Back from the Grand Canyon!

Dec 14, 2025

Last month, I had the rare gift of spending 27 days floating through the Grand Canyon. It was my 5th trip down but we got to explore so many new side canyons and adventures that I had never seen before. Twenty-seven days of stunning canyon walls, epic whitewater (and a lot of flatwater too if I’m being honest), and beautiful camps.

We mixed in a lot of side adventures this time. Can I make a Christmas song out of it? 12 awesome people, 11 at the takeout, 10 hours of sun (per day), 9 I got nothing, 8 days of rain, 7 technical canyons, 6 pictograph panels, 5 rented rafts, 4 layover days, 3 hidden mailboxes, 2 ruins sites, and 1 twenty seven-day trip!

Below is a secret spring way up Tuckup Canyon on a fork known as Hades Knoll.

We had our moment of chaos at Killer Fang. One flip, clean and fast, and a chance for me to step into the rescue lead role. I got to be a good safety kayaker and help a swimmer over to shore, and then I got to be in charge dealing with righting the raft. We had a deep and still eddy that we checked for rocks, we had a lot of people with drysuits who could get wet, and the shore was really rocky and difficult to maneuver on so we decided to use flip lines to flip it back into the river. It eventually took 7 of us to do it! Using ropes to flip onto shore wouldn’t have been as good a choice in this case but can sometimes work really well. It’s so satisfying to get to use the skills we teach in courses in real life.

After nearly a month moving at river speed, it’s hard to come home without feeling a little rewired. But mostly, I’m grateful. These long trips remind me exactly why I train, why I love teaching, and what it’s all for. Exploring places you can’t get to any other way.

And if the canyon is calling you too, good news. Permit season is almost here! Good luck in the lottery, and if you win a permit, I know a guy!

PS. Here’s video of our lines through Upset.

More Rolling Classes

Now that I’m back and have been able to talk to the pool, I’ve added additional rolling slots to the pool schedule. Heads up, prices are going up soon if you want to work with me. I’ll probably have some slots taught by our expert staff at the same price they are today, but if you want to work explicitly with me, prices will go up in February-ish.

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“Whitewater Workshop is the best. Nik and Michael are fantastic instructors. Their depth of knowledge and ability to scale the course to all experience levels is unmatched. 20/10 recommend if you want to learn the new hotness and best techniques!” - Google Review

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See you on the river!

-Nik.

PS. Made it this far? I like to include a random outdoor-related thing with each email: Grand Canyon book list: Everybody loves The Emerald Mile (the story of some raft guides doing the whole canyon in 36 hours!) but honestly I think it’s just ok. Fedarko’s next book A Walk in the Park was better (other than the first chapter) because it takes you off the beaten path to the special places in the Grand. For lovely easy reads We Swam the Grand Canyon is so strange and surprising, or There’s this River offers some fascinating short stories from guides. The one about Blacktail Canyon is my favorite. Lastly, if you’re willing to take John Wesley Powell off of the pedestal most river runners put him on, First Through the Grand Canyon gives you all of the diaries of the men on the first trip through the Grand in 1869. It isn’t very flattering for Powell.