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August 23, 2025, marks the 67th anniversary of the creation of the Federal Aviation Administration. A historic tragedy in Grand Canyon changed American Aviation forever.
Answers to our guests’ most common questions about the fire on the North Rim of Grand Canyon.
If you’re on an Upper Canyon or Lower Canyon trip with Hatch, you are well aware that the Bright Angel Trail hike into or out of the Grand Canyon is long, strenuous, and MANDATORY.
For this reason, many guests who book this style of trip with Hatch choose to lighten their loads by using our UPS duffel service. It works like this:
If you’re on an UPPER CANYON trip, you’ll pack your gear in your duffel bag and bring it all to Marble Canyon with you. Your bag will then continue on the with you until you reaching the Bright Angel trail. At this point you’ll want to make sure it is labeled it clearly (using something like a plastic luggage tag) with your name, address, and phone number. When you depart for your hike, your duffel bag and all the gear you don’t need right away will stay on boat and complete the lower portion of the trip. It will be loaded up with the boats at the end of the trip and driven back to our office in Flagstaff. Once there, we will ship it back to your house. The only charge is the UPS shipping costs!
If you’re on a LOWER CANYON trip, you’ll ship your duffel bag (clearly marked with your name and trip date) to our warehouse in Marble Canyon so that it arrives AT LEAST 4 business days (though a week or more is better) in advance of the LAUNCH DATE of your trip. Keep in mind that your trip’s launch date is the day the boats leave Lees Ferry to complete the Upper Canyon portion of the journey, so it will be several days before your hike-in date. Once your duffel bag arrives in Marble Canyon, we will load it onto the boats with all the equipment and gear needed for the trip and then off it goes! Your bag is now on the river on its way to meet you. Once you’ve hiked, in your bag bag will be waiting for you on the boat. The bag will then be in your possession the rest of the trip and at the end of the trip your bag will be helicoptered out with you.
*If you’re booked on this style of trip, your Activity Manager includes the appropriate UPS duffel form with instructions for using this service.
Check out our FAQs page to read more about our duffel bag service!
Did you know Hatch River Expeditions once sent a Ford LTD on a raft down the Colorado River? The year was 1967, and Ford wanted to show its vehicles being thrashed about on the rustic backcountry Colorado River and then driving away unscathed. The company...
Flashback Friday: 1984 Ted Hatch Interview - Part 2 On the origins of the Hatch family in Utah and how the motorized rafts came to be used in Grand Canyon UPDATE 6.20.25: We found the commercial! We'll post the whole story of how we came to find this...
In 1935 Eva Hatch and Doris Calder become the first women to raft the Yampa and Green rivers! Here’s what a local newspaper had to say.
