The Best Travel Writing 2011 - James O'Reilly [52]
We know that eventually the water will rise and allow us to get our boats back in the river, so we wait. “That’s what I like about there not being other groups around,” says Lynsey, an easygoing outdoor leader and flute player. “There’s no one to laugh at us,” she says. “We can laugh at ourselves.”
The sun is going down and the shadows are settling in the canyon. The vermilion gleams and roseate hues, blending with the green and gray tints, are slowly changing to somber brown above, and black shadows are creeping over them below; and now it is a dark portal to a region of gloom—the gateway through which we are to enter on our voyage of exploration to-morrow. What shall we find?
Powell’s description shows not just apprehension about the monstrous rapids he expected downriver, but his appreciation of the natural beauty of the Southwest. Unlike the dour explorers of his time, Powell appreciated the glory of the landscape.
Consider what his contemporary, Lt. Joseph Christmas Ives, who attempted to navigate the Colorado in 1857, said about the Grand Canyon and the river that runs through it: “The region…is altogether valueless. It can be approached only from the south, and after entering it there is nothing to do but leave. Ours has been the first, and will doubtless be the last, party of whites to visit this profitless locality. It seems intended by nature that the Colorado River…shall forever be unvisited and undisturbed.”
Today several million people visit the Canyon each year and about a million of those hike into it, according to the National Park Service. About twenty thousand people raft the Colorado River each year, mostly on guided commercial trips. The figure would be far higher if the park didn’t restrict the number of boaters with a lottery permit system. Until a few years ago, there was a waiting list to get permits for noncommercial trips, like ours, down the Colorado. When the list stretched to more than twenty years it was phased out and replaced with the lottery system. If boaters can’t use a permit, they can cancel, which happens with some frequency for cold-season trips—that’s how we got our winning lottery ticket.
On Day 2 we catch an eddy and pull over to scout House Rock Rapid, our first real test, seventeen miles down from the put-in (starting point) at Lee’s Ferry. To scout we hike above the rapid to see it. Unlike Powell, we have a detailed map that suggests routes through the rapids. But the river is ever changing. Boulders tumble into it and can make formerly safe routes hazardous; the powerful current can rearrange rocks, and a rapid can be easy at low water but frightening at higher flows—or vice versa. So we scout and understand the name of this rapid: the current plunges against a rock the size of a house, creating fearsome hydraulics.
In the rapids a fast funnel of waves coerces our boat to the left, toward the canyon’s south wall. Lateral waves push the boat sideways. Owen pulls at the oars with all his strength—we get just right of two mammoth waves and a hole that could flip a boat. I peer into the churning maw of the rapid’s recirculating hole as we clear it, the dark waves crashing in upon themselves.
We celebrate that evening at House Rock camp, just below the rapid, with gin-and-tonics and feast on fish tacos and fresh organic salad with goddess dressing. That evening I read of Powell’s reliance on “flour that has been wet and dried so many times that it is all musty and full of hard lumps.” Hanging off the side of each of our boats is a mesh bag filled with beer, staying cool and ready in the fifty-degree river water.
The next morning we scramble up eggs with spinach and cheddar. I overhear Kevin, the youngest member of our group at twenty-two, say “I don’t need the hot cock this morning.” Startled,