Rowan Gartner of Durango recently became one of the youngest people, if not the youngest, ever to kayak through the Grand Canyon.
Rowan attends Fort Lewis Mesa Elementary and will be in fifth grade next year. The 10-year old, however, successfully floated 288 miles over 17 days through the Grand Canyon in his kayak with the water raging.
“All of it was really fun,” he said. “It makes me feel cool that I’m one of the youngest to go down the Grand Canyon.”
“To have a 10-year old send the Grand Canyon is pretty special,” said his father, Russ Gartner. “It’s an exceptional feat to kayak for several weeks.”
Russ, Rowan’s older brother Orin, 14, and the boys’ mother Lindsay also went on the raft-supported trip.
Russ said both of the boys went on their first raft trips before they were a year old. Rowan then switched to a kayak, where he has to navigate the river by himself, about three years ago.
“The Animas River is world class in Durango,” Russ said. “And there are family-friendly float trips right next to us on the San Juan River and Dolores River. That’s where the boys cut their teeth. They started when they were infants.”
Russ and Lindsay had also floated the Grand Canyon multiple times before so they knew what to expect.
“I recognized Rowan had the capability to do this task,” Russ said.
The group, which included other children riding in rafts, launched at Lees Ferry and took out on the other side of Arizona at Pearce Ferry. Russ said they were in a consortium to do the kids trip, with three sets of parents all applying for permits.
Along the way through Grand Canyon, the Colorado River has about 160 sets of rapids that are so unique and generally difficult to run that they have their own rating system. The Grand Canyon ranks rapids from 1-10, opposed to the international 1-6 river classification scale. Both rapid ratings, however, refer to the level of technical ability needed to get through them.
The Colorado River was also flowing at 20,000 cubic feet per second, Russ said, running about twice as fast as normal to add to the challenge.
“It was unexpected, but a welcome adventure,” he said. “It was a little more scary, but more fun. It turns it into a totally different experience.”
“The features we encountered were huge,” Rowan said. “There were huge waves, like 40-feet tall. I thought I’d never come out of one wave. It was almost scary … I went right up and over it … It was definitely really steep.”
While descending the rapids, they used a truck-and-trailer formation for safety reasons, which Rowan called a “Rowan Sandwich.”
Russ would go first to show Rowan the route and Rowan would follow on his dad’s tail. Orin would then go third and make sure Rowan got through safely.
“If anything went wrong, someone was in front and behind him,” Russ said.
Rowan also had the option to hop on the raft or portage and walk around a section, but he was able to kayak the whole stretch.
“Some moments were a little scary, like I might not be able to do this, but most of the time I was like, ‘I know this will work; let’s do this,’” Rowan said.
Rowan said he had to pull his skirt and get rescued after riding the notorious Lava Falls. That didn’t deter him from trying other big rapids, though.
“The last big rapid, Diamond, that rapid is massive,” he said. “Hermit is a huge rapid, too. In the Gems, Crystal might be the biggest rapid I’ve ever run.”
Beyond the rapids, Rowan said the confluence of the Little Colorado River with the Colorado River was, “super cool.”
The water in the Little Colorado was turquoise and green in the rest of the Colorado, making a cool scene where they came together and mixed.
The Guinness Book of World Records doesn’t track who the youngest kayakers are who ride the Grand Canyon.
With permits accounting for everyone who takes the trip, however, two other youngsters known to have accomplished the feat include Abbey Holcombe, who did at 12 years, and Bodie Hilleke, who also kayaked the river at 10 years old.
“No records are kept for such things, but he joins the ranks of the youngest,” Russ said. “It’s all provisional.”
Rowan was also famous on the river for something else, he said. “I’m famous for asking the commercial rigs if they had any candy,” he said.
When asked if he wants to go down the Grand Canyon again, he said, “For sure.”
