THE ACCIDENTAL ECO-TOURIST

My stomach rose into my throat as the Bell helicopter dropped over the lower rim of the inner canyon, into the most intimate depths of the Grand Canyon.  As the river, our tiny boat and crew came into view, I heard the words of its first explorer, John Wesley Powell, who described the Grand Canyon as “the great unknown” when he entered it on August 12, 1869 from the relative gentle beauty, soft rock and smooth water of Glen and Marble Canyons.  The cool ribbon of green flowed quietly, agelessly through the inferno of the hard, ancient lava rock that would be my home for the next three days. 

I had always thought that when I finally floated the Grand it would be an epic three week private trip in a slow dory with a bunch of granola munching enviro-dudes and hippie-chicks.  It would take that long, I figured, to really get the feel of the canyon, to get the sand under your skin, to get naked and dance like crazed Anasazi around driftwood fires.  I changed my mind when my Long Island friends Wild Bill, Jai Johnny, Les is More, Phil the Thrill and Jumpin Julie Westerman invited me on a spur-of the moment, three day, totally indulgent, family reunion glamping trip down the lower canyon, complete with planes, helicopters, jet boats and J-rigs.  How bad could it be?  

I had been on dozens of private river trips around the world and it would be good to consider and contrast the alternatives.  My wife and I took a trip down the Grand for our Honeymoon and it was 120 degrees.  It didn't get below 100 at night.  It was the 'don't touch me honeymoon'. At night we would soak our towels in he river and drape them over us aw we slept on our bags.  We did this every few hours.  It was too hot for bugs.  This time they said I could come for free if I told stories about water, the river. the politics and personalities of the Grand Canyon.  I was still wrapped tightly in a sling from a recent shoulder repair but I figured if John Wesley could hang on with one arm, so could I.  Besides, I’ll try anything three times.  Bad idea, I had to have the surgery again then years later but it was worth it,  

            We had spent several decadent days in plush accommodations in Vegas, hanging pool side, sipping umbrella drinks, playing craps and betting on men who bite.  Las Vegas, where you can be anyone you want, is the sad metaphor for America.  Conspicuous consumption, more testosterone than taste and more dollars than sense.  Where else could you find the Statue of Liberty next to a great pyramid, across the street from a medieval castle, complete with fountains, rivers, golf courses, lawns and laser lights - all sprouting comfortably from Americas most inhospitable desserts.  When we flew from town to the outer canyon edge, early in the morning brilliant heat, the city was humming, the fountains were flowing and the lights were still on.

After a shady lunch and a brief introduction to our guides, fellow passengers and general rafting edicate, we hit the river.  Fifteen people and 1100 tons of provisions packed on to a 40 foot J boat left little room for or reclining or napping.  Everyone nervously jostled for their comfort zone as we approached the first rapid.  Wild Bill, front and center on the pontoon, Auntie Mo with Pistol Pete in the “chicken coop” towards the back, and me somewhere in-between.  With the 40 horse power motor cavitating, we center punched the 5 foot standing waves of a No Name Rapid without hesitation, without scouting, without a care in the world.  We came out totally drenched, cooled by the frigid water, and washed clean of any concerns we had when we entered the canyon.  The small group of family and friends discovered the instant bond of shared experiences, adventures and of facing your fears together.  The quite, uncomfortable group instantly became boisterous, bumptious and eventually bacchanalian.  Animated conversations and detailed, play-by-play rapid survival stories unraveled and a spirited exuberance set the tone for the rest of the day.

The originally subdued guides, emotionally and physically spent from the first 6 days of their tour from Lees Ferry with another group, started to open up to the guests, recharged with the fresh perspectives of the new trip.  Travis was the fun loving but tortured wanderer, Jed - the stress free, low key yet loquacious nature-boy interpreter, and Julie - the volunteer swamper offering the mature, calming, mother nature, feminine influence.  They worked extremely hard and ran a tight ship for Western River Adventures yet the trip appeared seamless, effortless and timeless for the clients.  The tremendous amount of experience, preparation, logistics, physical and mental stamina was barely apparent during entire voyage.  The endless shuttle miles, the marathon shopping, sun-baked packing and unpacking, the years of experience to ensure that you had the right tool, the right Band-Aid, or enough ice, was all but invisible to us on our casual, first class river float.  First one up, last one down, a boatman’s chores are never done.

 

We stopped at a side canyon and hiked up to some petroglyphs, complete with stories of The Ancient Ones, peyote and aliens. Then we decided to make camp.  After a quick fire line to unpack the boat we were left on our own to pick our spots and do our own personal nesting.  People wandered aimlessly in the last rays of direct sun, nervously debating between privacy and the security of the group.  I took a nap by the river.  The resulting tight cluster of cots revealed the close group continuity and the small comfort zone that comes with the first night out.  We tried out the open air lavatory, took baths, made cocktails, sang songs, had dinner and reluctantly went to bed, some for the first time under the endless desert stars.  Looking up at the massive, multi level canyon walls,  offset by the firmament, I remembered that Powell had called the canyon, “a stairway from gloom to heaven”

In the morning I awoke early and hiked to a ledge overlooking the river and the camp.  From my perch the hydraulics of the river and the canyon became evident.  The side canyon had spewed a tremendous amount of rock and debris during countless flash flood events, creating a large alluvial fan that extended halfway into the river channel and made our perfect beach campsite.  The alluvial fan also created a small rapid by filling the channel with debris, creating a calming backwater effect upstream and a constricted, steepened channel downstream.  The river poured over the elevated rock control section like calm, deep water pours over a water fall.  At the constriction of the river the water depth got thinner and the velocity faster as the profile approached “critical” - as hydrologists call it.  The water flowed through the rapid waves very thin and very fast in a “super-critical” state and at the end of the rough steepened constricted section, the river flattened and returned to a slower and deeper, more energy efficient flow regime called subcritical flow.  This trans-critical sequence is called a “hydraulic jump” where the water surface exits the rapid actually higher than the middle of the rapid, allowing it to flow back upstream along the side of the rapid creating a shear flow zone and the  backwater eddy.  The water then returned to the rapid again as the lateral flow that is so tricky for kayakers and canoeists. The fast moving, hungry water of the rapid can carry more sediment as it backcuts into the deposition from the side canyon, but drops it quickly after it slows down in the eddy creating beaches and point bars.  This particular eddy swirled behind the shelter of the alluvial fan that served as our camp and created a beautiful bay of deep, relatively calm water.  Other famous big rapids on the river were formed this way: Lava Rapid by a lava flow into the river, Crystal Rapid and Separation Rapid by two large side washes entering the river at the same spot.  I returned to camp, after this personal revelation, but could find no one who shared my hydraulic fascination.  We all appreciate the river for something different.  Therein lies the problem.

When the others awoke we had a magnificent leisurely breakfast of bacon, eggs, coffee and cake.  A quick pack, a long joke-du-jour by Jed and we were back on the river.  It was a spectacularly hot day, with a strong dry upstream wind and a clear blue sky that made the canyon colors jump out at you like from a cheap post card.  Everyone was very animated even before we crashed the first rapid.  Having survived the cycle of one full day had made us seasoned river rats and happy campers.  People scampered around the raft, assuming different positions for the ice cold rapid runs and hot interim drying cycles. We stopped numerous times to explore side canyons, pictographs, streams, waterfalls, cliffs, springs and to take shade, lunch and pee breaks. We were continually challenged to push our personal envelopes by taking higher cliff dives, rougher rapid swims, more technical waterfall climbs and hikes further and further away from the mother river.  The experience was liberating, the scenery indescribable.  Powell said that it was, “one thousand Niagaras, one thousand Yosemites”. 

The Natives say that you never see the same river twice but the river we were seeing was a far different river than the one John Wesley Powell saw for the first time more than 100 years ago.  With the installation of Glen Canyon dam and the ignominiously named Lake Powell, the river has been tamed, harnessed and controlled.  Without the dam, the river would be flowing at almost 120,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) because of the healthy winter snow pack still melting in the Colorado Rockies, the Wind River range of Wyoming and the Uinta mountains of Utah.  Even with some extra flood control releases at the dam, the current river was flowing at a nominal 27,000 cfs.   The river would, historically, be blood red with sediment and close to 60 degrees, but now, 200 miles below the dam, it was still flowing emerald green, hungry for sediment and barely 49 degrees.  Why drown a canyon to tame a river we asked; for fountains and light shows in the mid day Mojave heat of Vegas, to grow rice in the Imperial valley or irrigate cow pastures at 7500 feet in northern Utah?  The token Bureau of Reclamation flushing flows of 45,000 cfs released for one week last year have helped scour the channel and rebuild some beaches but it is apparent that to mimic the natural system they will have to release more sediment filled, warm water for a longer period of time to match the natural range of variability.  It’s at least a philosophical step in the right direction towards considering the rivers ecology as well as its economics. 

The day unfolded into and endless series of rapids and rocks, sun, sky and spray.  One of the guides asked me where I lived and what I did for a living and for a fleeting moment I forgot.  We assumed the timeless rhythm of the river, deep-sixing our wrist watches and looking for a place to camp only when the sun slid behind the edge of the canyon.  We eddied out to a slim beach and ran to find the best reclusive camp site.  After some minimal nesting we returned to the boat to get out of the blowing sand and to get closer to the beer.  We had several cases on ice and we were not planning on packing any of it out of the canyon. The guides bathed and dressed in their best black tie outfits and prepared another feast of steak and trout, while we watched helplessly. At this point in his journey Powell and his men had lost most of their food, clothes, blankets and hats but still maintained a lyrical quality in their journals and their appreciation of this awesome spectacle. Nothing mattered more than the rolling of the river and the changing colors of the canyon walls.

After countless beers we shuffled to our cots to tie our traditional, last night, togas and prepare for dinner.   The canyon wasn’t the only thing glowing this night and we floated above the shifting sand, smiling to ourselves.  We came back styling, to a table full of champagne and a paparazzi of cameras for every conceivable group shot combination .  Dinner was superb, both the cooking and the company.  Dusk languished into night and the Milky Way rolled into the northern sky amidst shooting stars and satellites.  Travis broke out his guitar and someone added an imperceptible bottom rhythm with a harmonica.  Generations were united during a eclectic sing along that ranged from Axle Rose to Kum-by-ya.  Powell said that the Grand Canyon is “a land of song” but I’m not sure this is what he meant.  Eventually, one by one, the crowd retired to their cots, to contemplate the night on their own terms.

They tell me that the rock formations of the Grand Canyon, some as old as 3 billion years, were pushed up 50 million years ago and the canyon was cut in a paltry 6 million years.  In geological times there could have been hundreds of grand canyons.  They say there are distinctive rock layers missing in places and parts of the river used to flow the other way.  You can not travel this canyon without thinking of the greatness of God, and the insignificance of man, but you also can not forget about the huge power dam above you and the bigger, controlling one below.  There have been several plans for dams in the canyons, the last as recently as Ronald Regan.  Congress has passed a law that forbids dams in the Grand Canyon, until they pass another law.  Only God can make such a place for the ages but only man can muck it up in a matter of years.

Sleep comes easy in the canyon on the comfortable cots, under a light sheet at first and into the sleeping bag by morning.  I missed the first light of the third and last day but heard the blowing of the conch shell to signal that cowboy coffee was ready.  Another great breakfast, a quick pack, a long joke contest and we are on the river before the sun.  We are into the backwater of lake Mead already, flat but flowing in this incredible canyon.  We float over the submerged Separation Rapid where several members of Powell’s first crew abandoned the main group, and walked away to their death, only 100 yards from the end of the last bad rapid.  The morning, for our group,  is an easy scenic motor until we meet our jet boat that will wisk us across 50 miles of slackwater and the upper, ugly portions of the lake.  When Powell went by here he passed a family of naked Indians, the man wearing only a hat, the woman only a necklace.  When he reached the eventual pullout at the confluence with the Virgin river there were surprised Mormons fishing for their bodies with Seine nets.

We say heartfelt thanks and goodbye to our mentors who will spend the next day motoring, unpacking, packing, cleaning, driving, unpacking and packing for the next trip.  Our short time on the river has been a revelation and we are momentarily jealous that they get to stay on the river all summer.  We promise to write and keep in touch but we know its a lie.  We go back to our jobs, our wives and our lives but we won’t forget the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon and who we were, for a few short days, when we were there.  The commercial river experience was not that different from the private ones I had been on.   It was a lot less work and worry but the group bonding experience was strong and real.  The ‘sense of place’ feeling came on quick and strong since we were not so distracted with logistics and tasks, packing and un packing, rapid performance anxiety and fear of the unknown.  Our appreciation of the Canyon was amazingly rapid, almost like a microwave version of a slow baked river trip, but it was real and valuable.  Don’t get me wrong, a three week trip is worth every minute of time, toil and tribulation but for those who don’t have the time, temper or wherewithal for the long run, the short survey trip is a valuable experience.  The more varied people who can capture even a small part of this wilderness experience, the more people will ‘get it’ that we have to preserve these magnificent places and experiences for generations to come. 

A boat, a bus and another plane ride, over the flat blue lake, looking like a beard on a beauty queen in it’s Mojave wasteland.  We fly over the dam that sits like a plug in a puddle.  Hoover Dam tamed the lower river in the 1930s and created the relatively sterile looking Lake Mead without much opposition or loss of unique beauty.  It was, and still is, an Art Deco engineering marvel that set the stage for development of the West.  Power generation revenue from this cash register dam was enough to fund most of the Bureaus subsidized water development projects in the forties, fifties and sixties and is still going strong. The lower canyon is stark and dark with lava flows and ancient silt and sand stones in a Mojave vegetation complex full of Barrel cactus and Fire Sticks. 

Glen Canyon Dam was built in the 60s as a trade off with environmentalists for not building a dam in Dinosaur Monument.  The sole purpose of Glen Canyon Dam is to give the upper states water use flexibility and guarantee a ten year water supply to the lower basin states.  The 500 million dollar per year power generation revenue is just icing on the cake.  David Brower, then president of the Sierra Club, made the deal with the Bureau of Reclamation before he and the environmental movement knew that Glen Canyon was an irreplaceable national treasure. The upper canyon was shady, lush and airy with vertical faces of polished red sandstones and side canyons as thin as a man or as cavernous as a cathedral.   As a regretful older man, Brower, along with the Sierra Club and ex Bureau chief Dan Beard were proposing the removal of the dam because of the waste of water from infiltration and evaporation - enough annually for the city of Chicago, and the lack of a real need for the storage.  He fought the power companies, the water users and more than 3 million recreationists that enjoy Lake Powell annually.  To Brower, flooding Glen Canyon for recreation was like flooding the Sistine Chapel to get a closer look at the ceiling.  Perhaps the proposal was the last desperate act of a regretful eco-warrior, or perhaps it is an extreme bargaining position for better environmental operation of the dams or perhaps it is an idea so outrageous that it might be worth reconsidering.   We flew back to Vegas, over what is left of the lower Colorado river, then over the Pyramid and the Statue of Liberty, a Circus, a Castles and the Space Needle.  The lights, air conditioners, fountains and sprinklers were still on, but the old river wasn’t.