Lifescapes
Ancestors, Animals, and Adventures
by Lois Smyres
Of Rafts, White Water, and Canyons
WHITEWATER RAFTING — THE GREEN RIVER
White water rafting can be addictive and Gary and I are addicted. Our first trip was with a Boy Scout Troop rafting a short section of the Green River in Utah. Gary had been a Boy Scout while growing up in La Junta, Colo- rado. His troop did interpretive Indian dancing and toured the United States as the Koshare Indian Dancers. Gary felt there were great benefits to being a scout and later became leader of a troop in Salt Lake City. The rubber rafts were put into the water below Flaming Gorge Dam and we floated down river about 20 miles. It was then that we realized how different seeing the wilderness from the river is from seeing a river from the shore. The river cut a swath through the forest and deer and hawks watched us float by. A beaver swatted the water with its tail to tell us he didn't want us there. The rapids were only ripples, but the whole experience was so wonderful we knew we wanted to try it again.
THE LOWER FORK OF THE SALMON
We didn't take another raft trip until twenty years later. We chose a river trip down the Lower Fork of the Salmon and after it joins the Snake River, down the Snake through Hells Canyon.
We were on the river two nights and three days. Two rubber rafts were put into the river at White Bird, Idaho, and the next two days were spent floating through the wilderness. No roads are allowed to penetrate into this part of the Salmon. We floated by basalt columns, abandoned cabins, and through forests.
Each night after we camped, we looked up to see a clear sky filled with stars. Each morning before breakfast I swam in the river. An unexpected surprise was the food freshly caught fish and homemade desserts.
The rqapids on the Salmon were rated 5-6 on a scale of 10. A rapid that is rated 10 is considered too dangerous to raft. The rapids were wild enough to get everyone wet and give us a good ride. In case someone was thrown overboard or fell out of a raft we were taught to float through the rapids with our feet pointed downstream. Later several people did leave the raft and float through a rapid just for the thrill of it. Of course, everyone wore life jackets. There were also inflatable kayaks we could paddle through the rapids.
Where the Lower Fork of the Samlmon flows into the Snbake River, the quiet was shattered by motorized launches bringing sightseers up the Snake through Hells Canyon. The canyon walls held in the sound and the roar of the launches reverberated through the canyon. No motor boats were allowed on the Salmon and we were sorry to leave that peaceful river and enter Hells Canyon. Fortunately, we were only on the Snake River half a day. The trip ended in Leiston, Idaho, where we had left our car.
THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO
We were hooked. We wanted to take the best white water rafting trip of all down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. We booked a 10 night, 11 day trip with the river company, Outdoors Unlimited. The raft trip started at Lees Ferry and ended at Diamond Springs, the take out point, 225.5 miles down river. There were three rubber boatsone carried supplies and the other two carried passengers. The two passenger rafts each held six people and an oarsman who sat on a frame in the center of the boat.
Gary and I started our adventure on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. We parked our car at a motel in Peach Springs, Arizona. A small fixed-wing aircraft landed on a muddy, rutted dirt road near the motel. We were flown across the Grand Canyon to Lees Ferry, 15 miles below Glen Canyon Dam. Several river companies were preparing their boats for the trip down the Colorado River. Most of the boats were rubber rafts, but there was a group going down the river on a large pontoon boat and another group going in wooden dories. We inquired around and found our group.
The amount of stuff we could take was limited. We had the clothes we had on when we got on the plane. We each had a sleeping bag and Gary and I had a small tent. We were each given a small waterproof bag to hold personal items such as a toothbrush, tooth paste, comb, soap, shampoo, suntan lotion, extra glasses, flashlight, an extra swim suit and towel. We were issued a second small bag for our camera, film and whatever we needed with us on the boat. The sleeping bags, tents and first small bag were put in larger waterproof bags and stowed on the supply boat. The supply boat also carried all the ice chests, food, water, any trash we accumulated and five gallon S and P buckets. Each of us wore a swimsuit and to protect us from the sun, we wore a hat and a long sleeved shirt. We were issued life jackets, which we wore all thetime except when we camped at night.
The people we met on the trip were part of what made this trip memorable. The oarsman on our boat was named Doug Carson. The lead oarsman was Gary Bolton, and the supply boat oarsman was Rick Day. There were two young men from New York City who worked at the Stock Exchange, a recently married couple from Philadelphia, a young woman from Boston named Betsy Ross and her teenage son, David, a dentist and his family from Kansas and Bruce Powell from San Jose.
At one time Bruce was a truck driver. He told a story about the time he and his girfriend had a load of Vermont granite they were taking South to be made into tombstones. They were traveling on the highway that went by Plymouth Rock, and because they had never seen it, they drove in and parked. The guard in charge of the parking lot came over to them and told them they couldn't park there. Bruce told him that they had a new rock to install and they needed to look at the site. "You don't think that rock lasts forever, do you?" he asks the guard. The guard bought story and they were allowed to walk in and see Plymouth Rock. After seeing Plymouth Rock they walked out, got in their truck, and drove away.
On our boat are Powell, Carson, and Ross. Bruce Powellcould he be a descendant of John Wesley Powell who with his crew were the first men to exp!ore the Grand Canyon of the Colorado? Our oarsman is Doug Carsoncould he be the descendant of that famous Western scout and Indian fighter, Kit Carson? Betsy Ross is also in our boat. Yes, she is a descendant of the Revolutionary War flag maker. We are in the good company of Powell, Carson, and Ross.
As the river begins its journey through the canyon, geologic
strata are exposed one layer at a time. We learned the geologic name of each
layer. Our first camp is lush with vegetation and is at mile 19. Everyone has
a map and we know how far we have traveled by saying we are at mile (n). In
the morning we have a great breakfast of blueberry pan
cakes. Back on the river, we encounter a series of rapids. Sometimes, before
going through a rapid, the oarsmen pull the rafts to shore and climb higher
up the wall to view the rapids. When the rapids are 5, 6, or 7 they try to plot
a course that will give the best ride. When the rapids are more dangerous, 8,
9, or 10, they try to plot a course to get us through safely. The river moves
the boats along at about 4 miles per hour and the oarsmen do not have to exert
much energy rowing. The scenery changes with every bend in the river.
Let me try to explain the thrill of going through a rapid. As the boat approaches the rapid the pace picks up and the boat is seemingly out of control. However, the oarsman is rowing furiously against the current and guiding the boat through the rapid. The boat hits the rough water and buckles and bounces; the water hits you with a slap or a spray; you hang onto the ropes around the edge of boat as tightly as you can. Then the river calms and you are soaked and happy. Where is the next rapid?
We stop at Vaseys Paradise where a spring comes out of the red canyon wall. We fill our water jugs there because the water is cool and tastes so good. We cross the river to Redwall Cavern a cave so big you could play a football game under the crevice that forms the cavern.
Every day brings more rapids and more surprises. When the Little Colorado River flows into the Colorado its water is brown and thick. Its water doesn't mingle with the cool, clear Colorado River water which comes from behind Glen Canyon Dam. We travel many miles before the waters blend. Everyday we stop and explore side canyons. The side trips are full of surprisessteep walls carved by rushing water, waterfalls, pools or lush greenery.
Except when we are going through white water, it is very peaceful floating down the canyon. We lounge against the rubber sides of the boat and watch the changing beauty of the cliffs. The oarsmen tell stories of other trips down the river and of other rivers. The leader of the group, Gary Bolton, tells of taking travelers to Australia when it is winter here and of treks to Tibet. When no one is talking the only noise is the sound of the rushing water. Time and the rest of the world do not intrude. It occurs to you that something terrible could be happening in the world and you have no way of knowing. The beauty and immense size of the canyon makes you realize how insignificant you are but you don't care. It is so pleasant to be where you are.
In the late afternoon when it is time to camp, the oarsmen look
for a sandy beach which is not already taken by the boats of another river company.
After we pull the boats up onto the shore, everyone helps set up camp. The oarsmen
have the meals planned, but everyone helps prepare the food, The S (for solids)
and P (for liquids) buckets are set up a distance from camp. Gary has brought
oil of wintergreen and puts drops of it into the buckets to neutralize the odor.
The ultimate luxury is to wash your hair using any warm water left after the
dishes are washed. By the time we clean up it is dark and we go off to bed exhausted
after a day of hiking, riding through the rapids and soaking up the sun.
The sand is warm and the night air is warm. We lay our sleeping bags out on
the sand and sleep on top of them.
On the fifth day we reach Bright Angel Creek. The dentist and his family and the two New Yorkers leave and walk up Bright Angel Trail to the rim. Others walk down the trail and join the group for the second half of the trip. Phantom Ranch is along Bright Angel Creek and there the oarsmen replenish the ice in the ice chests. We break for several hours at Phantom Ranch while we wait for the new group to show up. Our friend, Kathie, joins us there. She is in the process of getting a divorce and needs a vacation. We have persuaded her to come along on the trip.
After stowing all the gear of the new group, we set out on the second half of the trip. Soon after leaving Phantom Ranch the boats pull to the side and we walk around the next rapid. The oarsmen tell us that all the boats that have gone through the next rapid have flipped in the rapid. Gary and Bruce Powell are allowed to ride in one of the boats ostensibly to balance the weight in the boat to keep it from flipping. They have really conned their way onto a boat. All three boats make it through without being flipped. The rest of us are pretty irritated that we didn't get to ride through that rapid, too. We get over it.
Great hikes up Specter Chasm, Fishtrail Canyon, Deer Creek Spring trail and Havasu Creek trail await us. In one canyon huge boulders brought down by a flash flood are lodged in the narrow chasm. In another, we inch along a narrow ledge to where a small valley opens before us with a lovely waterfall and pool. At Deer Creek Spring a waterfall comes out of a cliff and falls 100 feet to the canyon floor. At Havasu Creek we walk through wild grapevines and up a valley where we find beautiful blue pools created by deposits of travertine left by the water flowing toward the river. We hike on up the canyon to a lake and waterfall. Gary Bolton takes several people including Gary and Bruce on a trail behind the waterfall. They also climb to the top of the waterfall. Kathie and I head back to the river, but take time to swim in the pools.
As we travel down the river we see the boats of the same river companies. One group we see over and over is a pontoon boat and they have a few paraplegics traveling with them. The paraplegics ride in kayaks through the rapids.
The next part of the canyon is narrow and deep and the walls
are steep. The river has cut its way through volcanic rock. As we approach Lava
Falls Rapid, the boats are pulled to the side and we all get out. This rapid
has a 37 foot drop in elevation from the beginning to the end of the rapid and
has a rating of 10. We climb up and look at the rapid. There is a ten foot standing
wave at the beginning of the rapid. The oarsmen discuss the rapid and plot their
way through it. Meanwhile, Gary and Bruce are also plotting. Bruce wants to
take a picture of the wave just as the boat hits it. He will take the picture
and immediately put his camera in the waterproof bag Gary is holding open. Gary
will roll up the waterproof bag, Bruce will drop down into the boat and they
will ride through the white water. Kathie,
David and I are in the front of the boat, Carson, the oarsman, is in the center,
and Gary, Bruce and Betsy are in the back of the boat.
The supply boat goes through. The other boat goes through. Our boat starts through and hits the wave. Gary, Bruce, Betsy and David are all tossed out of the boat. Betsy and David land near the boat. Kathie and I pull David into the boat, but Betsy is hefty and very frightened and although both Kathie and I try, we can not pull her into the boat. Carson stops rowing for a second, reaches over with one hand and yanks her into the boat and starts rowing again because we are still in the rapids. Betsy is pretty shaken.
We start looking for Gary and Bruce. We spot Gary far from the boat over by the canyon wall. Bruce is now beside the boat, but won't swim toward the boat because he has to first get his Australian Outback hat. Carson yells for Kathie and I to bail out the boat so we start bailing. Soon we have Bruce back in the boat. With five passengers in the front of the raft and none in the back and we move through the remaining part of the rapid. At the base of Lava Falls in a calm looking pool, Gary suddenly disappears. Later he teils us he was suddenly pulled down as if in a very fast elevator. As he went down, it went from blue skies to yellow to black in less than 1 second and his glasses were ripped off his face. Everyone is trying to spot Gary. Finally, after what seems an eternity, he pops up about 40 feet behind the boat and about 200 feet from where we last saw him. His life vest brought him back to the surface. He is probably under water 35 seconds. We throw a rope to him, but he can't see it because he has lost his glasses. After floating through a small rapid the oarsman holds the boat back until Gary floats up close to the boat and is able to grab the next rope thrown to him. When we pull him in he is still holding the waterproof bag Bruce had given him. Later Kathie says the thought flashed through her mind that the trip would end with us flying Gary's body out of the canyon in a helicopter.
Soon afterward we stop for lunch. When Gary talks his voice sounds nasal. After eating half a sandwich he bends over and the water that had been forced into his sinuses comes rushing out. After eating the other half of the sandwich more water pours out and is voice is almost back to normal.
That night is the last night on the river. Kathie, who is a writer, has written a poem about the trip and everyone on it and she reads it by the campfire. Bruce comes over to us later and tells us that Gary has saved his trip. The waterproof bag Gary had clinched in his hand had a couple of things in it. The suntan lotion had been squeezed out of the tube and had coated the inside of the bag. But his marijuana had been in a plastic box with an o-ring seal and was in perfect condition. He didn't offer us any though.
The next day the river begins to slow down as we approach Lake
Mead. Our trip ends at Diamond Creek - mile 225.5. We deflate the boats and
collect our possessions. No one wants to see the trip end. The Hualalpai Indians
pick us up in a school bus and drive us to the motel at Peach Springs. The bus
driver tells us she has to go back for a
funeral of one of the tribal elders. The Hualalpai Indian custom is to have
a group of the deceased man's friends dig a grave. The hole has to be dug as
deep as the tallest man in the party or until they run out of alcohol. They
will have picked up the body from the mortuary in a horse drawn wagon and driven
the wagon to the burial site where the elder will be buried along with his favorite
horse.
We drive back home to Sparks that night.
This trip had it all - beautiful scenery, great rapids, good companions, adventure, and drama. Fortunately, it did not end in tragedy.
THE ROGUE RIVER
Our next raft trip was down the Rogue River in Oregon. Friends, who live in Redding, California, called and ask if we wanted to join a group of their relatives and friends taking a white water trip down the Rogue. Two people who had planned on taking the trip had to cancel and they hoped we would take their place. Of course we would. We drove up to Oregon and met them at a campground close to the launch site. We were to be on the river two days. This was the first rafting trip we had taken where everyone paddled. At the start of the float we practiced paddling. The guide would tell us which side of the boat needed to paddle and which side didn't so the boat would turn the way it needed to turn.
The rapids were pretty tame until suddenly the river widened and a long, steep rapid appeared before us. This obviously was the highlight rapid of the trip. We got our instructions. One side of the boat would really have to dig in and paddle hard to get us around the big rock in the middle of the river. We started through the rapid. We dug in and paddled and made it through. It was fun. We paddled to the side of the river to watch the other boat come through. Well, it didn't make it. The boat hung up on the rock; the boat tipped and everyone was thrown into the river - right in the middle of the rapids. Our guide saw that they weren't going to be able to right the boat. He asked us if it would be all right if he left us. We told him we would be fine. He climbed up the riverbank and using a rope, crossed the rapids over to the marooned boat. He helped the other guide right the boat and get the people back in. They made it through the rest of the rapid, but several people were shaken and had minor injuries.
There was a ranch at the bottom of the rapid and we stopped there while the people from the second boat recuperated. The guides collected coolers and waterproof bags. A motor launch full of sightseers came up the river and lent a hand. They offered a ride to anyone who wanted to go back downriver with them, but no one took them up on their offer. We continued on and camped later in the evening. The trip ended around noon the next day.
The boat company crew was inexperienced and although they distributed the strong people between the two boats, the people pulling the oars in the second boat were not strong enough to successfully paddle through the rapids. There were several unhappy campers.
THE ARKANSAS RIVER
The Arkansas River starts in the mountains of Colorado and flows out of the mountains toward the Great Plains. In Kansas it becomes the Ar-Kansas River but reverts back to Arkansas River again after it leaves Kansas and flows on to the Mississippi.
One Fourth ofJuly, Gary and I flew to Colorado to meet and visit with a cousin, Knud Pedersen, from Denmark. We all stayed at my brother Lee's farm, which is where Lee and I grew up. Colorado is a great place to go sightseeing and we had to show Knud as much of our part of Colorado as we could. So on one of the sightseeing trips, Lee, Joan (Lee's wife), Gary and I took Knud to the Royal Gorge. The Royal Gorge is a canyon carved by the Arkansas River in the mountains west of Canyon City, Colorado. A bridge was built to span the gap between the two sides of the gorge. The road crossing the bridge doesn't go anywhere, but people can walk back and forth across the bridge and look down at the river. We took the cog tram that goes from the rim to the bottom of the gorge. An interesting historical sight at the bottom of the gorge is the train track built by the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad though the bottom of the gorge. Trains seldom run through there now. Everyone but Knud had seen this tourist attraction many times, but Denmark doesn't have mountains nor gorges and we thought Knud would enjoy seeing it. When we got back up to the rim, Gary informed us that he had bought us all rides for a white water trip through the Royal Gorge. Surprisingly, no one objected. We drove upstream to the place where the raft was put into the river and soon we were shooting off down the river. We rode the rapids through the Royal Gorge and waved at the people who had ridden down on the tram. The rapids were good enough to give everyone a taste of white water and to get us all wet. The ride only lasted a couple of hours, but everyone enjoyed it tremendously.
That was the last of our white water adventures, but there may be more.
1990 Rafting through the Royal Gorge on the Arkansas River. Back of boat: Gary Smyres and Lee Nielsen. Oarsman: Phil. Front of Boat: Knud Pederson, Lois Smyres, Joan Nielsen.