Beverage Planning for a 30-Day Grand Canyon Rafting Trip
Reading Time: 10 minutes If you’re planning a 30-day Grand Canyon rafting trip with 16 people, then, first of all, I’m sorry. I know the struggle of being a Trip Leader (TL), and it’s not as fun as planning a solo backpacking trip. Chasing around 15 people to get personal details, payments, and commitments is no enviable task. Even if you’re using an outfitter for your boats, communal gear, and foodpack, there’s still the issue of the beverages.
Yes, many outfitters will provide coffee, juice, tea, and/or hot chocolate (note: hot chocolate will be principally consumed by the one group member who thinks “one cup a night” equates to filling a one-liter Nalgene), but that still leaves the question of recreational beverages. That is (basically) anything canned.
Locking in the correct quantity and variety of drinks can make or break a Grand trip (and/or friendships). But how many beverages do you need for 16 people over 30 days? How do you account for different preferences, potential cravings two weeks in, or the challenges of storing (or not storing) everything in your rafts’ coolers?
Having TLed two month-long Grand Canyon winter rafting trips, I have enough experience to share wisdom on your Grand beverage supply. Step one? Find yourself a reliable crafter of beverages like 10 Barrel Brewing – a brand steeped in the outdoors and adventure – to outfit what may be the most crucial part of your trip.
Catering to the Taste Buds of a Group
When rafting with 16 people, you’re not just dealing with one set of likes and dislikes; you’re juggling a spectrum of preferences.
Some folks want craft beer; others will want a non-alcoholic beer (I suggest the 10 Barrel NA/IPA, pronounced nah-E-pah!), some want bubbly water, some want kombucha, some want soda, some want canned cocktails—there are a lot of options, to say the least.
This is where you must decide: will you collectively purchase your beverages or ask that everyone provide their own?
The latter may seem the obvious choice, but then you can run into space issues (and not the interplanetary kind of space): How much physical space on each boat is each person afforded for their beverages? If everyone’s sharing equally, that’s not much of an issue.
And then there’s the “unknown factor.”
Predicting what you (or everyone) want(s) on a windy afternoon nineteen days in or on a freezing evening around the wood-burning stove in camp isn’t easy (in fact, it’s impossible). What tastes great on Day 1 might make you gag by Day 15. Having variety (or maybe nothing?) is key.
A tip from someone who’s been there (that’s me!): Go heavy on what you love (whether that’s IPAs, lagers, sours, fizzy waters, or soda), and then bring some of what you might not even drink that often – to give yourself the option to mix things up at some point. Spending a month in the Big Ditch can get a bit stir-crazy – best to provide yourself some outlets.
The “Midtrip Cravings” Dilemma
Like a long-distance hike, tastes can (and do) change on a long river trip.
However, unlike a long-distance hike, there is no resupply in Grand Canyon National Park (except the small store at Phantom Ranch, where you can find pricey beverages to supplement your cravings).
Have you ever spent three weeks living between a dry suit and a wood-burning stove punctuated by moments of terror as you plunge through huge whitewater? Because if not, this version of yourself may be completely different from the you reading this and may have an entirely different taste palate.
What you think you’ll want at the start of your trip might be wildly different from what you crave halfway through.
Do your future rafter self a favor and diversify your beverage stash to include some comfort drinks for unexpected moments when your cravings shift. You have no idea how popular my one last-minute addition of a few packs of soda was on my last trip. They were basically currency, as I was the only one with any to my name.
The Space Challenge
You can bring a lot of gear when you’re rafting – like a lot.
That said, liquid takes up a lot of space – and it’s heavy. You may have a ton of space for gear, but you only have so much room in your coolers. If you’re on a winter trip, this may not be too much of an issue beyond the fact that beverages not in a cooler are at greater risk of being accidentally smashed or sent overboard. But on a summer trip, you’ll want to keep your drinks cold, which means managing the space in your coolers.
Perishable food is the priority, but beverages are a close second. Beverages take up massive amounts of room – think strategically.
It is advisable to have a drag bag on each boat to store drinks during the day. Getting in and out of coolers or boxes while on the water can be a pain (especially if you’re not the one rowing and repeatedly ask your captain to get up to get drinks).
For all your drinks that won’t fit into your coolers, it’s best to tape them up liberally with duct tape—like tape the entire case with duct tape. Leave one hole where you can tear the case open and grab drinks; otherwise, the whole thing should be wrapped up. If it’s not, the cardboard will disintegrate with repeated exposure to water, and you’ll end up with random loose cans flooring around your raft.
Shout Out to 10 Barrel Brewing
Beverage choices shouldn’t just satiate thirst; they should elevate the experience. Enter 10 Barrel Brewing.
10 Barrel isn’t just about exceptional beers. Based in Bend, Oregon, the brand is all about the outdoors and adventure. And having fun. Did I mention having fun? If you’re looking for beer, non-alcoholic beer, or canned cocktails for your river trip, you can’t go wrong with 10 Barrel.
Their etohs is all about having fun. And isn’t that what a river trip should be? Fun? Maybe not for the Trip Leader who has to spend the entire trip making sure everyone else is having fun. But what’s one easy way to check one more task off the TL list? Outfit your trip with 10 Barrel beverages.
If you haven’t yet, definitely check them out before finalizing your gear list.
Pro tip 2: Label them.
The Formula for Beverage Inventory
How do you calculate the right number of beverages for 16 people across a 30-day rafting trip? Honestly, there’s no great solution to this. It’s difficult to predict how much everyone will drink every day. It’s difficult to predict how much just one person will drink every day.
That said, we can try to come up with something.
The Basic Math
- Daily Beverage per Person (DBP): 3-5 drinks (varied between alcohol, non-alcoholic, and hydrating options).
- Group Total per Day: DBP × 16 people
- Grand Total for Trip: Group Total Per Day × 30 days
Example Breakdown
For 16 people, aiming for four drinks per day/person:
- Daily Total = 16 × 4 = 64 drinks
- Grand Total = 64 × 30 = 1,920 beverages
Holy moly. That’s a lot of cans. According to the internet, a canned beverage weighs approximately 13.83 oz / 392 g. That means 1,920 beverages will weigh somewhere around 1,659 lb / 752 kg.
If you have six rafts (an appropriate amount for a 30-day winter trip), each raft will be responsible for carrying 320 cans or 553 lb / 250 kg of beverage. Assuming you have 18-foot rafts and each raft has a 150-quart cooler, you have space for 190 cans in each cooler. And that assumes the coolers are empty (no ice or food – only cans). That’s just over half your allotted cans per boat.
All this to say, boat space for beverages, let alone cooler space, goes quickly.
And if you think that’s a lot of drinks and space to devote to drinks, remember that four drinks (alcohol or otherwise) really isn’t that much. Let’s say you have one with breakfast, one with lunch, one while floating, and one with dinner – that’s your four right there. Days on the river can be long, and having more than your allotment is easy.
Better bring extra, just in case, right? Well, not so fast.
The Final (Potential) Mistake
If you’ve rafted through the Grand Canyon before (or maybe other rivers too, but my experience doesn’t extend much beyond Grand trips), you might have heard whispers of a curious superstition among river runners—it’s considered bad luck to take alcohol off the river at the end of your trip.
Is it worse luck than having a banana on your boat (apparently, another river superstition)? Who’s to say? Do NA IPAs count as alcohol? What about trace amounts of alcohol found in kombucha?
For some, finishing their remaining beverages on the final night/day of a Grand trip is a playful tradition filled with celebratory toasts; for others, it’s an insurmountable struggle to finish or otherwise dispose of (give them away to other groups?) their remaining beverages before reaching the takeout.
Summer Struggles
I have only ever (and maybe(?) will only ever go on) winter Grand trips – there’s just so much more the winter has to offer than the summer. Yes, we’re mostly discussing 30-day trip planning here (something not possible in the summer), but it’s worth examinning why summer trips (and beverages) can be tougher to manage (despite the need to not bring as many beverages since summer trips must be shorter).
So why’s the summer worse? The struggle to keep your beverages cold. The days are longer, the days are hotter (a lot hotter), and the sun is more omnipresent. For some, this may be a welcome feature of the trip. For your canned beverages, this is a challenge to be contended with.
Managing ice and cooler access becomes a science—and a potential source of tension within groups.
With perishable food and cold beverages being prized in the sweltering heat, opening coolers sparingly becomes a cardinal rule. The more they’re opened, the quicker the ice melts—and before you know it, you’re staring at a soggy mess of produce and warm drinks.
If you want to keep your group intact, it’s important to establish rules for opening coolers in the summer. Namely, know exactly what you’re going to pull out of a cooler before you open it. Don’t open it and then yell up to the group, “Hey! Does anyone want anything out of hrere?” and then wait while your indecisive crewmates struggle to make up their minds or, even worse, start asking, “Is there any X beverage in there?”
Thirty-day winter trips for the win.
Cheers to an Epic Adventure (and not dying)
Rafting thr Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park is an incredible adventure. If you’ve never been and someone invites you on a trip, I highly encourage you to find a way to go. And if it’s a 30-day winter trip, even better.
Grand Canyon beverage planning is just one of dozens of different points to be addressed before launching from Lee’s Ferry (where all Grand Canyon rafting trips begin – at least where the boats begin). Making sure you have a wide variety of beverages and plenty of them can be a challenging but worthwhile task. Make sure to check out 10 Barrel if you’re looking for a beverage partner as committed to the ourdoors as you will be to the river once passing Phantom Ranch.
Yes, it will seem ridiculous the number of cases of drink you have with you at the start, but remember that even a pack of 30 beers isn’t enough for everyone (assuming a 16-person trip) to have two drinks over the course of a day.
Just make sure you wear your PFD and consume your beverages responsibly (alcoholic or otherwise – you want to make sure your future self has something to drink after Lava).
Have fun and don’t die out there, friends!
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