whitewater rafting trip through the Grand Canyon to study a river that sustains 40 million people. Capital Public Radio’s Amy Quinton traveled with them. I’m in a raft on the Colorado River, about to hit the fastest, steepest and most treacherous rapid in the Grand Canyon — Lava Falls. Here, the river drops 27 feet in a span of several hundred feet. The raft’s direction or momentum is not up to me. My fate is in someone else’s hands, someone far more experienced than me. Ann Willis, a researcher at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, guides the boat with precision. “You hanging on?” Ann asks as we approach the monster and hear the screams from rafters in front of us.