Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico written by E. L. Kolb
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E. L. Kolb >> Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico
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19 THROUGH THE GRAND CANYON FROM WYOMING TO MEXICO
By E.L. Kolb
With a Foreword by Owen Wister
New Edition
With Additional Illustrations
(72 Plates)
From Photographs by the Author and His Brother
1915
Dedication
TO THE MANY FRIENDS WHO "PULLED" FOR US, IF NOT WITH US DURING THE ONE
HUNDRED ONE DAYS OF OUR RIVER TRIP, THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY
DEDICATED.
FOREWORD
It is a dogged courage of which the author of this book is the serene
possessor--shared equally by his daring brother; and evidence of this
bravery is made plain throughout the following pages. Every youth who
has in him a spark of adventure will kindle with desire to battle his
way also from Green River to the foot of Bright Angel Trail; while
every man whose bones have been stiffened and his breath made short by
the years, will remember wistfully such wild tastes of risk and
conquest that he, too, rejoiced in when he was young.
Whether it deal with the climbing of dangerous peaks, or the descent
(as here) of some fourteen hundred miles of water both mysterious and
ferocious, the well-told tale of a perilous journey, planned with head
and carried through with dauntless persistence, always holds the
attention of its readers and gives them many a thrill. This tale is
very well told. Though it is the third of its kind, it differs from
its predecessors more than enough to hold its own: no previous
explorers have attempted to take moving pictures of the Colorado River
with themselves weltering in its foam. More than this: while the human
race lasts it will be true, that any man who is lucky enough to fix
upon a hard goal and win it, and can in direct and simple words tell
us how he won it, will write a good book.
Perhaps this planet does somewhere else contain a thing like the
Colorado River--but that is no matter; we at any rate in our continent
possess one of nature's very vastest works. After The River and its
tributaries have done with all sight of the upper world, have left
behind the bordering plains and streamed through the various gashes
which their floods have sliced in the mountains that once stopped
their way, then the culminating wonder begins. The River has been
flowing through the loneliest part which remains to us of that large
space once denominated "The Great American Desert" by the vague maps
in our old geographies. It has passed through regions of emptiness
still as wild as they were before Columbus came; where not only no man
lives now nor any mark is found of those forgotten men of the cliffs,
but the very surface of the earth itself looks monstrous and extinct.
Upon one such region in particular the author of these pages dwells,
when he climbs up out of the gulf in whose bottom he has left his boat
by the River, to look out upon a world of round gray humps and hollows
which seem as if it were made of the backs of huge elephants. Through
such a country as this, scarcely belonging to our era any more than
the mammoth or the pterodactyl, scarcely belonging to time at all,
does the Colorado approach and enter its culminating marvel. Then, for
283 miles it inhabits a nether world of its own. The few that have
ventured through these places and lived are a handful to those who
went in and were never seen again. The white bones of some have been
found on the shores; but most were drowned; and in this water no
bodies ever rise, because the thick sand that its torrent churns along
clogs and sinks them.
This place exerts a magnetic spell. The sky is there above it, but not
of it. Its being is apart; its climate; its light; its own. The beams
of the sun come into it like visitors. Its own winds blow through it,
not those of outside, where we live. The River streams down its
mysterious reaches, hurrying ceaselessly; sometimes a smooth sliding
lap, sometimes a falling, broken wilderness of billows and whirlpools.
Above stand its walls, rising through space upon space of silence.
They glow, they gloom, they shine. Bend after bend they reveal
themselves, endlessly new in endlessly changing veils of colour. A
swimming and jewelled blue predominates, as of sapphires being melted
and spun into skeins of shifting cobweb. Bend after bend this trance
of beauty and awe goes on, terrible as the Day of Judgment, sublime as
the Psalms of David. Five thousand feet below the opens and barrens of
Arizona, this canyon seems like an avenue conducting to the secret of
the universe and the presence of the gods.
Is much wonder to be felt that its beckoning enchantment should have
drawn two young men to dwell beside it for many years; to give
themselves wholly to it; to descend and ascend among its buttressed
pinnacles; to discover caves and waterfalls hidden in its labyrinths;
to climb, to creep, to hang in mid-air, in order to learn more and
more of it, and at last to gratify wholly their passion in the great
adventure of this journey through it from end to end? No siren song
could have lured travellers more than the siren silence of the Grand
Canyon: but these young men did not leave their bones to whiten upon
its shores. The courage that brought them out whole is plain
throughout this narrative, in spite of its modesty.--OWEN WISTER.
PREFACE
This is a simple narrative of our recent photographic trip down the
Green and Colorado rivers in rowboats--our observations and
impressions. It is not intended to replace in any way the books
published by others covering a similar journey. Major J.W. Powell's
report of the original exploration, for instance, is a classic,
literary and geological; and searchers after excellence may well be
recommended to his admirable work.
Neither is this chronicle intended as a handbook of the territory
traversed--such as Mr. F.S. Dellenbaugh's two volumes: "The Romance of
the Grand Canyon," and "A Canyon Voyage." We could hardly hope to add
anything of value to his wealth of detail. In fact, much of the data
given here--such as distances, elevations, and records of other
expeditions--is borrowed from the latter volume. And I take this
opportunity of expressing our appreciation to Mr. Dellenbaugh for his
most excellent and entertaining books.
We are indebted to Mr. Julius F. Stone, of Columbus, Ohio, for much
valuable information and assistance. Mr. Stone organized a party and
made the complete trip down the Green and Colorado rivers in the fall
and winter of 1909, arriving at Needles, California, on November 27,
1909. He freely gave us the benefit of his experience and presented us
with the complete plans of the boats he used.
One member of this party was Nathan Galloway, of Richfield, Utah. To
him we owe much of the success of our journey. Mr. Galloway hunts and
traps through the wilds of Utah, Colorado, and Arizona, and has a fame
for skill and nerve throughout this entire region. He makes a yearly
trip through the upper canyons, usually in a boat of his own
construction; and in addition has the record of being the only person
who has made two complete trips through the entire series of canyons,
clear to Needles. He it is who has worked out the type of boats we
used, and their management in the dangerous waters of the Colorado.
We have tried to make this narrative not only simple, as we say, but
truthful. However, no two people can see things in exactly the same
light. To some, nothing looks big; to others, every little danger is
unconsciously magnified out of all proportion. For instance, we can
recall rapids which appeared rather insignificant at first, but which
seemed decidedly otherwise after we had been overturned in them and
had felt their power--especially at the moment when we were sure we
had swallowed a large part of the water that composed them.
The reader will kindly excuse the use of the first person, both
singular and plural. It is our own story, after all, and there seems
to be no other way than to tell it as you find it here.
+CONTENTS+
CHAPTER PAGE
I. PREPARATIONS AT GREEN RIVER CITY, WYOMING 1
II. INTERESTING SIGHTS OF SOUTHERN WYOMING 12
III. THE GATEWAY OF ALL THE CANYONS 22
IV. SUSPICIOUS HOSTS 36
V. THE BATTLE WITH LODORE 50
VI. HELL'S HALF MILE 64
VII. JIMMY GOES OVER THE MOUNTAIN 71
VIII. AN INLAND EXCURSION 83
IX. CANYON OF DESOLATION 93
X. HOSPITABLE RANCHMEN 102
XI. WONDERS OF EROSION 111
XII. COULD WE SUCCEED? 121
XIII. A COMPANION VOYAGER 129
XIV. A PATIENT AMID THE CATARACTS 142
XV. PLACER GOLD 156
XVI. A WARNING 169
XVII. A NIGHT OF THRILLS 178
XVIII. MARBLE HALLS AND MARBLE WALLS 190
XIX. SIGNALLING OUR CANYON HOME 203
XX. ONE MONTH LATER 219
XXI. WHAT CHRISTMAS EVE BROUGHT 235
XXII. SHORT OF PROVISIONS IN A SUNLESS GORGE 249
XXIII. THE LAST PORTAGE AND THE LAST RAPIDS 267
XXIV. ON THE CREST OF A FLOOD 280
XXV. FOUR DAYS TO YUMA 290
XXVI. ACROSS THE MEXICO BORDER 303
XXVII. THE GULF OF CALIFORNIA 321
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Grand Canyon near the mouth of Ha Va Su Creek _Frontispiece_
After a difficult picture. E. C. Kolb on rope................... 2
In the Grand Canyon near the Little Colorado.................... 6
The start at Green River, Wyoming............................... 10
Fire Hole Chimneys.............................................. 10
A typical butte formation....................................... 14
Boats and crew. Photo taken in the Grand Canyon................. 18
Skeleton found in the Grand Canyon.............................. 22
Inside of the first canyons..................................... 26
Tilted rocks at Kingfisher Canyon............................... 26
"Immense rocks had fallen from the cliff"....................... 36
Ashley Falls, looking down-stream............................... 40
The rocks were dark red; occasional pines grew on the ledges,
making a charming combination of colour....................... 44
"We stopped at one hay ranch close to the Utah-Colorado line"... 48
Remarkable entrance to Lodore Canyon............................ 52
"The river cut a channel under the walls" at Lower Disaster
Falls......................................................... 56
"Everything was wet"............................................ 56
A Colorado River salmon......................................... 60
Lodore Canyon as seen from Brown's Park......................... 60
"The Canyon was gloomy and darkened with shreds of clouds"...... 64
"It took nine loads to empty one boat".......................... 68
"An upright log was found wedged between the boulders".......... 68
Echo Cliffs. "This was the end of Lodore"....................... 72
End of Echo Cliffs. The mouth of the Yampa River is on the
right.......................................................... 72
Marvels of erosion.............................................. 76
"Here was one end of the rainbow of rock that began on the
other side of the mountains".................................. 80
Pat Lynch: the canyon hermit.................................... 84
Each bed was placed in a rubber and a canvas sack............... 90
"Now for a fish story" ......................................... 100
The centre of three symmetrical formations in the Double Bow
Knot.......................................................... 114
The Buttes of the Cross......................................... 118
"The Land of Standing Rocks was like a maze".................... 122
Rocks overhanging the Colorado's Gorge.......................... 122
Thirteen hundred feet above the Green River..................... 124
The junction of the Green and the Grand Rivers.................. 128
Looking west into Cataract Canyon............................... 132
Charles Smith and his boat...................................... 132
A narrow channel at Rapid No. 22................................ 136
Developing tests................................................ 136
Rapid No. 22 in Cataract Canyon................................. 140
The _Edith_ in a cataract....................................... 144
A seventy-five-foot drop in three-fourths of a mile............. 144
Camp in the heart of Cataract Canyon............................ 148
Lower Cataract Canyon. Boats tandem............................. 152
Beginning of a natural bridge. Glen Canyon...................... 152
Pictographs in Glen Canyon...................................... 158
Cliff ruins near San Juan River................................. 162
Rainbow Natural Bridge, looking south........................... 162
Rainbow Natural Bridge, looking north........................... 166
Glen Canyon near Navajo Mountain................................ 170
Upper Marble Canyon............................................. 170
Placer dredge at Lee's Ferry.................................... 174
Badger Creek Rapid.............................................. 180
Bands of marble in Marble Canyon................................ 180
A peaceful camp in Marble Canyon................................ 184
The Soap Creek Rapid; a little above lowest stage. Photo
published by permission of Julius F. Stone.................... 188
"It was too good a camp to miss"................................ 192
Arch in Marble Canyon........................................... 192
Walls of Marble Canyon.......................................... 196
Approaching the Grand Canyon.................................... 200
End of Marble Canyon, from the mouth of the Little Colorado..... 204
Cataracts of the Little Colorado River.......................... 204
End of Hance Trail. Small white line is an intrusion of quartz
in the algonkian.............................................. 208
Below the Sockdologer........................................... 210
The Rust Tramway. Span four hundred and fifty feet.............. 214
Bright Angel Creek and Canyon................................... 218
Leaving home, Dec. 19, 1911..................................... 222
A composite picture of Marble Canyon walls and a Grand Canyon
rapid......................................................... 222
The _Edith_ (on left of central rock) in Granite Falls.......... 226
Rough water in Hermit Creek Rapid............................... 230
Type of rapid in the granite near Bass Trail.................... 234
The inner plateau, thirteen hundred feet above the river........ 238
Bert Lauzon, above Separation Rapid............................. 238
The break in the _Edith_........................................ 242
Merry Christmas. The repair was made with bilge boards, canvas,
paint, and tin................................................ 242
Pulling clear of a rock......................................... 246
A shower bath................................................... 246
Grand Canyon at the mouth of Ha Va Su Canyon. Medium high
water. Frontispiece shows same place in low water............. 250
"Morning revealed a little snow," on the top.................... 252
New Year's Eve was spent in this section between the highest
sheer walls in the lower gorge................................ 252
Lava Falls. Lava on left, hot springs on right.................. 254
Swift water in Tapeets Creek Rapid.............................. 260
Lauzon, equipped with a life preserver on a rope, on guard
below a rapid................................................. 260
In the last granite gorge....................................... 260
Capt. Burro: a Ha Va Supai...................................... 266
The Last Portage. The rocks were ice-filmed. Note potholes...... 270
Mooney Falls: Ha Va Su Canyon................................... 274
Watching for the signal fire. Mrs. Emery and Edith Kolb......... 278
The granite gorge near Bright Angel Trail....................... 282
The Grand Canyon from the head of Bright Angel Trail............ 286
The Cork Screw: lower end of Bright Angel Trail................. 290
Zoroaster Temple from the end of Bright Angel Trail............. 298
Winter in the Grand Canyon from the Rim......................... 308
Winter in the Grand Canyon at the River......................... 308
A vaquero in the making......................................... 318
Cliff swallows' nests. Found from Wyoming to Mexico............. 318
Steam vents beside Volcanic Lake................................ 326
Cocopah Mountain, Mexico........................................ 326
Ten miles from the Gulf of California. Coming up on a
twenty-foot tide.............................................. 332
Sunset on the lower Colorado River.............................. 332
[Illustration]
THROUGH THE GRAND CANYON FROM WYOMING TO MEXICO
CHAPTER I
PREPARATIONS AT GREEN RIVER CITY, WYOMING
Early in September of 1911 my brother Emery and I landed in Green
River City, Wyoming, ready for the launching of our boats on our
long-planned trip down the Green and Colorado rivers.
For ten years previous to this time we had lived at the Grand Canyon
of Arizona, following the work of scenic photography. In a general way
we had covered much of the country adjacent to our home, following our
pack animals over ancient and little-used trails, climbing the walls
of tributary canyons, dropping over the ledges with ropes when
necessary, always in search of the interesting and unusual.
After ten years of such work many of our plans in connection with a
pictorial exploration of the Grand Canyon were crowned with success.
Yet all the while our real ambition remained unsatisfied.
We wanted to make the "Big Trip"--as we called it; in other words, we
wanted a pictorial record of the entire series of canyons on the Green
and Colorado rivers.
The time had come at last, after years of hoping, after long months of
active preparation.
We stood at the freight window of the station at Green River City
asking for news of our boats. They had arrived and could be seen in
their crates shoved away in a corner. It was too late to do anything
with them that day; so we let them remain where they were, and went
out to look over the town.
Green River City proved to be a busy little place noisy with switch
engines, crowded with cattle-men and cowboys, and with hunting parties
outfitting for the Jackson Hole country. A thoroughly Western town of
the better sort, with all the picturesqueness of people and
surroundings that the name implies.
It was busier than usual, even, that evening; for a noisy but
good-natured crowd had gathered around the telegraph office, eager for
news of a wrestling match then taking place in an Eastern city. As we
came up they broke into a cheer at the news that the American wrestler
had defeated his foreign opponent. There was a discussion as to what
constituted the "toe-hold," three boys ran an impromptu foot-race,
there was some talk on the poor condition of the range, and the party
began to break up.
The little excitement over, we returned to the hotel; feeling, in
spite of our enthusiasm, somewhat lonesome and very much out of place.
Our sleep that night was fitful and broken by dreams wherein the
places we had known were strangely interwoven with these new scenes
and events. Through it all we seemed to hear the roar of the Rio
Colorado.
We looked out of the window the next morning, on a landscape that was
novel, yet somehow familiar. The river, a quarter of a mile away, very
clear and unruffled under its groves of cottonwood, wound through low
barren hills, as unlike as could be to the cliffs and chasms we knew
so well. But the colours--gray, red, and umber, just as Moran has
painted them--reassured us. We seemed not so far from home, after all.
It was Wyoming weather, though; clear and cold, after a windy night.
When, after breakfast, we went down to the river, we found that a
little ice had formed along the margin.
The days of final preparation passed quickly--with unpacking of
innumerable boxes and bundles, checking off each article against our
lists; and with a long and careful overhauling of our photographic
outfit.
This last was a most important task, for the success of our expedition
depended on our success as photographers. We could not hope to add
anything of importance to the scientific and topographic knowledge of
the canyons already existing: and merely to come out alive at the
other end did not make a strong appeal to our vanity. We were there as
scenic photographers in love with their work, and determined to
reproduce the marvels of the Colorado's canyons, as far as we could do
it.
In addition to three film cameras we had 8 x 10 and 5 x 7 plate
cameras; a plentiful supply of plates and films; a large cloth
dark-room; and whatever chemicals we should need for tests. Most
important of all, we had brought a motion-picture camera. We had no
real assurance that so delicate an apparatus, always difficult to use
and regulate, could even survive the journey--much less, in such
inexperienced hands as ours, reproduce its wonders. But this,
nevertheless, was our secret hope, hardly admitted to our most
intimate friends--that we could bring out a record of the Colorado as
it is, a live thing, armed as it were with teeth, ready to crush and
devour.
There was shopping to do; for the purchases of provisions, with a few
exceptions, had been left to the last. There were callers, too--an
embarrassing number of them. We had camped on a small island near the
town, not knowing when we did so that it had recently been put aside
for a public park. The whole of Green River City, it seemed, had
learned of our project, and came to inspect, or advise, or jeer at us.
The kindest of them wished us well; the other sort told us "it would
serve us right"; but not one of our callers had any encouragement to
offer. Many were the stories of disaster and death with which they
entertained us. One story in particular, as it seems never to have
reached print--though unquestionably true--ought to be set down here.
Three years before two young men from St. Louis had embarked here,
intending to follow the river throughout its whole course. They were
expert canoeists, powerful swimmers, and equipped with a steel boat,
we were told, built somewhat after the style of a canoe. They chose
the time of high water--not knowing, probably, that while high water
decreases the labour of the passage, it greatly increases the danger
of it. They came to the first difficult rapid in Red Canyon, seventy
odd miles below Green River City. It looked bad to them. They landed
above it and stripped to their underclothing and socks. Then they
pushed out into the stream.
Almost at once they lost control of the boat. It overturned; it rolled
over and over; it flung them off and left them swimming for their
lives. In some way, possibly the currents favouring, they reached the
shore. The boat, with all its contents, was gone. There they were,
almost naked, without food, without weapons, without the means of
building a fire; and in an uninhabited and utterly inhospitable
country.
For four days they wandered, blistered by the sun by day; nearly
frozen at night, bruised by the rocks, and torn by the brambles.
Finally they reached the ranch at the head of the canyons and were
found by a half-breed Indian, who cared for them. Their underwear had
been made into bindings for their lacerated feet; they were nearly
starved, and on the verge of mental collapse. After two weeks'
treatment in the hospital at Green River City they were partially
restored to health. Quite likely they spent many of the long hours of
their convalescence on the river bank, or on the little island,
watching the unruffled stream glide underneath the cottonwoods.
Such tales as this added nothing to our fears, of course--for the
whole history of the Colorado is one long story of hardship and
disaster, and we knew, even better than our advisors, what risks lay
before us. We told our newfound friends, in fact, that we had lived
for years on the brink of the Grand Canyon itself, a gorge deeper and
more awful, even, than Lodore; with a volume of water ten times
greater. We knew, of course, of the river's vast length, of the
terrible gorges that confined it, of the hundreds of rapids through
which a boat would have to pass.
We knew, too, how Major Powell, undismayed by legends of underground
channels, impassable cataracts, and whirlpools; of bloodthirsty tribes
haunting its recesses,--had passed through the canyons in safety,
measuring and surveying as he went. We also knew of the many other
attempts that had been made--most of them ending in disaster or death,
a very few being successful.
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