Red Rocks, Blue Skies and White Water

Instead, they go at it together, Marcus pulling on the oars and one of the six-packers, Matt Holstein, pushing. While they row, other passengers throw themselves against the tube, forcing momentum like a kid on a bike until, at the decisive moment, one of them tosses himself against Matt: It's the other Matt (Reid, the Portland physician) screaming and throwing his weight into the push, and it works. The boat shoots past the bottom corner of the gut, soaked by just enough spray to feel like deliverance.

The next day, Marcus is so hoarse he can hardly speak. In the flat water of Lake Powell -- where the passengers will be ferried to planes that will fly back to Moab over the water they've just seen, the whitewater looking from the air like flour spilled on a kitchen floor -- the bragging will fall to Lorenzo. When we come upon guides from a competing raft company, he hollers over: "We had boats run every hole except the marker. We had a boat on Little Niagara."

"Little Niagara!" the competition says.

"We had a boat on Frog's Hole. We had a boat on the Gut. It was sick."

Brian smiles. "Ah, the stories," he says.

Karl Vick is the Post's West Coast bureau chief. He last wrote for Travel about Christmas in Africa.