Sure enough, Little Lava's deafening roar soon enveloped us. Yet the horizon revealed nothing but a broken horizontal line, with not a plume of water or blinding mist visible beyond. It looked like the edge of the world. And, sure enough, there were no eddies to catch.
Chuck disappeared over the lip. I followed. To our enormous relief, there were no sudden, waterfall drops-the rapid descended at an even, albeit steep angle. But it was unexpectedly long and complex, requiring instant reaction and technique, and brooking no time for strategy, or aiming for position. Miraculously, neither of us rolled or swam.
Once past 2-mile-long Little Lava, the river's gradient eased to 10-20 feet-per-mile, but its speed didn't. The bullet-train current carried us past Perkinsville in no time. Nevertheless, we camped early. It had been an exhilarating day.
The following morning we slept in. Chuck, having spent a miserable winter's night without a sleeping bag, dawdled in bed (such as it was). But when he finally arose, he dawdled even more-ambling about, rearranging his pittance of stuff, fiddling with the fire, and mumbling. By 11am I suggested that we should get going. But then he declared he had to repair his kayak. He turned it over and examined-slowly-every inch of his boat, then proceeded to go through the motions of repairing it.
However, I soon noticed there were no repairs to be made. Chuck was up to something. Under my insistent interrogation he finally admitted to willful delay, hoping we'd use up our food and I'd be forced to cut my trip short at Horseshoe Dam-as he'd been insisting right from the start. I called his bluff with my own bluff, and threatened to leave ASAP. By the time I was ready to launch, he was too.
The river had lowered some, but its speed hadn't. Riding through Clarkdale, the first town of note, we were shocked by the devastation. Along the entire Verde Valley stretch, humble homesteads, single-wide toeholds, and double-wide dreams close to the banks had become nightmares-most, probably uninsured for the owners' modest means.
The extremely high water levels had planed most all the rapids, empirically averaging the river's gradient, and obliterating sharp drops. Still, it was hard to imagine "The Falls" and "Pre-Falls", downstream of Beasley Flats, disappearing. Yet that was nearly the case. We ran both without scouting.
Late on our second day out, another storm cell darkened the skies and threatened us with a downpour. So we decided to call it a day at the Verde Hot Springs-an ideal bivouac under the conditions, especially for Chuck who spent most of the night in the hot springs out of the rain. The next morning dawned clear, bright, and cold. Chuck emerged from the stone shelter covering the hot pool complaining that he felt like a prune.