PUL/IR fV/ EC HA !VIC S " 19 09 • BOATING he r1 By ROBERT P. CROSSLEY, Editor

Just 100 years ago, in the most adventurous exploration in RANK MASON BROWN was a man here we are last June at the very spot American history, a one-armefi army major led four small F with a vision. He dreamed of build- where the river saved the Grand Can­ ing a railroad through the awesome yon from the iron horse. We're climb­ boats down the unknown canyons of the Green and Colorado canyons of the Green and Colorado ing over the boulders at the mouth Rivers. Last summer PM's editor retraced the journey of all the way to California. In 1889 he of Soap Creek, gazing in horror at the Major John Wesley Powell- the hard way- through the fero­ started down the rivers with a survey- most ferocious furlong of wild water ing party. When he got to Marble Can- we've ever seen. And we're supposed cious rapids of the Grand Canyon. yon, the Colorado drowned him. So to go right smack through it. We've

"Ride the wilderness whitewaters in reverence before God with a prayer His strength will be in you." -LESLIE ALLEN JONES ------U T ------A R 0 N

20 30 miles

Map of Colorado River in the Grand Canyon already run one major rapids, Badger high water. Some say Unkar-Dread Creek, the afternoon before. Badger Unkar, our raft captain, photographer wa wild enough. The Park ranger who Joe Munroe kept calling it-is the checked us in at Lee' Ferry and made wor t in low water. It wa still ahead sure we had bought S12 life preservers of u , along with Hance, with the big­ that provided all the freedom of a space ge t drop of any rapids in the Grand uit, tood on the bank and took mov­ Canyon, and nearly 30 other . ie . He had never een a raft like ours Soap Creek carried an average rating go through. I think he wanted docu­ of "8" on Jones' map. Ten' the wor t. mentation to protect the Government Buckethead had also scattered such re­ if w didn't make it. assuring notes along the route a : Badger had been photographed from "Brown-upset and drowned." ''Upset a canoe fitted with outrigger-mounted on Goddard trip-near drowning," oar . Veteran river-runner Le lie Allen "Bert Loper up et, not seen again," Jone mounted a camera in a helmet "1960-jet boat sunk going upstream.·· and shot movie through a hole in its A voice boomed out above the crash­ rear. Ever since. he's been known as ing of the rapids: "Anyone who doesn't "Buckethead" Jones. want to go through can walk around. Now. after camping on a sandbank We'll pick him up downstream." The below Badger and a prebreakfa t swim voice wa Martin Litton' . 1artin. in the clear, icy water, I wa unrolling long-time travel editor of Sunset, now a 40-foot map I had ordered from a senior editor of that magazine, was Jones. It wound like two rolls of toilet our leader. Like a TV wagon boss, he paper in a watertight polyethylene bag. rou ed u at 6: 00, picked our camp ite I quinted at Buckethead's scratchy no­ at night. He also decided how to run tation by Soap Creek Rapids: "Worst each rapid . in canyon at high water.'' Martin made his first Grand Canyon Well, the water wasn't really high, trip in 1955, has run the river nine thank God. Or maybe. "Thank Glen times. Like a golfer who keeps going Canyon Dam," which has regulated back to a challenging course, he spend · flow since 1963. But it wasn't really low three week in the Canyon each urn­ either. The fact is. you can't win on mer. Thi year he plan to make tu;o water flow. Soap may be the wor t at trip . H and Clyde Childres , who is 124 POPULAR MECHANICS WORLD'S WI LDE BOAT TRIP fet ns ben ath two faint waterfall.s. Powell (Continued from page 1 named it ·'Vasey's Paradise" after a bota­ nist who accompanied him on earlier ex­ drowned July 10, 1889 opposite this peditions in the Rockies. We had planned point." It was carved by Peter Hans­ to picnic het·e, but two rafts of young brough, one of Brown's companions. A people were already pulled into shore. A few miles downstream he was drowned, mile downstream the river makes a sharp along with a third mcmb r of the railroad bend to the right beneath an enormous party. No one volunteered to carve a cavet·n. Powell desct·ibed it as "a vast memorial for Hansbrough: it seemed like circular half-chamber, which, if utilized tempting fate. However, someone did, be- , for a theater, would give sitting to 50.000 low President Harding Rapids, so named people." Just call it Hollywood BO\d with because a survey party camped there a low ceiling. The entrance was only a heard the news of the President's death few feet above the river, so we climbed on their primitive radio. We climbed a up to explore. hundred feet or so to Hansbrough's shal­ low grave covered by rocks. Nearby is Canyon resounds with Romberg buried a Boy Scout dl"Owned 62 years It was Hollywood Bowl all right. Sud­ later in Glen Canyon. denly, from nowhere we heard a thrilling It's amazing how much you learn about soprano voice singing Indian Love Call­ a river when you don't have a motor. I you know, the "I'm calling you-oo-oo" had traveled hundreds of miles on the number made famous by J eanette Mac­ quieter parts of the Green and Colorado Donald. Just as suddenly came. clo e by, in power boats. All we looked out for an answer from our own elson Eddy, were sandbars. Here, besides listening Hal Gilliam. a San Francisco newspaper­ for the warning roar of t·a pids a half- mile man who had been frightening the deer ahead, you learn to seek out the current. with Stout-Hearted Men each morning. You watch for eddies that can spin you Darned if he didn't know the words to around like a top. Once, the first after­ Indian Love Call. For ftve minut s. Hal noon, we actually floated upst1·eam. under and the mystery sopmno bounced Sig­ Navajo Bridge, which we had passed go­ mund Romberg's thrilling duet off the ing down. massive walls of Marble Gorge. The farther, the deeper We soon traced the soprano to the ri\"CI'. The raft party at Vasey's Paradi e had Three miles b low Soap Creek we en­ caught up with us. The singer, a blonde ter a stretch of green water where the in a pink bathing suit, said her name was river flows swiftly between sheer walls. Carol Neblett and her career was managed The farther we go, the deeper we get. At by New York's renowned Sol Hurok. She the head of Marble Canyon, or Marble was a long way from Lincoln Center. Gorge, as the Sierra Club prefers to call Six miles below Redwall Cavern we it to indicate it's not a separate canyon, passed the site of the propo ed Marble but really part of the Grand. the walls arc Canyon Dam, abandoned after protests 200 feet high. At the mouth of the Little by the Sierra Club. Mat·tin Litton. the Colorado, they're 3500 feet. At Phantom kind of a guy who shakes his fist at the Ranch, the Canyon will be a mile deep! sky when a sonic boom shatters the si­ Here between the sheer walls we stop lence of the wild. point d to the test for lunch on a shelf 40 feet above the borings and rickety scaffolds and snorted: river, possibly the same shelf Powell "Look what the Government did to the camped on 99 years before. Canyon!" Two twisted aluminum boats "About 10 o'clock," he wrote, "we come lay on the right bank. '·You'd think the to a place where the river occupies the Reclamation Service would clean up its entire channel, and the walls are vertical junk,'' Martin growled. from the water's edge.... There is a little shelf. or rather a horizontal crevice. a few Down the Canyon once too often feet above our heads. One man stands on That night we camped above the Royal the deck of the boat, another climbs on Arches, deeply etched in the redwall lime­ his shoulders, and then into the crevice." stone. We could see the bleached remains It had to be the same place! of another landmark, "Bert Loper's boat." Running the cataracts Bert was past 70 when he went down the Canyon for the last time in 1949. They We run four more cataracts and camp found his boat, but they never found Bert. the second night above 24-Mil Rapids. Next morning I switched into Martin's Next day we run nine more. The Canyon boat. We stopped for lunch under the is getting deeper and t·edder. The third tamarisks on a long sandy beach below noon we pass an "oasis" of mosses and (Please turn to page 238) MAR CH 1969 237 Hance they tilt d harply toward the on­ WORLD'S WI LDEST BOAT TRI P insignificance as it dashes its angry waves rushing river. against the walls and cliffs that rise to the For the first time, artin ordered the (Continued from page 237) world above; the wave are but puny ~~~ELECTRONICS boat passengers to walk around. He de­ ~'iJ~i~~ratJ~~~~~~l~t~dstn10 ro~~~lnlt'~ilo~~.hn~~~~~~·ti ~1~~~11~~: Nankoweap Rapids. ow we're in Grand ripples, and we are but pygmies, running rOnlJ•Utl'r , nul.n, nutomntlon. na ... lt" ;... advan("<'d roun•e" bated about Jo 's raft. J oe needed at least I h·f'tiCJnh• En).!lllt·N·inL:" Te(."hnolo~y nod F.le<"trunll' 1(rhalOI· up and down the sands or lost among the ot·): f'"UIII~ula '"'th n' allnhle. \ .. SOt•. 4legu•e 1t1 :.!H mo... Canyon National Park, which extends four to man the oars, two to an oar. That l~ .s. uht:un~llle. _G. I. npproH•d. Stnrt FPh •. ~'-'Pt oorm~ this far up Marbl Gorge's west bank. boulders. meant three would walk around. Who C'.lnt)lll JIJ••h ~··honl (;r-•.ultmt(' o €'CJUi\itlt•nt. Clltttlo••: The river flow d swiftly oiTshore, but the "We have an unknown distance yet to VALPARAISO TECHNICAL INSTITUTE would ride and who would walk? At Soap DEPARTM ENT 0 , VALPARAISO, INDIANA 46383 curve of the beach afforded a sheltered run, an unknown river to explore. What Creek I had butterflies about climbing bay for swimming. Facing us was a sheer, falls there are, we know not; what walls aboard. Now I felt like a kid waiting to red cliff; behind us the walls were but­ ri~e over the river. we know not. ... The get "chosen" in a ball game-or an astro­ tressed by dunes. men talk a cheerfully as ever; jests a re naut wondering if he's going to make a "What a place for a Holiday Inn!" I ex­ bandied about freely this moming; but to moon flight. Hance was bigger and mean­ me the cheer is somber and the jests are claimed. Martin didn't think that was er t.han Soap, but now I wanted to ride! funny. Behind us, 800 feet up, was a string ghastly."' Fmally Martin turned to Joe and said of tiny holes, cliff dwellings built by the Red walls change to black "Oh heck, let 'em all go. ' ' long-depa1ted Mokis. I joined an explor­ We watched three of the boats go ing party. The climb came close to sepa­ Next morning, app;wently at the head through. Clyde Childress, an oarsman on rating the Sierra Club members from the of Hance, he added: ''Heretofore hard the raft-at home an inventor who old boy . There wasn t much to see inside the rocks have given us bad river; soft rocks, 110·120 VOLT A.C. LICHT his company to Monsanto-recorded this PLANTS-60 CYCLES little apartments, but the view of the smooth water; and a series of rocks play-by-play: Fanb It driven from pickup 6r harder than any we have experienced small gas engrne. Op erates sa .. s. river was breathtaking. . "M.artin Litton in the Diablo is ust puH­ dnlls. pump . freeurs. T.V. sets in. The river enters the gneiss! We X IOOO Watts-Needs No Battery. Befuddled bullfrog mg mto the stream. You can just see Reg . $99.50. Now $62.50. 1500 can see but a little way into the granite Watt -6 and 12 volt vehieles. the Diablo coming around the large Reg . $89.50. Now 552.50. 3000 That night, before turning in, Joe and I gorge, but it look threatening.... The Wa tts 12 volt vehie~e only. Reg . bat;lder in fJ"Ont of tts. H e's rowing hm·d. $179.50. Now $99.50. Gu -truntud. went down to check the raft. Somewhere canyon is narrower than we have ever He s pulling m·ound the cente1· bottlde r Cheek or Money Order. in the brush an outraged bullfrog let us before een it; the wat r is swifter.' dipping. Now he's pulling hm·d towani VIRDEN PERMA·B ILT, Box 7066 P.M., Amarillo. Texas 79109 hav it. We flashed our lights but couldn't The one-armed major not only had the far side of the stream to avoid the spot him. Every 20 seconds he gave us a guts: he could write! big, jagged, shm·p boulder di1·ectly ahead Bronx cheer. Joe went back for his cas­ After lunch we ran two minor rapids, DRAINS cellon, dslems, wash tubs; $ of us. Behind the 1·ock, he"s pulling down . IRRIGATES • CIRCULATES • SPRAYS 8.95 se tte recorder. Then every time the frog then Unkar, a long, hair-raising chute the smooth tongue for a moment. Now curving against an overhanging cliff from 1 ,001 U"e". ~talnle. haft. Won't ru t cr rlojt! c ~ sounded off, we recorded him for poster­ ~e 's into the 1·ough water, into the fi1·st which murderous wave ricocheted l~~ 116p'ifo~~f. oh,~h"; ';!'r· 1.~"o,,'~~~~rf~~o..,~.,-l~~~~?Pitt; ity. J oe played it back. The frog answered httle hole. Now he's appl"Oaching a big Inlet: 3 , .. out!('{. Coupllm IOC'Iude-d r";Pe. sa:9s. immediately. He thought he owned Mar­ against us. hole. !'erfect 1 Now he's pulling away /1·om :r~~~~0°~P~r (~~~l ~·~.E,~:;~~~ ~!J~~,~t ~-~ .. t~uliit~ 1~[:f.~5 By the sixth morning we were well into Po lp(lid 1/ ('tJ~