While Limited Space Remains for 2015 Season River Runners Urged to Book Now for 2016 Colorado River Trips
O.A.R.S., the award-winning whitewater rafting and adventure travel outfitter, reports that they began to accept advance reservations for 2016 Grand Canyon rafting adventures in late November 2014 and the company has seen a record number of bookings placed.
“In less than a month since opening up reservations, we are more than 50 percent sold out of our signature Grand Canyon river trips for 2016,” reported Steve Markle, director of sales and marketing for the O.A.R.S. Family of Companies. “This is the strongest demand we’ve ever experienced for advance bookings in the Grand Canyon.”
Markle went on to say, “Sales for dory trips in the Grand Canyon are exceptionally strong and are actually outpacing demand for our Grand Canyon rafting trips for the first time in the history of the company. We attribute some of that increased demand to the success of Kevin Fedarko’s book, The Emerald Mile, which highlights the dories prominently.”
Dories are small, wooden and fiberglass boats popularized by the late Martin Litton, the legendary environmental crusader and founder of Grand Canyon Dories, who died peacefully at age 97 on November 30, 2014. As Fedarko detailed in his book, Litton “inaugurated a tradition of naming every craft after a natural wonder that, in his view, had heedlessly been destroyed by the hand of man—‘to remind us of places we’ve destroyed without any necessity,’ he would bark to anyone who inquired, ‘so that maybe we’ll think twice before we do it again.’”
In 1969, O.A.R.S. became the first exclusively oar-powered rafting outfitter permitted to run the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Today, O.A.R.S. & Grand Canyon Dories offer 5- to 18-day trips between Lees Ferry and Lake Mead, floating up to 277 river miles through billions of years of geological time reflected in the Canyon’s steep, vibrant colored cliffs. All O.A.R.S. Grand Canyon trips incorporate daily hikes to Native American sites and interpretive discussions of everything from archaeology and geology to the night sky and harrowing tales of Colorado River runners.
Markle reminded groups who may have tight travel windows to book as soon as possible because the most popular dates are filling quickly for 2016.
“Although our Grand Canyon trips are already mostly sold out for 2015 at this point, we have limited space available for one or two people here and there and we do have a waiting list we turn to in the event of cancellations,” he added.
Only 16 commercial outfitters are permitted to run the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon and O.A.R.S. offers more than 30 unique itineraries from April into November each year.