The short answer is that you will be unreachable for the duration of your trip.
Many of our guests are concerned about leaving elderly family members, children, or others home while they depart on their Hatch river trips. The Grand Canyon is one of the few remote places left in the world where technology like cell phone service simply isn’t an option. Our guides carry satellite phones in case of on-river emergencies, but those phones are only able to make, not to receive calls. This means that while you are on the river, there is no direct or guaranteed way for a loved one to contact you about an emergency at home. Even if information from a loved one is able to reach you, there is no way to exit the canyon early (outside of emergency medical evacuations), so you will finish the trip while holding that news.
If you need to leave contact information for your family members or their caretakers while you are gone, please give them our office phone number: 800-856-8966. (If it is after hours, there will be an emergency number left on our voicemail.) They can leave a message with our staff who will do their best to get the information to you. It’s important to understand that we cannot guarantee a message will reach you. There are few places where we can leave messages for our trips in the canyon, and there is no guarantee your particular trip will stop at all those points. You may not receive the information until you have departed the river.
If you need to be able to be reached at all times, a Grand Canyon rafting trip may not be a good option for you. Consider planning this style of trip another time when your circumstances have changed.