Mahan and Sauer crash through Lava Falls, one of the many dangers risked for a life afloat.

Life Afloat

Editor's Note: Sections of this story have appeared previously in Lowbagger.org. This story is the unabridged version of a 106-day, 1,400-mile  river trip down the Green and Colorado rivers in the fall of 2007.

“This river is loud,” I say with my voice raised, overwhelmed by the constant roar of the current in my ears.

“It will be quiet soon,” Serena Supplee responds, the official artist of the Colorado Plateau and a Cataract Canyon companion. She refers to water that is pooling up downstream of us, even as we speak, in the Powell reservoir.

The comment is as eerie as the prospect of such a force being tamed.

We’ve been on the river for 40 days, covering 500 miles since we launched from Expedition Island in Green River, Wyoming on August 27, 2007. We’re positioned in southern Utah. Our task is to row another 1,000 miles to Yuma, Arizona, solely by human-power, documenting the changes to the West’s most prominent river artery: the Green and Colorado River system.

Five reservoirs have been constructed on our path since John Wesley Powell first traversed it in 1869. In total, over sixty dams have been built on the Colorado River by the Bureau of Reclamation since Powell’s time. But we are determined to pull across the stilled waters if only to prove it can still be done without a motor. We’ve already rowed Flaming Gorge reservoir, but four more reservoirs remain in our path: Powell, Hoover, Mohave, and Havasu. Not to mention the monster rapids of the Grand Canyon.

Right now, we’re camped directly below Rapid 19 in Cataract. The giant V-wave of Rapid 18 churns in sight just upstream. There, two surging laterals join together mid-rapid and stand powerful for the ages, though you can only smash through that wave once a run. A boater must stick one’s craft in precisely the right spot, or pay the price.

The ride through 18 is so amazing that all you can do when you are finished is look back upstream and feel the joy and satisfaction of a smashing line. But at the same time sadness sets in. You begin to mourn such a magnificent wave is above you.

Feelings like these bring a boater back to Cataract again and again.

Boaters like John Weisheit of Living Rivers, based in Moab, Utah. Weisheit has run the big water, roller coaster lines of Cat well over 300 times.

“I stopped keeping track around my 270^th run,” he said. Numbers like those and a passion for clean, free-flowing rivers led John to become the Colorado River Keeper. You can’t pass a gypsum dome or a salt intrusion without Weisheit tying off the boats and trudging a visitor through the coarse footing of Cataract canyon to explain how a one-time ocean evaporated leaving only crystals.

He’ll even give you a jeweler’s loop to examine the residue.

If a reading of the geologic record isn’t enough, get Weisheit talking about the Glen Canyon dam. Not only does that wall of concrete stop the movement of all things wild; like pike minnows, grains of sand, mule deer, and me.

It’s also a safety issue.

When the Bureau of Reclamation built the dam it ignored the true high-water capacity of the Colorado River, Weisheit says. The dam was built to contain 125,000 cubic feet of water per second. But thousand-year-old silt deposits show that the river is capable of surging much higher when flood conditions line up every 500 years or so. Weisheit has found silt deposits that suggest the river can swell to 500,000 c.f.s. According to deposits it has been about 495 years since the last one. With a big snow year in the southern Rockies this winter and a couple 95 degree April days, who knows what could happen.

By not taking into account the levels that can be achieved during the 500-year-flood, the dam engineers have stacked the dominoes tight. If the Glen Canyon dam goes, so could the Hoover dam, Parker dam, and Davis dam, as the water rages to the sea.

Nobody wants the water to return this way.

The next day we observe Cataract Canyon evolution in progress.

A steep, no-name gulch gashes through the left side of the canyon. A massive debris flow spills from its shallow walls and into the river, forming a horizon line on the river. The debris flow is historic and the rapid we are about to descend has been covered by Lake Powell for forty years. But the power of the river has recently scoured the sediment that choked this rapid and sent it a little farther downstream.

“This is a brand-new rapid,” Weisheit yells excitedly from his boat. “I’ve never seen it before.”

As our boats approach the new rapid, the angle smoothes and we see down its gentle tongue. The flow merges into a series of rolling waves.

We run Rapid 30 – a Cataract Canyon drop that hasn’t been run by even the River Keeper. High on the canyon wall above the blown out gulch is an eroded sandstone fin.

“It looks like a buffalo head,” my co-pilot, Montana journalist Jennifer Sauer, says.

Named in honor of the mega fauna of our homeland, we leave a little piece of Montana on that rapid and call it Buffalo Head rapid. The canyon country locals don’t like out-of-towners naming their rapids, but hey, he who publishes first wins.

We leave Serena and John at Clearwater Canyon, where Serena is going to paint a watercolor landscape of the famed winding wash.

“Powell called this place Eden,” John says. “It has a perennial stream flowing through it.”

Mike props a DRAIN IT flag that Weisheit has given us in the frame of his blue Hyside. It flaps furiously in the strong upstream wind.

“Powell would want it this way,” John says, referring to us parting company at Eden.

“I don’t know how you’re going to make it across that reservoir with the wind,” Serena cackles, cigarette in hand. “It always blows upstream.”

It can’t be done, eh? We’ve heard that before.

We thank Weisheit for his expertise and push down into the gale-force breeze. We pull hard and make camp on Rockfall beach, just above Dark Canyon. Once a fierce rapid it is now covered by a record-low Powell reservoir. But the low level also means that current is beginning to flow past it again. One solid blow out down the massive Dark Canyon and the rapid is back.

Back to the chipping fields of Labrinyth Canyon, the site of the one of the Stone Age’s most important advancements: learning to use pressure to chip chunks of jade with deer antlers to produce arrowheads matched by no other. Natives came from great distances to trade for this ancient technological advancement. Nearby dense pictographs clutter the sandstone walls.

The Turk's Head, Labrintyh Canyon, Utah. Photo by Josh Mahan

Watchtowers made of flat stone dominate the highest mesas, each one within view of the next. Young natives were relegated to these vantage points to watch for invaders from the south who might come to enslave tribal members. If a war party was spotted a large fire was built, sending warning. The next watchtower would spot the flames and follow in suit, sending the message down the line.

My mind goes still further upstream where Jen, Roselle, and I learn not to row past dark on moonless nights. Pushing for Sand Wash, the official launch of Desolation Canyon, we row into the night after several long dawn ‘til dusk days in the Uintah Basin.

My navigation falters. “We may have passed Sand Wash,” I say to the boat floating Jennifer and Mike. “We have to row back upstream.” A thunderstorm has set in and my mates grumble at the order through the rain-soaked night. We can see each other only when the lightning snaps bright through the desert night, illuminating cottonwood trees and a mud bar we aim to row back up to. Their determination proves strong as their backs and they make the pull against the smooth, but steady, current.

In the morning we discover that in fact we had not passed it, and flow down to where we meet some friends from Missoula. On the river caution always wins.

In my head, still huddled behind the wind reef on Powell, I can see the sweeping vistas of the Uintah Basin, its skies choked with thick flocks of geese and sandhill cranes. Herds of wild horses run the beaches eyeing us with suspicion and nosing their foals back to the tamarisk thickets. Elk bugles dominate the airwaves, a passionate autumn call. We see one big bull rolling in a small pool of water, throwing his weight around in frenzy.

The locals in Vernal tell us we are crazy to row across the basin, the river choked with sandbars and nearly unnavigable with the low fall flows. Nearly being the key we count on.

“It’s just ranchland,” said our driver from River Runner’s Transport, who donated a resupply shuttle into town to our cause.

His wife laughs, “I don’t know that you’ll be able to make your permit date in Deso. It’s over 100 miles away.”

Our boats are made of rubber, but our will is iron.

Each time a beaver slides into the river in front of our boat, or a crane swoops over our head, Mike and I look at each other and say, “Just ranchland.”

Anybody who thinks the old West has changed has been spending too much time in towns on interstates and ski slopes. Off the beaten path, the West is still as striking, vacant, and depressed as it’s always been.

Once in the canyon, there is only one way out: down through Disaster Falls, Triplet, and Hell’s Half Mile. Lower Disaster bites The Hyside, one of our boats, hard, shearing off its oar tower in a death-defying collision with a sandstone overhang on river right. Roselle had snapped two of his four oars like chicken wings in shallow waters earlier. The boat is injured, perhaps beyond repair, morale is low, and there is no place to go unless we learn to fly.

River legend Dr. Roderick Nash, who literally wrote the book on Big Drops, joined us below Flaming Gorge. He pulls me aside at camp. This isn’t the first time I have been pulled aside by Nash. Earlier in Red Canyon he told me he had questions about The Hyside’s ability to negotiate Lodore.

“Ah, they’ll be fine, Rod. They can do it,” I said defending the crew that consisted of Mike, an accomplished boatman, and Bob Scholl, more of a novice and the navigator in the Lower Disaster incident.

Now, without two working oar towers The Hyside is dead in the water.

“Josh, what are the chances of fixing that oar tower?” Rod asks anxiously. “If you can’t fix it, I don’t know what we’re going to do.” The tower needs a weld. I take stock of the repair equipment. There is no aluminum welder in the kit. We do have an extra tower for my boat, The Significance. But it fastens round and The Hyside’s frame is square. Faced with the ancient paradox we search for a new application.

“I give it 80 percent, Rod,” I say. “I’ll use bailing wire and duct tape if I have to.”

Roselle comes up with the idea to fasten the tower to one of the oars he snapped, then cam strap the oar to the frame. It works fantastically and we are back in business.

The next morning we push off and scout Triplet. We make our weaving way through three serious moves and scores of rocks. The tower holds solid. Next up is Hell’s Half Mile, one of the West’s ten legendary rapids as featured in Dr. Nash’s book.

The move is tight. A series of entrance rocks guard a small slot to the left-hand side of a house rock affectionately known as Lucifer. Professor Nash moves through first without even a brush of Lucifer. I run next, boofing the side. Then Bob drops in, oars motionless. The raft careens sideways hitting the rock mid ship, rolls up on its side tube threatening to flip, and finally wraps around the boulder. The Hyside is stuck. To make matters worse cargo is flushing off of the boat. But the Park Service is stationed below, ropes in hand. Pulleys are fastened, and in a matter of minutes crisis is averted. Jennifer and I launch, chasing down several key expedition items, all of which are recovered in the current below.

The next day we float past the center of the universe: the confluence of the Yampa and the Green. But as any river runner knows, there are several centers of the universe. Polished rocks colored of the rainbow litter the converging currents. A holler is answered in seven syllables as voice reverberates off the maze of rock surrounding. A feeling of greatness overwhelms. This is Echo Park, and it is the center of our universe at this moment.

Just downstream we stop at the site of the proposed Echo Park dam, thwarted largely in an effort by Nash, and also David Brower. That plug in the river would have drowned Lodore and the lower Yampa, both world-class stretches of river. Victory over the dam builders came with a price, though: the construction of a dam on a little known canyon called Glen, named for the lush springs that flowed from its walls. What would life be like without Echo Park? We know what life is like without Glen Canyon.

We arrange a back tow by motor to the bottom of the cement wall. The next five hours tie our entire descent together. We float on current for the first time in 12 days beneath the bright orange walls bedecked with fern. Lush alcoves surround.

“I didn’t know this still existed,” I mutter, awed by the sight.

The next morning at Lee’s Ferry a shot gun blast breaks the still of morning. Bird shot scatters across the river just over my shoulder. It’s duck hunting season. A hunter has shot illegally from the boat ramp sends his retriever into the water for the quarry.

It wouldn’t be the last scraps of lead shot our way.

“What the…,” I yell into the desert dawn.

Soon we meet our crewmates, mostly Missoulians, for the next leg: Marble and Grand Canyons. Our descent is smooth, though one craft flips early on in House Rock, and other crewmates join the Grand Canyon Air Force and Swim Team, catapulted from boats by the furious rapids of Horn and Sapphire.

The descent, rocketing side-slope through the Colorado Plateau boggles the mind. We pass the one-time proposed Marble Canyon dam site, but also ancient lava dams that have long since been reduced to gravel. As Nash likes to say, the river always wins.

We leave our friends at Diamond Creek and continue. Yes, the Colorado still flows below Diamond Creek. The lower Grand is intriguing, we run some formidable rapids and soon the waves are smoothed by Mead reservoir’s backwash. We calmly float river miles that were once feared, like Separation and Lava Cliff. The current has returned to the mouth of these canyons, and one day they will flow fierce again. The transition is reminiscent of the entrance to Powell, as this reservoir is also 100-feet low. Bath-tub rings of white tower above the reservoir level.

Roselle is due to leave the expedition at South Cove after 1,000 miles of dogged rowing. The night before he leaves I write in my journal:

Jennifer Sauer living a life without rent and florescent lighting.

“Leave me in the sand and dirt amongst the bugs with only the hot coals of a fire to warm my bones. Let me breathe fresh air and gaze at monuments older than civilized life. No museum or amount of culture could ever uplift the spirit like these orange and pink rocks glowing at sun’s set. Give me a life of simplicity, devoid of rent and florescent lighting. A world without landlords and bosses. It is a peasant’s dream out here, for you can live as the laws of nature intend – a free man.”

We pop a bottle of champagne. I tell Roselle and Jennifer they are the best shipmates a man could ever ask for, and with that Sauer and I row across Mead in three days, passing the Virgin Arm, Powell’s take-out now buried under hundreds of feet of water. Somehow we best a windstorm that blows us off course at 3 a.m. in Boulder Basin. We’re nearly blown into the Hoover dam.

Gloves, who needs 'em?

“Well, now we’ve retraced Buzz Holmstrom,” I joke. That legendary boatman was the first to row all of the rapids on this stretch in 1936. He ended his trip at Hoover dam, physically bonking his boat into the obstruction upset he could go no further. We shuttle around the dam early the next morning.

The Black Canyon of the Colorado below Hoover dam should not be missed. Rife with hot springs, we spend three days in a four-mile section, soaking one night with a tarantula and eating a Dutch-oven casserole for Thanksgiving.

We receive visitors in our camp on Ringbolt Rapid, one of the Colorado’s last significant drops.

“We’ve got an emergency,” says the voice in the dark. “Our skiff floated away fifteen minutes ago.”

Without hesitation I offer to go row the motorboat down. The boat’s operator, Lynn, and I hop into the raft and I begin to push through the night. He tells me the boat was dragging anchor, probably taking on water, and for all he knows could be sunk. Though I think I can make the pull back up river to camp, hesitation sets in with passing miles, and I know Lynn is growing more nervous about his boat.

Finally, we see it pirouetting, half-sunk in the moonlight. I tie off to the skiff and Lynn unfastens the anchor. The great weight of the water-logged boat pulls us downstream. I muscle it to the side of the river. Using buckets, we bail for 15 minutes and the motor purrs to life. He tows me back to camp, our public service complete, olive branch extended to the motorists, and river karma elevated.

Current is soon tamed again by Mohave reservoir and we buckle down for yet another row. Mohave Desert surrounds and creosote bushes abound, many landscapes away from the high-country sagebrush populated by pronghorn in Green River.

“I think he’s getting kind of temperamental,” Jen says, lapping by. He eventually drops to the other side of the ridge, and we break camp and row on.

Out on the reservoir we encounter Abe Karam, a fisheries biologist for Arizona State University studying the endangered razorback sucker that has been decimated by the many dams on the river system. These days most hatchery razorbacks augmented to the waning population become food for exotic striped bass that can grow to 50 pounds.

“You guys are living my dream. Everyday I motor up and down this reservoir and stare at the GPS that has the names of the old rapids buried under here and fantasize about what this place used to be like,” Abe says. We stay one night in ASU’s fish camp, carousing with the biologists.

Soon we shuttle around the Davis dam. A day in Fort Mohave, Arizona finds us walking the street. A county sheriff’s deputy detains us and runs our identification.

“I run everybody through who is walking,” she says. “Even grandmothers.” We’re a long way from the river trails of Missoula and disturbed by the encounter with the law. Down in this populated section we feel the freedom of the river slipping away. The horizon-line is the casinos of Laughlin, instead of bluffs, and roads line the banks.

Back on the river, our next stop is in Needles, California. Fresh trophy homes line the bank, some within spitting distance of the dilapidated trailers they replace, a striking contrast.

The Kolb brothers ended their trip here in 1912 and were greeted with a marching band and a night in the fanciest hotel in town, the El Garces. We’re received in a more modest fashion, simply staying in an RV park among Canadian snowbirds. A few do see us off the next day, waving excitedly.

We row on under Interstate 40, a busy section of the grid. Three pipelines, the interstate, and a train span the river. We leave it behind, retreating to the lush cattail bird habitat of Havasu National Wildlife Refuge and the Topock Gorge, a jagged lava flow surrounding the river. A local has told us that the Mohave natives belief their spirit goes to Topock when they die. A beautiful place to spend eternity. That night the calm waters reflect the stars like a mirror as we row.

Lake Havasu City is below, the first big city we’ve seen on the journey. We float beneath the London Bridge and row our last reservoir.

We form a legitimate relationship with a duck. He seems to like us. We name him William. After we launch from Whyte’s Retreat, he flies behind our boat for some time.

At the foot of the reservoir we come to a massive plumbing system sucking the Colorado River into a canal bound for southern California. The water we’ve been riding will soon be delivered to millions of people living in the desert.

“Wyoming,” I say.

He looks perplexed. “How did you get around the dam?”

We float on, eventually under a bridge spray-painted with graffiti. Sunset lights the heavens up in a display I’ll never forget, if only because nothing golden lasts. It is going to be our last night on the river, though we don’t know it yet.

Chili cooks on the stove and the coals for the cornbread began to glow red as a car approaches on the lonely reservation road. I turn out the lantern on the small, flat island we camp on, hoping the vehicle will pass without noticing us.

The car pulls an aggressive U-turn. Three locals get out and the night lights up with gunfire. Bullets rain around us as we lay belly down on the rocky ground. I prop myself on Jen and tell her to crawl into the frigid December river if I am hit.

We move camp and spend the night sleeping on our boat, pulled up into a beaver slide in the cattails. The darkness brings rain.

“I want to go home,” Jennifer says.

The trip is over.

I stay awake all night keeping watch.

Situated just above Lost Lake Resort I watch the lights of vehicles driven wildly on a Saturday night, and listen to drunken hooting and hollering.

Dawn breaks and two men stand near a fire at the lodge’s landing. Their hands move strangely and they stagger around. Still shaken I watch them through binoculars, hidden in the cattails.

“I think it’s some sort of sunrise ceremony. I don’t think we should interrupt them,” I say. “They’re either medicine men or on meth.”

We huddle down for two hours, allowing the sun to clear the ridgeline and clouds. Still hesitant we realize we have to show our white faces eventually and push off for the landing. It turns out that the men are participating in an ancient sunrise ritual – fishing. The resort is full of snowbirds living in little trailers. I’m happy to see a Great Falls, Montana license plate.

With that the journey is over. We rent a car and drive back to Wyoming in two days, a distance that took 106 days on the river.

The last 100 miles to Yuma still calls my name, and I intend to return to finish the run, perhaps even over the border and into the Sea of Cortez delta. The next journey? Glacier Park to Hudson Bay.

Josh Mahan is the editor of Lowbagger.org, a river runner, wanderer, and reservoir rower.