Episode 2 Operation Grand Canyon with Dan Snow

The Grand Canyon.

One of the world's greatest natural wonders.

Carving through sheer rock and almost invisible from the rim,

the mighty Colorado River.

Big hit, right here!

In a modern-day historical challenge,

Dan Snow and a crack team are taking on the rapids of the Grand Canyon.

And they're doing it in boats more fit for a museum

than some of the wildest water on the planet.

No-one's done this journey in these boats since 1869.

And there's probably a good reason for that!

But there's a serious purpose...

..to get to grips with one of the world's greatest

adventures of discovery for the very first time.

Tucked in the far South West of America,

the Grand Canyon was called simply The Great Unknown.

Then, in 1869, a one-armed war veteran, Major John Wesley Powell,

lead nine men in three tiny boats into a hostile and alien world.

Not all of them would come out of the canyon alive.

Now armed with diaries from the original 1869 expedition,

Dan is seeing the canyon as if through the eyes of Powell

and those original, pioneering adventurers.

Morning.

Eight days in and the Powell team is feeling ground down.

'Body sore this morning.'

Legs, bum muscles very sore

cos when you're rowing, you do a lot of it with your legs,

surprisingly enough.

So far, they've covered 90 miles...

..with nearly 190 still to go.

Travelling pretty light.

These are all of my clothes for this journey.

Here we go.

Get on the boat, boys!

Dan's mission is to survive the mighty Colorado River.

So far, from Lee's Ferry, they've travelled through the Marble Canyon,

heading towards the Grand Wash at the other end...

..with 280 miles of canyon and around 100 rapids in between.

Right now, they've entered the feared Granite Gorge,

just a third of the way in, with the worst of the canyon still to come.

See that big pink blob? That big pink blob's the Granite.

There's big lumps of it, and it's those big lumps

that are causing all of this mayhem in the river.

Geology and rapids, basically.

Coming up is their biggest test so far...

..Granite Falls...

..a dangerous rapid that has even got some

of the most experienced river guides worried.

A bit nervous about Granite. It's been in the back of my mind a bit.

There's not much to think about Granite except for, you know,

it's going to be big.

It's going to be freaking huge - and unavoidable!

Just two weeks into Powell's expedition,

he lost a boat to a rapid.

With no chance of rescue,

Powell became too cautious to run rapids like Granite.

Instead, he faced the grind of lugging his boats on land

or lowering them down on ropes.

OK, we're going in, guys!

Whoo!

But today, Dan's team, with expert rivermen

and modern safety support, are pushing their boats to the limit.

# I feel like

# The time has come

# A fearless rescue... #

Fred avoids the sheer granite walls

and steers the small scout boat through to safety.

All right, let's bail!

HE HOWLS

But the two heavy oak boats are harder to steer.

THEY GROAN

Their crews are battered, but they come through intact.

Row! Pull! Pull!

Pull! Pull!

Get your oars in the water and pull!

Just like Powell, back in 1869,

Dan's team is getting used to being continually drenched.

We took on a fair bit of water today.

This is what Powell had to deal with every night. He had to get

his stuff out, he had to dry it off in the desert and repack everything.

Literally, rancid, from soaking and drying constantly.

We're struggling a bit with the oranges and the apples.

cos they're getting bruised. The oranges are getting really mouldy.

But we're eating them!

And it's not just food that's rotting.

That's trench foot, foot rot. Just feet being wet all day.

And it hurts. Feels like 80-grit sandpaper rubbing on your feet now.

'Quite a few of us have our feet going off. They're just rotting.'

It's a fungus that grows on your feet from being just wet

and moist all day long. It's almost debilitating. It just throbs

all the way up to the knee, right into the hip and it's on your toes.

I don't know.

Push, push, push, push, push, push, push!

Dan's team has been on the river for just eight days.

'This is our secret weapon, that's transformed

'the way our boat performs in the water,'

cos we put loads of sandbags along the keel to help ballast it,

but they weren't enough,

so we started putting huge rocks in the stern compartment.

In 1869, having started higher upstream,

Powell and his men had been on the go for over two months.

Here. Here.

Powell and his guys, by this stage of the journey, were physically wrecked.

I mean, two of them wrote in their diaries

that they'd never been so low, physically.

By this stage, they were actually starving to death.

They were doing a huge amount of exercise and physical activity.

Except Powell. Powell's diary, he says he's having a great time!

He's absolutely over the moon. He can't believe his luck.

Never complains about the food.

He occasionally says the men are making him move on a bit quicker

because they're worried about running out of food

but if he had his way, he'd have just spent his days

looking for rocks up in these hills, taking celestial sightings.

Extraordinary man! Completely driven.

Tomorrow, Dan's team will face the feared Crystal Rapid.

But for once, they won't be running it.

We're going to try and lift one these boats out of the water,

we're going to carry it over there, portage it, as they say

in America, and if that doesn't work, or when that proves

too miserable, the other boat, we'll line it down.

We're going to put it on ropes and take it down the side

of the rapid in the water. Exactly what Powell used to do

when he came across a rapid he didn't like the look of.

Morning.

Large holes and a rock-strewn island make Crystal Rapid

one of the most dangerous in the canyon.

So today, they're going to try the two methods Powell

routinely used 150 years ago.

First, lugging one of the boats on land.

The boat weighs about 800 pounds and it's big and awkward,

so the weight is an issue, but also the size and how awkward it is.

But before moving his boats, Powell

and his men had to manhandle all their supplies and equipment.

Some of the boys are looking very reluctant, indeed.

You know, that's what happened back in 1869. Powell's men hated

doing this. It's knackering.

I think you're more likely to injure yourself than you are on the river.

We need to go slow, we need to work together,

we need to communicate. All righty. Let's do it!

One, two, three, lift!

Go! Go!

THEY GROAN

Everyone, down!

Two, three...

THEY GROAN

As in Powell's day, progress is painfully slow.

What I'm thinking about is the rest of the day.

We're killing ourselves

and we've got one of the hardest stretches of river ahead of us.

Nice and slow!

Break an ankle here in the wilderness

and the only way out is by helicopter.

If one person slips, they go down. The other person holding that side of

the boat has to carry the full load. It's actually really dangerous.

In 1869, it could have meant death.

Powell's guys sometimes had to do this three times a day,

with all of their boats.

Hard to imagine.

'Puts you right in there. You can understand what

'they went through, that's for sure.'

THEY SHOUT

Two hours of muscle-wrenching torture.

Turn to the left.

And to everyone's relief, Dan's team reaches its goal.

This boat's as tough as nails.

Ben Khan is the team's carpenter.

He spent six months creating the three traditional riverboats,

carefully copied from original photographs.

But boats like these were never designed to survive the canyon

and Ben's had to work around the clock just to keep the team afloat.

Didn't sleep at all last night.

All the men are exhausted, but there's no time to rest.

The much bigger

and heavier oak boats are still at the top of Crystal.

This could very well be the most dangerous part of the trip.

We don't want to be more than knee-deep.

Thigh-deep, waist-deep is where it's dangerous, OK? Really dangerous.

Watch your legs, buddy.

No-one wants to face another portage,

but Powell's other method is even worse.

For the first time,

the team will attempt to line a boat through a rapid.

'We've never really done this before,'

so we're on the learning curve at a pretty significant rapid.

There's a big rock right here you're going to have to go out of.

All right.

'By the time Powell got down here,

'he'd probably already lined 75, maybe 100, small ones'

for their learning curve, to see what worked and what didn't.

-Got to get off of this, right?

-What a big rock here.

-Yeah.

Ropes, rocks...

..heavy boats and a surging current...

..all add up to a potentially lethal combination for the men on land.

You guys, you guys, as he swings, take.

For anyone on board the boat, it's even worse.

This whole feature right here, where you see the white water,

is the biggest feature on the rapid.

That's the one place you don't want to go.

Right now, we're basically lining the boat

right next to the edge of that thing. Hey, Tom!

Come up.

One slip, the boat slides or pins. These guys are going in that hole.

-One, two, three!

-It's good.

It's a slow, and dangerous process.

THEY SHOUT TO EACH OTHER

OK, watch out for the rope. Watch out!

Good to go.

Then, to make matters worse, the boat jams

on hidden rocks.

HE GRUNTS

Even the brute strength of Adam can't dislodge the boat.

If it rolls, Brian and Tom could be trapped.

Exactly what I was worried about!

As water surges into the boat, they have to abandon ship.

The situation is as bad as it can be. The boat is stuck, which means

it can break free suddenly and it's also full of water,

so it's five, six times heavier

than it was before. Which means these ropes have got to

take that much more weight and it's going to be coming on really hard.

Let's go get a better angle on this.

-Not going, not even thinking about it.

-Yeah, no.

Not even thinking about it.

With light fading,

Dan's boat will have to be left to the mercy of the river overnight.

The team hoped to have travelled 20 miles today.

Instead, they've managed just 400 metres...

..with just one boat.

We're in a state of limbo, really.

That boat could be completely ruined in the morning or we could

not be able to get it off. In which case,

things could get quite cosy, as we shove nine people into two boats.

It's all about the river finally biting us back, really.

The more you spend time here, the more you learn that...

..you can't beat the Colorado.

And it's not only the river that hides unseen dangers...

RATTLING

There we go still coming this way, he's coming out.

He's going to come out.

About a metre in front of me is a Grand Canyon rattlesnake.

But this is our beds, right? We're just on the floor on a tarpaulin.

Yeah, it's literally, like...

Like, 15 feet from my sleeping bag.

I'm scared of snakes.

It's got very big fangs

and if it bit me on the calf,

slowly, but surely, my calf would start dissolving.

It's just, kind of. buried in the vegetation.

I'm so close to these bushes. This is definitely the most

frightening campsite we've had.

Little sleep in Rattlesnake Camp

and an early start.

Tom and I were out here late last night, checking it out.

The water was still coming in.

Now, it's not, so this is our best chance to get it out of here.

4.00am.

And Dan and Bryan are working out a last-ditch plan to rescue

the stricken boat.

The boat's high and dry out of the water. We're starting to bail,

so we can lighten her up and try and get her off.

The water level has dropped overnight,

opening up a precious window of opportunity.

It's pretty jammed in right now.

The rocks are wedging it at the bow, they're wedging it at the stern

but we can actually see where it's being wedged.

That's the difference from yesterday.

Yesterday, when there was water going in the boat and we couldn't

see anything we didn't even know where it was getting held up.

..two, three!

THEY GRUNT

Yes!

We're floating, we're floating.

-We're floating!

-Yeah!

I've done stupider things in my life, but I don't know when...

For everyone, immense relief.

Two hours ago, I though this expedition might be over...

for our boat

and now it's back.

It's been a tough 24 hours.

Carrying only 18 days of provisions,

they're now way behind schedule.

They've lugged one boat and almost lost another.

But Bryan's boat is still at the top of the rapid

and they haven't gone anywhere for nearly two days.

OK, is there anything else up on that beach?

Just picking up stuff that's not... Life jacket.

With an almost-suicidal decision, to save time,

they decide to run Crystal.

8.55, Crystal Rapid.

Powell faced t he same hard decisions.

With food running out, even he was forced to start running

dangerous rapids.

It's a big rapid. It's got a somewhat technical line

and then, we've got a rock island at the bottom

that we have to get left of.

Bryan Smith is an adventurer and film-maker.

An extreme kayaker, Bryan knows white water inside out.

But he's more used to operating solo in hi-tech fibre-glass...

..than one of a trio in a tonne of oak.

Three people in a boat. We are all right next to each other.

It's where personalities, sort of,

either start to gel or start to clash.

Big strokes together, Mike. Don't pass him. Go full strokes.

There's a lot of consequence on this rapid.

Big hit, right here!

All right! All right! All right!

Right! Right!

Big strokes!

Right! All together! All together!

Both oars! Both oars!

Mike! Both oars!

With the crew still failing to gel

and at the mercy of Crystal Rapid...

Mike, bail! Bail!

Bryan, pull as hard as you can!

..Adam is becoming desperate.

B-a-a-a-i-l! Goddamn it!

Pull!

The rest of the team look on nervously.

We might be doing a rescue here.

We going right? Yeah, a little. We're good, we're good.

We're hitting rocks, we're hitting rocks.

-Everybody high side this way.

-CRASH!

Goddamn it!

OK. OK, OK, OK.

OK, row.

Bail, Mike, bail.

Bail, Bryan. OK.

Goddamn, we had a meltdown

fall apart at the worst place on the whole trip.

Bryan's boat only just survives Crystal Rapid.

Hitting calm water, they start to put some miles on the clock.

But Adam and Bryan seem to have given up on Mike.

Mike is struggling in my boat and I'm struggling with him.

I'm letting him get under my skin now,

I don't even want to look at him, let alone talk to him.

Oh, he's driving me nuts.

He knows that his primary job when we're full of water, is to bail

and...

you know, he still hasn't figured out a system for being able

to get that bail bucket out when it counts.

To be perfectly honest, Mike's not pulling his weight in the boat.

Had a couple of close calls with the rocks this morning in Crystal

and, as a result, now we're trying to keep ourselves in the water,

not on the rocks.

I think since Crystal, we've rowed well as a boat...

'Tensions are coming to the surface,'

because there's nowhere to hide and this journey is exhausting,

it's attritional and it will bring those tensions out.

I think Mike is just trying to put the best on it.

You know, he's a good British, stiff upper lip optimist,

but he's suffering in that crew

and I think Mike, unfortunately, is being a bit of a scapegoat.

SINGING IN CAMP

Time to make camp after a long, hard day.

But Sam and Dougal still have things to do.

In 1869, Powell not only wanted to survive the Canyon but to survey it.

And to do that, he needed to know exactly where he was.

The whole point is, if you're taking scientific readings or samples,

you need to know where you are. Otherwise, there's no point.

Sam Willis is a maritime historian...

..and the team's navigator.

In 1869, Powell mapped the canyon

using dividers, sextants,

and a bit of improvisation.

Now, Sam is seeing

if he can accurately track HIS journey through the canyon.

Dougal's been taking photos of rocks for a week and a half now,

-It all looks the same to me.

-I've got a big memory card.

In 1869, hard climbs to the rim with heavy equipment

were an almost daily event.

That moon's going to be a real friend tonight,

because that's going to travel over here in this direction all night

and the whole of the heavens are just going to go boom,

right across us.

For centuries, man has used the night sky to navigate.

But for Sam, being surrounded by rock,

with no visible horizon is less than ideal.

OK, the moon's out, so we're going to see

if we can see it in the sextant.

First thing I need to do...

..is to fill up our bowl with some water.

By making his own mini-ocean in a bowl,

Sam gets a level surface, just like a horizon at sea.

Knowing the time and the moon's angle...

..he's almost ready to calculate the team's position.

Next morning, back in camp, Sam puts his findings to the test.

So we've got a mixture of things we've done here,

for the first few days. We worked out roughly how far we'd gone,

estimating the speed of the river and using compasses

to judge the bearing. So, we've plotted our estimated position

on this astro-chart.

This is the fix we got when we went hiking to the top of the canyon

and when we finally got down to base camp, we got a GPS

and that gave us our exact location

and so, we can work out how accurate our sighting was.

So we've got our guessed position here,

we've got our fix from the moon and the sun here

and our actual position there.

So, THAT is quite good.

We are...

..just over nine miles of difference.

You can get sextant accuracy

to within one or two miles, but for being in an alien environment,

for having to hike up a mountain, I'd done it after a 30-mile row

as well and nine miles is absolutely fine. I'm really pleased with that.

Over the next few days,

Dan's team presses on through the Granite Gorge.

OK, here comes our big area here.

From their start at Lee's Ferry,

they're now 130 miles through their journey.

Almost halfway.

But travelling the canyon in August, just like Powell...

..means they have to contend with the monsoon.

The rain in the desert is freaking amazing.

Water pouring down every little groove and doing its thing.

I get a smile on my face, I look around and everybody else sits there

going, "Oh, it's raining."

And it's like, it's the desert and it's supposed to happen...

..on rare occasions and we're so fortunate to see it.

That's really... I love the rain,

Can't tell you enough.

Well, last night I just got rained on. I mean, I didn't really mind.

it was just a couple of hours just before dawn and...

I just got rained on. And it was OK. Quite nice, really.

The full moon was out

and then the lightning came in and it was quite dramatic.

But I think tonight, there's a chance it could be,

rather than just lose a couple of hours' sleep,

we might lose the whole night, so tonight were not taking chances.

In 1869, Powell faced weeks of persistent downpours.

Don't you worry, it's going to be dry as a bone in there.

He spent days imprisoned on land, waiting for weather to clear

and a chance to dry out.

For the modern team, the threat of a sudden night storm

means that they have to fix up shelter.

That looks about as waterproof as a sieve.

Dougal's taking matters into his own hands.

He doesn't trust the communal solution.

But it looks like it involves a flimsy bush.

I know who'll be knocking at our door at about two in the morning.

It may be an early night for some,

sheltering from the canyon's weather...

But ecologist Mike has other ideas.

I'm hunting scorpions.

I have a special torch,

a flashlight. It basically shines out black light or UV light.

Oh, there's one! Got it!

Fantastic!

This is the bark scorpion.

Probably the most venomous scorpion

in the whole south west of the United States.

Oh, look at the colour of it! Wow, That's amazing!

It just looks totally yellow in the light.

Oh, look at this one! Look at that!

It's just caught a moth, absolutely fantastic. One of the

best things I've seen on the whole canyon trip.

That is a top Grand Canyon moment.

I'm totally thrilled with that.

Well worth staying up for.

A bit wet last night.

Not the most ideal, erm...

..camping set-up really but, erm...

..kept mostly dry.

Didn't really, actually. I'm quite wet.

There you go.

# Good morning, world It's a brand-new day

# I'm packing my bags and I'm getting away... #

Powell never wasted the time he spent on land.

They say the Grand Canyon is all about the little side canyons

that you've got to explore for the full experience

and that sounds very true of our trip.

At any opportunity, he explored side canyons.

Collecting rock samples and recording the geology.

Dougal's writing his rock notes.

Since 1869, it's a world that's barely changed.

And for Dan's team, offers a rare relief from the river grind.

Here we are, what a view.

We know from Powell's diaries, he used to hike up the top of this gorge

nearly every night.

You feel a very long way from the river, a long way from the rapids

and I think, coming up here was probably

part of his coping mechanism.

There's one of the rapids of the Colorado. When you're in it

they feel all encompassing and very intense,

but from up here...

..they just look like a few ripples.

It looks nothing from up here.

Powell returned to the canyon two years after his pioneering trip.

And this time, he brought along a state of the art 3D camera.

Going home with dozens of delicate glass plates.

Oh, look, there's this layer. This limestone layer.

Yeah, the Tapeats. It's a sandstone.

I don't know. What do you think?

Armed with a box of prints from the Powell originals,

Dan and Bryan are trying to find the exact locations

where they were taken.

-It's upstream from here.

-Is this not that right there?

Yeah, there you go.

-That could be it, too. yeah, yeah, yeah.

-Right here...

We found it, we found the spot. That's a great one.

-We're looking at the same scene...

-Yeah.

..that Powell would have looked at back then.

We're in their footsteps.

-That pretty solid?

-Yeah.

Using a camera similar to the one Powell would have had,

Dan and Bryan are attempting to recreate

one of his most memorable scenes.

Just glorious. Fantastic. It just looks great.

-Do you want to come and see this?

-Oh, wow!

OK, here we go.

One, two, three,

four, five...

-We back on?

-Back on.

-OK, nice.

It's just amazing up here. It's like the perfect dark room.

-All right, so...

-OK, buddy, we need to go red now, right?

We need to go red now. Stand by.

-Look at that!

-Not quite there.

That evening, Dan and Bryan find a dark spot, to discover

if their own 3D photography has worked.

Oh, it's exciting. OK, here we go.

It's amazing not knowing what pictures you've taken

until you got them back to the lab or dark room,

which could be weeks or months later...

Great shot of the boat here.

When you think about modern photography,

it's just a different world, isn't it?

I mean, digital photography,

you just instantly make a correction

and then you walk away with the shot.

Where as here

it's just so tricky, you know?

-Is it cool to go white light now?

-Yeah, we're totally set, so...

-We might see more. Look at that.

-Oh, wow.

That's fantastic.

-Well done, man.

-Thank you.

11 days in.

Dan and his team still have 158 miles to travel.

THEY SHOUT TO EACH OTHER

But at last, they are coming to the end of the feared Granite Gorge.

The rapids here are not as big as some they've come through.

THAT can be deceptive.

They're shallower and rockier and the men are all worn down.

When Powell was coming down this river, their shoes had

rotted off their feet, they had very little food left,

they had run out of spares and were running out of motivation, as well.

Running low on energy,

people's feet are starting to rot, hands are starting to swell up.

It's all going to have an effect and all it takes is for us

to be a little off our game

and we're straight into the wall or straight into some rocks.

A sudden snap...

and Fred goes hurtling.

Just sheered off an oarlock pin.

That's the bit that's broken off and you can see

where it started to go, started to bend here

and then it's just, "ping!" it sounded like a bullet.

Fred, can you wiggle your toes, if you're OK?

Oarlock fixed and back on the river.

But the worst of the day is still to come...

-for Dan's boat...

-Hard on this side. Hard...

..at a vicious rapid called Bedrock...

..where even the normally-serene Tom gets rattled.

Keep going, keep going!

Hang on, hang on! Get rid of your oar, get rid of your oar!

Get rid of your oar. Hang on, hang on...

Dan's boat takes a big hit...

We're all right.

Relax, wait.

Stay in the boat, just relax.

..and it's seriously damaged.

OK, poor Crazy Horse, man. Oh, my goodness.

It's ruined.

If this was a fibreglass boat, it would have...

it would not still be floating, I don't think.

It would've wrapped around that rock. It may of even stayed on that rock.

It hasn't even crushed the grain on the outside,

if you look at the inside, the wood's totally blown out.

What do you think of that, eh?

That's brutal, patching a patch.

Patching a patch.

OK, that's a serious digger right there.

Unless Ben can fix the extensive damage to Dan's boat,

the whole expedition could be in real trouble.

Sometimes, when there's a crack in the wood,

you can actually cork the crack. I'm just driving the cotton in there.

The Powell guys did this a lot on their expedition down through here

and they used to use... They used to climb up to the higher ground

and use tree sap as an agent to improve this corking process.

It's all hands on deck to help Ben.

Kind of out here in the field and running out of daylight.

There's really no good way to fix it, so I'm just going to go for it

and see what happens. I'm going to do what I can.

I can no longer see daylight through the bottom of the boat.

Didn't sleep, hardly at all, last night.

Just started working on the boats. I'm not fixing them properly,

because I'm just trying to keep the boats going on the river

and we have limited time.

We were in the camp at six or seven and it's almost dark.

This is, you know, this is my job.

Having spent half the night fixing the blue boat...

..Ben needs the next day to check over the others.

With the canyon's biggest rapids ahead and time running out...

..he resorts to modern technology.

These boats are definitely taking a lot of energy.

I've been working on them every night, every morning

for the last couple of days and...

the river's definitely taking its toll on the boats.

Thank you, sir.

A boat like this should last 50 years on the ocean,

but you put a boat like this

in an environment like this, two weeks is about all it can take.

Can't quit now.

While Ben finishes his repairs...

..Dan and Tom climb to an ancient site

which would have fascinated Powell back in 1869.

-Here we go, check these out, Dan.

-Oh, yeah there's some marks here.

It's the old universal desire to draw a picture of a...

-human on a rock, eh?

-Yeah.

No matter where you are in the world.

Oh, wow. There's great ones up there.

Powell took a great interest in the native Americans who were

living in the canyon long before he arrived.

What material are they using?

That is a hematite. They use it to colour their moccasins

and their bodies, too, for dances for ceremony.

On later visits,

Powell even photographed the local tribes for posterity.

Powell coming through here,

he thought this was The Great Unknown and he spends his whole time bumping

into evidence of human habitation. And this journey would have

changed his whole outlook on this great unknown, this blank space.

Because it wasn't The Great Unknown to all the people living here

and fishing here and hunting here and growing vegetables here.

-This was home.

-And probably gave him hope that he was getting back

-and closer to...

-I think...

..terra firma, you know?

-Would have been comforting, I think.

-Yeah.

Boats finally repaired, it's time to move on.

There's a pretty major repair that went down on the blue boat.

But it's good, it's all patched up.

The problem now is that they're all very high and dry

and our boat is completely rocked out.

One, two, three!

-Yeah, there we go.

-That's nice.

-Oh, beauty.

-Straight in.

Every single day, Powell thought that the cliffs of the canyon

would begin to open and he would be freed from his prison.

But every day brought new grim surprises...

..formed from ancient geological events.

Dan's team are two thirds of the way through the canyon.

They've made it through marble

and granite,

but are now approaching the most treacherous section of all...

..lava

These lavas, sort of, represented the start of the final dark

chapter in Powell's journey.

Imagine that desert canyon as it is now

and then, all of a sudden, a lava flow

starts coming barrelling down the canyon,

gets to the edge of the Grand Canyon and goes whoosh

and starts an actual -

almost like a waterfall, but a lava fall - of molten rock.

In fact, this would have come all the way down

and would have filled up and blocked the Grand Canyon.

We'd have actually been able to walk from here

over to the other side of the Grand Canyon.

Rounding Vulcan's Anvil, just as Powell did in 1869,

Dan's team comes into hard lava rock

and the start of some fearsome white water.

Here is the biggest

and most violent rapid in the entire canyon...

..Lava Falls.

When Powell actually got to Lava, he didn't think at all about

running it. I think it's such a violent churning stretch of water,

they would have just portaged it, there was, literally, no choice.

Even the safety and filming rafts get battered

by the huge waves of Lava.

Lava is, by everybody's estimation, pretty much the biggest and most

complicated rapid on the Colorado River.

Lava's properly dangerous. People die on Lava.

But Dan is determined to see if his boats can run Lava.

For Mike, it's a massive ask.

I'm going to try not to think too much about what a big rapid

it is before we go down.

I'm going to trust my technique, listen to Adam and watch Bryan

and they're the three things that I've tried to

maintain the whole way through.

My concern is that...

with Mike, is that he gets really nervous and scared,

and when he gets nervous and scared,

he stops following directions.

It's this whole domino effect, where one little missed stroke turns

into two, turns into three and then

we start losing the boat. We lose our momentum, we lose our angle.

Lava can just slap you. Anything can go wrong there.

Doesn't take much.

Technical bends. Exposed rocks.

It brings all the dangers together in one terrifying package.

At the top, a hole the size of a bus,

capable of pinning boats to the riverbed.

Survive Lava and you're straight into another rapid

that has been the undoing of many river men...

..Son of Lava.

Fred, what happens if we get it wrong?

We are probably going to go pretty deep and get washed out.

Possibly a popped eardrum, smashed on some rocks.

Remember, if you do go in, this is a rocky rapid down deep and it's

going to take you down deep. Make sure you limbs are in, so you're not

getting a foot entrapment from a rock.

But, erm, the boats just get trashed.

It's the biggest test in the entire canyon.

Fred takes the scout boat over the top with Sam and Ben.

Only a perfect line will do.

Oh, they nailed it!

CHEERING

The light scout boat makes it through Lava.

Get on it, now, get on it.

Get on it.

Get on it.

OK, here we go...

Dan's heavier oak boat, though, takes a hammering.

Here we go, keep going.

Stay with it, stay with it, stay with it.

It seems Powell was right not to run Lava falls and its violent waves,

as Tom's stern oar is ripped from his hand and he loses control.

Dan only comes through at the mercy of the current.

Big wave, duck!

Just coming in, Bryan's boat takes a massive broadside hit.

Adam is suddenly nowhere to be seen.

He's hauled back on board.

But without a stern oar, they are totally out of control.

And heading for Son of Lava.

Hold on!

A rescue boat vainly attempts to attach a safety line.

But somehow, Bryan's boat makes it to shore.

For Mike...

it's all been too much.

Was I scared? Erm...

You haven't got time to be scared

it's just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

After coming close to tragedy,

Bryan has sympathy for Mike's feelings.

-Hey, Mike.

-Yeah?

Nice work, dude. Nice job, all right?

You realise that life is this fickle thing

and the river has WAY more power

than any of us possibly have to control it.

Dan's team have travelled 240 miles.

Leaving the dangerous Lava behind them,

they are finally through the worst of the canyon.

In 1869, Powell's men were barely clinging on to life.

Expecting to only spend a few weeks in the canyon,

they'd been on the river for over three months.

And some had finally lost faith in their leader.

This was described by one of the guys on the Powell expedition as the

"darkest day" of the entire expedition.

Almost starving, they reached a side canyon,

now called Separation.

Here, three of the men deserted.

Up until now, one of the key distinguishing features of this

place has been its claustrophobia. It's like being in a maze.

You can never see any further than a quarter of a mile in any direction.

But here, for the first time, it's opened up

-and it really looks like you've got a chance of getting out.

-Yeah.

Tensions, built over months, had reached breaking point.

It's funny, we talk about arguments over food,

"So and so doesn't do the washing up very much" and it sounds so petty

when you are back home. But those are the things that do drive you

crazy about each other. Those are the things that do rip the group apart.

And they had lost faith in the leadership.

Totally lost.

So when he's saying "Guys, we're close by!"

They are saying, "You've been saying that for weeks. We don't trust you

"any more and we are taking matters into our own hands."

Two brothers, Oramel and Seneca Howland,

along with William Dunn, left the expedition on the 28th August 1869.

They exchanged letters for loved ones

and were given a copy of the expedition journal.

Then, they walked away.

So, the three of them left the river after having come so far.

But if your scared and you don't know what's downstream...

Scared, hungry and nobody was getting along.

The three men were never seen again.

What no-one knew was that Powell and the remaining five men

would reach the safety of a Mormon settlement only two days later.

I think what it comes down to, is that Powell had what lots

of those great explorers had, which was luck.

They shot these rapids OK. They were lucky

and then, they were home clear.

For the 2013 team,

just one last night in the grip of the canyon.

Old squash, old peppers.

It's going to be delicious.

Sad, elated...

..proud.

Yeah, it's good. Good. We've done well. We've done well.

You know, I'm ready to...

Kind of kick off the foot rot and shave my face

and go home and see my wife and kid.

This relentless push to get to the end is finally done and I am

God-relieved that it's nearly finished.

In 1869, Powell and his men spent 101 days

fighting for survival through 930 miles of hostile river.

After nearly three weeks, Dan's team have successfully navigated

their antique boats through all 280 miles of the Grand Canyon.

Dan has rediscovered The Great Unknown for the very first time.

I can safely say that Powell's achievement

is up there with anything any explorer has ever done,

whether it's Stanley crossing Africa, whether it's Shackleton

in the South Pole, whether it's Scott in the Antarctic, as well.

What they did here, what they suffered

and what they went through...

is right up there.

I'll never sit at home and sit back

and read a diary of a great explorer ever again

without realising just the horror that they must have been through.

Back in 1869, there were still rapids to navigate.

But today, water backed up from the Hoover Dam has covered them all.

Dan's journey is finally over.

The canyon walls fall away just as they did for Powell

almost 150 years ago, and they're out in open country, at last.

I'm enormously relieved that we're here.

OK, we've got Adam in there now.

We've all got cuts and bruises and aches and pains. The boats are

-looking pretty battered...

-Here we go.

-Get in, Bryan.

..but we've done it. It's absolutely amazing.

LAUGHTER

# Keep all your lands

# And dream them burning

# Keep all your lands

# And keep them burning

# Yeah!

# Oh!

# Yes! #