# lava falls fact and fiction



## dkrakel (Nov 2, 2003)

im have some trouble tracking down a few stats about lava falls. some river running companies, boaters, some magazine articles and a few books will tell you that lava drops either 35 or 37 feet in a hundred or two hundred yards. one float company said a quarter-mile.

nobody can source this information so where did it come from? the official drop as listed in guidebooks is 14 feet with 13 feet coming in at lower lava. i called the park service river office and they said to read the guidebooks. not very helpful. you would think someone in the nps has researched and measured the falls and knows everything about it.

also, ive heard that the world book of guiness records calls lava the fastest stretch of navigable whitewater in the world. a search of their site doesnt come up with anything about lava at all. hmmmm.

the last thing is that you hear the current reaches speeds of from 25 to 35 mph.....(a film by the smithsonian claimed 100 mph) where did that information come from?

looking at the falls, it looks longer than 100 yards but certainly not a quarter-mile. 

so, if you have info come forth.

any help greatly appreciated. also, any extraordinary tales and exagerations youve heard about lava would be appreciated as well.

thanks,

dean


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## Caspian (Oct 14, 2003)

Well I didn't measure it, but I would guess it could be 30-some feet. Then again it could be 18. It really doesn't matter when you have that much water; a little gradient will make it big anyway. I think the bit about the speed is crock. Maybe with higher water, but not at the flows we see these days. I think you hit about 35mph at Oceana - and that feels like 60mph. No way do you go 35mph at Lava, at least not at the flows of the last few years. (IIRC we hit Lava around 8K)

Extraordinary tales: I heard that at the bottom end of these low releases, a dude eddied right at the bottom and went up to where the bank and the cheesegrater meet. There is a seive there and supposedly he saw a dory stuffed in it. If you run a search you'll find an old thread on Lava, talking about swimming the ledge hole, guys with blown out eardrums, etc. Jimi Snyder tells a tale of squirting it at very high water, getting pulled into the RR eddyline and mysteried for a long time; had his helmet, PFD, and paddle jacket ripped off IIRC.


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## whip (Oct 23, 2003)

*Ledge Hole*

I completely missed the mark and drove my 14' Hyside into the gut . Biggest 
most turbulent swim of my life. Under water a vey long time. 22,000CFS
ran left surfaced right One gasp of air only to be worked good in the tail waves. My raft spun on its long axis for probably a minute in the bottom of the hole. The recirc in the hole was spinning really fast and was quite a ride.
I got shot out of the bottom of it after awhile like a I was in a cannon.
Biggest piece of oar left including the 2 strapped to the frame was about 4 feet . My raft and frame and load stayed intact due the fact I run a 
solid steel 2" muffler pipe unibody frame. Quite a relief to have a clean run on the subsequent trip a couple years later.


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## dkrakel (Nov 2, 2003)

*thanks tried to find swim post*

hey thanks. i tried and tried to find that swim thread. i remember it. no search that i did could turn it up.

dean


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## sj (Aug 13, 2004)

Dean I worked down there fron 81 thru 89. Most of the info you are questioning was what i was told when training in by people who had worked down there in the 60's some even in the late 50's. 

37 feet. the belknap guide first published in the 60's used 37 feet. I have never seen or heard of any scientific publication that disputes that. I was able to track down a national geographic from I beleive 62 that cronicaled the jet boat uprun. Most of the article was about lava as it took them 4 days to get up it. NG also used the 37 number. But again were thy using Powells number? Personaly it dosen't look like 37 feet but who am i to bust a myth and a billion egos :shock: If one looks from the first swirly on river right to the last tail waves near the spring on river left it appears to me about 250 yards the ledge hole to cheezegrader about 50.

The fastest navigatable water was from the 60's. we thought it wrong in the early 80's it was never part of my schtick but I heard it often. The few times someone bothered to time aboat going thru all the times were in the 20 second range. Again a guide story i did'nt use and have no idea where it started but i heard it often.

We had a saying as guides down there"Never let to much truth ruin a good story" IMO most of these facts and figues and stories bear wittnes to that. But i will not be the one that changes anyof this 8) . peace sj


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## dkrakel (Nov 2, 2003)

*thanks steve*

sj. was hoping you'd weigh in. knew you had guided down there. maybe the older belknap is where it came from. i have the most recent. and also the martin and lindeman guides....got a call from the nps river office which went much better than the last. the rangers down there can't figure out where the numbers came from either. funny and gave me the number of a person in resources & science so i'll call that. i think you're right at about 250. that's what it looked like to me anyway.

i appreciate everybody and their info. this is all just fun. the legend of lava is much larger than truth....although the truth is pretty darn big. i had to piss three times after looking at it. didn't know i had that much water left in me.

best,

dean


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## alanbol (Jun 3, 2005)

The USGS did some hydraulic studues in the GFC in the 80s. I once had maps of many of the rapids. I think the maps showed both velocities and elevation of the river itself. I don't recall the drop of speed of lava, but you could find it there.

I managed to google up this:
Kieffer, S.W., Hydraulic map of Lava Falls Rapids, Grand Canyon, Arizona, U.S. Geological Survey Miscellaneous Investigations Map 1897, part J, Map size = 42"x 58", 1988.

I can't find it online, but you could order it from the USGS (or if you live in Denver, you could go by the Fed Ctr in Lakewood and pick it up at the USGS map sales).

alan


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## dkrakel (Nov 2, 2003)

*maps*

hi. i called the usgs trying to find those maps. what a minor nightmare. at any rate i need to do the index thing and hunt them up that way rather than try and do it with someone over the phone. will do though. thanks. dean


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## dkrakel (Nov 2, 2003)

*more about the map*

also the rapid has changed so much since 1897. it was made steeper and gained many of its current features during flash floods out of prospect canyon in the 60's. the last major change came in 95, which added rocks to the left side run. the rapid of today is more severe than the one powell saw and the early guys ran. . . .all this gained through my lava falls inquiries. dean


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## COUNT (Jul 5, 2005)

dkrakel-
Thanks for doing such in depth research and letting us know what you discover. I've always been curious but haven't been able to put the quality work in (or was too lazy). How 'bout the one about whenever someone has a perfectly clean run down Lava, they are greeted at the bottom by a fiery demon that grabs your boat by the loops and snaps it in half before throwing any survivors into the stickiest hole imagineable :twisted:? (No, I swear I didn't go for the loop on my skirt before I even flipped, it was that crazy Devil that pulled me out of my boat after I totally Shropped the Gnar-Gnar with that clean run  )

COUNT


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## alanbol (Jun 3, 2005)

Check out this USGS fact sheet
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/FS-019-01/

It's got an very scientific sounding title, but basically it's about side-canyon debris fans and how they evolve through time. The example they present is lava falls. 

Figure 2 is side-by-side aerial photos taken in March and April of 1996, before and after the experimental flood.

Figure 4 shows a plot of elevation versus distance for the fastest moving water (the thalweg - more geology speak). Anyway, the plot shows a 4 meter drop through lava, almost all of it occurring in the first 100 meters of the rapid. I imagine that the tail waves will pretty much double that distance, but don't add much to the drop. So much for 37 feet!

It still doesn't answer how fast the water is moving, though.

I haven't tried, but has anyone taken a look with Google Earth? I've looked before and very clearly seen rafts tied up on a beach somewhere (Nankoweap?)

alan

back again:
Hydraulic map of Lava Falls Rapids, Grand Canyon, Arizona
http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/pubs/i/i1897J
scroll to the botoom. either view as images or download the dejavu plug-in.
The highest velocity is about 7 meters/second, which equals about 14 knots, or 15-16 mph. These measurements were taken at 10,000 cfs (see the notes on the right side of the map) sometime in the mid-eighties.

Ain't the web amazing?


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## dkrakel (Nov 2, 2003)

*very cool*

thanks. very cool info.i'll check out that site. i did find the maps through the online index of usgs. i'll post more as i find stuff. that's interesting about the four meter drop and the 16 mph flow.

as for the demon....well, he did reach up and snatch my spare oar.

dk


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## ENDOMADNESS (Jun 21, 2005)

*Equation for River Velocity*

Not sure why you need the velocity, but it can be computed very easliy with a few assumptions. Use Mannings Equation (computes open channel flow). You need the Flowrate (any flow you want) the channel slope (which you have 37ft over 250 yards), the cross sectional area (you can get width from google earth, but depth may be hard---ask some of the hole swimmers how deep it is!!) and a coefficient of friction for the channel bottom.

Google Mannings Eqn and have at it!! (yes, i'm an engi-nerd)


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## Force (Apr 27, 2004)

Dude, manning's eqn. is a load of crapola. you'd be better watching a orange/watermelon floating through and timing it than using manning's. all it will give you is an average cross sectional velocity but the results are highly variable on the assumptions used.


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## ENDOMADNESS (Jun 21, 2005)

Einstein is that you??? It is the ONLY equation to compute open water flow. Just trying to help the guy out (ball park figure). But go with Einstein and the watermelon case study.


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## alexhenes (Oct 14, 2003)

See for yourself...

There are two pictures of Lava on www.merelyafleshwound.com under Paddling - Stills - Colorado River - Grand Canyon. Pictures 95 and 129.


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## dkrakel (Nov 2, 2003)

*ouch*

i'm getting a headache. thanks. no need for the melons. lets just say it's fast. i like the 20 seconds whether you're in your boat or not equation.

dk


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## COUNT (Jul 5, 2005)

I'm just posting this because it doesn't seem to go along with what you were saying earlier:

"A River" in John McPhee's _Encounters with the Archdruid_ describes the trip down the Grand where Floyd E. Dominy, the guy basically responsible for Glen Canyon Dam, goes down the river with David Brower, the guy basically responsible for preventing all of the other dams from going in on the Grand Canyon. Definately a good read with a lot of interesting stuff I didn't know. Anyways, he talks about the water speed being 15-20mph at the fastest (don't know how reliable this is) and when he talks about Lava, he says it's a 26 foot drop over 100 yards. Again, I'm not sure how reliable these specific numbers are but I do know that McPhee put a lot of research into some the other topics he writes about in the book.

COUNT


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## dkrakel (Nov 2, 2003)

*mcphee*

count,

i've read the book and you're right, it's a good read. i know he's a good researcher....but if nobody in the grand canyon can come up with the numbers, nobody in the usgs office can verify it, and nobody else really seems to know, where did he get his facts. it seems all to common to me that, especially when it concerns numbers, we just take other peoples words for granted and it builds and builds. people just source one another.

i can't tell you how many places i've read the guiness book of records thing or heard lava is the fastest stretch of whitewater.....but i'm just wondering where that came from, especially if the book of records thing doesn't really exsist, and i've searched that site and contacted them.

i'm not out to debunk anyone. just finished my first canyon trip and am writing a piece about it. but when an editor asks where the "facts" come from it made me curious. 

i don't take any of it seriously; i mean who really cares. just a little fun.

best,

dean


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## Alpnrafter (Sep 4, 2009)

Bump. So what's the final answer on the total drop?


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## Tom Martin (Dec 5, 2004)

Hi Dean, great posts. Here's why the Martin Whitis Guide says what it says. Side Note: Duwain does the Maps, and I do the text. I asked Duwain where he got the 13 feet on the map page, and here is his reply:

"I originally got it from Belknap, but they got it from the maps produced from the 1923 Birdseye expedition (see current Belknap guide, page 27, top left photo caption). It's funny you should ask since RiverMaps just mailed a check to Dan Casidy to purchase a set of those maps, which I have never seen. You know that USGS pick inscription under the overhand below Brown’s Riffle? Yeah, that expedition… That was part of a larger effort by the USGS to map the plan and profile of many western rivers to identify potential dam sites. It was the only survey that mapped the profile and tabulated the drop through each rapid in the Grand Canyon until the GCMRC LIDAR survey in 2000 (more on that later). The Birdseye survey also established the mileage system used until 2003, too. The maps were first published in 1927, but we’re purchasing a set reprinted during WWII. These maps were the basis for most of the river maps and guides published until our third edition including the maps used by Norm Nevills, the Les Jones scroll maps, Belknap, and probably Stevens.

Back to GCMRC… The LIDAR survey actually mapped the river bottom and ground along the river corridor. GCMRC used that data to map the river’s thalweg (deepest channel) and establish the new mileage system. LIDAR penetrates water, but there were reflections from the surface that were used by USGS researchers to look at changes to the river profile since the 1923 survey. They published a paper on their work in _Water Resources Research_ in 2005. The upshot is that aggradation due to debris flows from tributaries and decreased peak flows in the river channel have caused all rapids to increase in drop by an average of 0.26 meters (almost a foot) with House Rock and Badger increasing the most by about six feet. A couple of rapids actually decreased, but they are the exception. The reason I’ve been looking into this is that I plan to try to contact the researchers to see if I can get a comprehensive list of all the rapids so I can update the guidebook with current info, but I want to see the original USGS maps before I do that.

BTW, the 13’ drop in Lava is just the main rapid itself and doesn’t include Son of Lava. It looks bigger than other rapids with more drop since it happens so abruptly."

A fun Lava story that i recount in Big Water Little Boats (also called Vulcan Rapid, below Vulcan Anvil and Vulcan Throne) is what happened on the 1957 motor run through the Canyon made by Otis "Dock" Marston when the river was running 104,000 cfs. While up on the high scout on river left, Marston's crew watched in horror as they noticed one of their boats, the Boo Too, had come loose from it's tie up and was floating into the gut of Vulcan, hatches open, cameras laying on the decks. They got some good photos of the wayward ghost-boats run (and flip). 

All the best, Tom


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## richp (Feb 27, 2005)

Don't know about gradient, but I ran it last week at 12k with my 20 foot cat. The GPS showed 24.1 mph max. FWIW. Rich Phillips


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## tony (Apr 19, 2004)

I cannot believe there was a fluvial geomorphology mini debate and I missed it. BTW mannings is very rough and easy to screw up with your assumptions but I know you engineer types love that equation.


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