Something you might not have thought about but that is a pretty big deal: How and where do we get our fresh drinking water on our river trips? Before the trip launches, our boats are filled to the brim with 5-gallon water jugs, usually about 10 per motor boat. Those are filled at our Grand Canyon Whitewater warehouse in Flagstaff, with delicious local water. Usually on the third or fourth day of the trip, we’ll stop at a place called Boat Beach, which is near Phantom Ranch. That’s the only place along the river where there is a water spigot providing fresh water from the North Rim. Our guides will fill up any empty jugs and lug them back onto the boats.
Now if you know anything about river trips, you know we live by backup plans, so you know we have one for water too! So if for some reason the Boat Beach water station isn’t working, or if we start running low on our water supply from Flagstaff, we have a high grade UV/micron water filtration system on the boat that allows us to filter water while we’re on the river. You might hear the guides say they’re going to “make water,” and this just means they’re going to use that high-tech filter down in the Canyon.
So give a little nod to the guides when you’re in the bottom of the Canyon and you fill up your bottle with fresh drinking water!