Twilight is darkening in the depths of the Grand Canyon and the storyteller is ready to begin. He stands there by the campfire, a tall long-legged character with a bushy white moustache and an old Hawaiian shirt. His skin is deeply tanned and weathered from 35 years as a boatman on the Colorado, the river that cut this mile-deep chasm in the earth and roars past our camp. Brad Dimock probably knows more stories about this place than anyone else alive, and he tells them with rare skill and a salty laconic wit.
‘In August 1867, a man was pulled out of the river 50 miles below the Grand Canyon. He was bruised, contused and abused, delirious and half-deranged, nearly naked on a bunch of logs strapped together with a lasso – your basic boatman,
you might say…’
So begins the saga of James White, a hapless prospector who lashed together a raft and inadvertently became the first man to run the Colorado through the big white water of the Grand Canyon. ‘When they finally nursed him back to health, he didn’t remember much – horrible rapids, whirlpools, big cliffs – and some people didn’t believe his tale,’ Brad says. ‘They denounced him as a monumental prevaricator. But most people who met White said he was too simple a man to lie.’
The early history of river running in the Grand Canyon is full of nightmare voyages, drownings, starvings, desperate acts of heroism and stupidity, but now it’s become a popular recreation activity, attracting more than 20,000 people a year. Modern boats, techniques and life jackets have greatly reduced the danger, but the trip is still more of an adventure than a guided tour, because the Grand Canyon is still a big, rugged, remote wilderness, with harsh, unpredictable weather, no access to roads or electricity, and the biggest runnable rapids in North America.
A full trip takes 16 days and covers 225 river miles, from the boat ramp at Lee’s Ferry, Arizona, where the Grand Canyon begins its plunge, to the next navigable road at Diamond Creek. I’m doing the lower canyon trip, only nine days long but harder on the legs and feet. You fly into Phoenix, Arizona, catch a shuttle bus to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, spend the night in a lodge, and then, starting at first light, you hike down the steep, rocky 7½-mile trail to the river, seeing the morning sun illuminate some of the most spectacular scenery on earth. There are a few deeper canyons in the world but none of them are as elaborately sculpted or richly coloured, and the colours are constantly shifting and glowing in response to passing clouds and changing light, so the whole canyon seems to be alive and somehow breathing.
Footsore, knee-sore and sweat-drenched, I reached the green river at the bottom. Opaque with silt and bone-chillingly cold, it is compressed between the walls of the inner gorge and hurtles along with tremendous force. The guides and the rest of the group, most of them connected to a winemaking family in California, had come down the river from Lee’s Ferry and were waiting there by the tethered boats – three inflatable oar rafts, one paddle raft, and Brad’s beautiful wooden dory.
The guides strapped me into a life jacket, told me what to do if the boat flipped – don’t get trapped underneath – and a few minutes later, with a soaring pulse rate and a death grip on the gunwales, I was smashing through the roaring fury and mountainous waves of Horn Creek Rapid, instantly drenched to the skin and flooded with adrenaline. Then came a short stretch of calm water, then more enormous rapids, one after another, until we pulled into a deserted beach on the shore, unloaded the boats and pitched camp for the night. The guides grilled steaks, baked a pudding in a Dutch oven with charcoal,
and my fine new friends from California furnished the wine.
