Not long ago, when Patti McGuire was visiting our Chicago offices, she happened to mention that she had always wanted to take a rafting trip down the Colorado River. Knowing a good idea when it hits us over the head, we promptly dispatched Playmate of the Year Patti, Playmate Hope Olson, Chicago Bunny Cindy Russell and Staff Photographer Richard Fegley to Las Vegas, where they caught a small plane to Marble Canyon, Arizona, the starting point of their adventure that would take them 200 miles down the river, through the Grand Canyon.
It was, to say the least, idyllic, especially for their two guides. The girls soon realized the futility of wearing clothes while negotiating turbulent rapids. "Whenever we'd hit rapids," says Hope, "we'd all get soaking wet; so after a while, we'd just wear our life jackets and nothing underneath." And since the canyon is pretty much deserted most of the time--the group encountered only two other rafting expeditions during the entire five-day journey--nudity became the order not only of the day but of the evening as well. On just one occasion did they feel the necessity to cover up. "Once," Patti told us, "we came upon another rafting company and it was mainly older people, so we threw on our clothes real quick. The guides said they might get upset." At another spot, they encountered a group of eight rafters taking a nude shower in one of the canyon's hundreds of natural waterfalls and, as Patti puts it, "Since they were naked, they sure didn't care if we were."
Our intrepid team of rafters negotiated about 150 rapids in its motorized pontoon craft (the raft can hold up to 16 people). Some rapids were fiercer than others, but the most dangerous was Lava Falls, where the waves can go up to 40 feet. Although they ran the Lava Falls rapids with no trouble, they did have a slight problem at another white water spot when a towel got caught in the raft's motor. "We really needed the motor, because there were a lot of dangerous rocks," Patti recalls, "and when the towel got caught in the propeller, it stopped the motor, so we were just floating around for a while among the rocks. I was a little scared, because we easily could have crashed, but one of the guides finally untangled it and we proceeded on course." At dusk, after a hard day of rafting, the group would beach the craft, set up camp and either sun-bathe or explore the side canyons. "One day," says Hope, "we anchored on a rocky hill and Patti and I got off the raft and almost stepped on a rattlesnake that was sleeping in one of the crevices." To which Patti adds, "I almost had a heart attack." Other wildlife spotted during the trip: a king snake, a skunk (which actually went up and sniffed the girls' ankles before running away), mountain rams, a wide assortment of lizards and, of course, insects.
At the end of the five day journey, the girls and the guides packed up their gear and rode horses out of the canyon (there's no other practical way to get up the canyon walls). How did the girls feel about their experience? "It was one of the most exciting things I've ever done," Hope told us, "and I'd do it again; but after five days of roughing it, I was ready for a good home-cooked meal."
