Red Rocks, Blue Skies and White Water

But the big boat pushes us the wrong way, farther into the current we're trying to escape. Brian looks downstream. "I think I can still make it," he says.

He can't. The river that meandered through the canyons at the rate of one inch per mile is about to drop 30 feet in less than a mile. The first wave buries us. It is an immense amount of water. The three of us in the front of the boat disappear under it. Brian stays put, but nothing looks right. The S-rig, which was going to head down ahead of us, is frighteningly near: just to the left, and, ah, overhead. It's riding the massive, 20-foot "ledge wave" that blasts out from the left shore.

The "compression" waves we face are in the middle of the river, and the next one carries Brian away (Pedro, too, from his seat on the back tube, but he clambers right back in). We have fallen into a hole called Little Niagara. Lorenzo sees the boat go straight upright, its entire bottom visible. But it lands right side up.

"Fletch," I say to my neighbor, who rows float boats on trout trips. "It's time to row." He just looks at me. "Fletch. You've got to row now. That's Brian out there."

His look says: Oh. He hops into the well and bends to the task so diligently that Brian almost has to throw him out when he returns.

I am weirdly cheerful. "We're doing great," I holler, after Brian makes his assessment and says the bad words that will pass the lips of every guide today. Normally they are cocky fellows.

A moment later we are upside down, hit by a torrent so hard that Draper, seated next to me, lands 20 yards upriver. He's the only person I see when I surface, still clutching the line (Rule No. 2: Hold on) attached to the overturned raft.

It's not fun now. I can't see anyone else, including Emily, who is 23 but looks 16 and was in the back. Pedro will feel her, tug her out from under the boat and tell her she's fine, though her nose is bleeding and she's pale as death. Something has hit Brian's head so hard his vision blurs. But everyone makes it back to the raft, which has drifted right, and here comes Lorenzo with the S-rig.

A hand grabs my life vest, and I'm on the piazza, scrambling to pull up my shipmates. But Lorenzo shouts there's no time, so they ride the next set of rapids clinging to the overturned raft.

At the bottom, Lorenzo pushes the capsized raft onto a beach that's the final night's campsite. A quarter-hour later, we're in a western again: a boy on the overlook shouting, "There's a yellow boat coming!" A minute later: "It's upside down!"

The new guy goes into Big Drop 2 sideways, doomed. Nine passengers are scattered across the river, coughing water but all scrambling back onto the lid. "It didn't just flip," says Alex, 15. "It catapulted us."

Marcus watches it happen from Purgatory, the eddy his raft retreated into after hitting a wave so fierce it bent an oar. He grabs a spare, then tries to figure out how to escape Purgatory without being drawn into Satan's Gut, a hole so steep you see only flat water before it. He calculates 70-30 against and offers to put the passengers ashore.