The Promise of the Grand Canyon

by John F. Ross

  Everywhere black lava coated the older rocks like tar. Gone was the symmetrical limestone and sandstone layering, now yielding a geological chaos. Beginning about 850,000 years before, waves of molten rock had erupted from numerous vents both on the rim and within the canyon, flowing through the side canyons, then pouring into the main river channel. The expedition bestowed the name Vulcan’s Throne to a cinder cone volcano, its 4,000-foot peak sitting high above on the north rim on the boaters’ right. Some thirteen lava dams had blocked the lower canyon, one of them filling it to a height of more than two thousand feet, another flowing eighty-six miles down the river course. “What a conflict of water and fire there must have been here!” wrote Powell. “Just imagine a river of molten rock running down into a river of melted snow. What a seething and boiling of the waters; what clouds of steam rolled into the heavens!”

  The formidable hydraulics of Lava Falls forced them once again to line and portage. But afterward, the whitewater eased and they swept along for thirty-five miles. They began on their last sack of moldy flour.

  The next day, they again traveled thirty-five miles, which elicited a glimmer of optimism. But the river was not yet done with them. The following day, August 27, the Colorado darted south, then west, then south again. Worst of all, the dreaded dark granite reappeared downriver. The hope blooming among these desperate men withered, then blacked out altogether when they heard the roar of a rapid that made all of the others pale in comparison.

  They pulled over and gazed silently at it. Two side canyons entered the river nearly opposite one another. The river first bounced through boulders washed out of the side canyons coming in from the left, then hit rapids caused by the rocks from the canyon on the right. A granite reef reached one-third of the way across the river. The resulting Z-shaped rapid had no apparent way through. “The spectacle is appalling to us,” wrote Bradley dramatically even for the master of the superlative. “The billows are huge and I fear our boats could not ride them if we could keep them off the rocks.”

  That morning and afternoon they spent climbing the rock walls, first from the right bank, then the left, searching for a path around this monster. Scrambling for a mile or more over the granite, they found their way entirely impeded. A portage would work only if they could haul the boats up eight hundred vertical feet then come back down, which Powell calculated would take ten days, an impossible feat with only five days’ rations left. They had already wasted half a day on the search itself. Three more rapids—all looking equally formidable—loomed below this one. “[T]o run it would be sure destruction,” Powell wrote plainly. The vise had tightened, closing off whatever slight room for maneuver they had enjoyed before. “We appeared to be up against it sure,” wrote Sumner.

  Before sunset, Powell climbed down the cliffs to announce a plan that he and Sumner had worked out. They would lower the boats on the rocky bank to avoid the first falls, then run to the head of the second, which they would try to skirt through a chute on the right side. Then they would try to cross to the left to avoid a boat-destroying boulder. An iffy plan at best, but it was all they had. They ferried across, then sat down to drink coffee and chew on half rations of tasteless, unleavened balls of bread, the rush of the river loud in their ears. “This is decidedly the darkest day of the trip,” scribbled Bradley in his journal.

  After this slim repast, Oramel Howland asked Powell to join him on a walk. Up a short distance into a side canyon, out of earshot of the camp, he urged Powell to call off the expedition. He informed Powell that he, his brother Seneca, and Dunn had decided to abandon the river.

  Somewhere not too far downstream—but still at an unknown distance—the Virgin River fell into the Colorado. Twenty miles up that tributary stood a Mormon settlement. An overland hike to such an outpost from where they now stood would entail crossing some seventy-five miles of desert, but Howland believed the recent rains would have left enough water pockets to keep them going. And they might find some game along the way. For the elder Howland, the odds of surviving such a desert journey looked much better than running the next rapid, and who knew how many more after that. The five days of half rations could easily rot away with another wetting. The granite showed no signs of abating any time soon. Howland had reviewed his best odds for survival—and they pointed away from the river. Powell could not disagree that the expedition had reached a critical juncture.

  “Of course I objected,” Powell wrote later, “but they were determined to go.” The time for glorious speeches invoking the national importance of the mission had long since passed. Nor could Powell force them to stay: His only authority lay in the trust built up over the past three months, which had eroded steadily with the loss of No Name, and the drenching of the maps, and ruin of the instruments. Even the Major’s legendary powers of persuasion would fail him now if he attempted to use them. Powell knew that it was not a matter of bucking up Howland’s courage and resolve. Unlike Goodman, Howland had demonstrated over and over again that fear did not dominate his actions. He was as brave as they came. At his core as a commander, Powell understood that he had to honor the Howland party’s decision—the expedition was not a military unit but a mishmash of volunteers serving at their whim. Neither had Howland challenged Powell to abort the trip in front of all the men nor tried to wrestle away power and become the new leader. This was no mutiny, although Powell most certainly regarded this act as desertion.

  Both men returned to the camp not having shared an angry word; neither spoke about their conversation, although the others knew that something was brewing—and that it centered on aborting the expedition. “There is discontent in camp tonight,” noted Bradley, “and I fear some of the party will take to the mountains but hope not.”

  Without a working barometer, Powell could not determine altitude, and thus how much drop there remained in the river. But he did sight a sextant on a celestial object, Sumner illuminating the dial with a mesquite-brush torch, to determine their latitude, which corroborated his dead reckoning that the Virgin ran about forty-five miles away downstream as the crow flies. He then sensibly doubled the length to take the river’s meanders into consideration. Explorations by the Mormons had already indicated “comparatively open country” for many miles above the Virgin’s mouth. In his pre-trip preparations, Powell had secured the diary records of the Mormon guide Jacob Hamblin, who had floated unscathed from Grand Wash just below the Canyon to the Virgin in April 1867. If they could get to Grand Wash, then the rest of the river would prove easy. By his calculation, therefore, they were quite close to getting through the Canyon.

  As river runners have now done for many decades, Powell scratched out the expedition’s location in the sand, indicating where he thought the Virgin came in, and the placement of the settlements. Although no evidence reveals Sumner’s thought processes, Powell would have wanted his buy-in. And there, in the flickering light of the small torch, peering over a crude map of sand and rocks, Sumner indicated his intention to remain on the river, a decision crucial to the expedition’s continuation. Jack had proved the field leader on the trip, quelling disaffection and keeping up morale, taking charge of the lining and portaging, and stepping into the riskiest positions as rescue or fast action demanded. He gave a mountain toughness to the group dynamics.

  Powell woke Oramel and showed him the crude map. They spoke briefly. Sumner made a pitch for him to stay. Decades later, Sumner recalled that he did what he could to “knock such notions” out of Howland’s head. “I fear that I did not make the case very strong,” he would confess—doubt that would haunt him badly for the rest of his life. But Howland’s mind was made up, even with the strongest indications that their perilous journey neared its end.

  Howland lay down again. All that night Powell paced a slight stretch of sand along the river, turning over in his mind whether to abort the expedition. He took no one else’s counsel. At one point, he decided to quit the river, but soon enough changed hi
s mind. Much later he would write that “for years I have been contemplating this trip. To leave the exploration unfinished, to say that there is a part of the canyon which I cannot explore, having already nearly accomplished it, is more than I am willing to acknowledge, and I determine to go on.”

  He woke up Walter and told him his decision, but his brother’s dedication to him he would have taken for granted. The young men, Hawkins and Hall, when shown the sand map, agreed to continue. Bradley agreed also, his innate optimism shining through. “’Tis the darkest just before the day,” he mused, “and I trust our day is about to dawn.”

  The men spoke little during their meager breakfast, nothing about the impending split that now hung ominously over the party. After breakfast, Powell asked Howland if he still intended to leave. He did. Dunn did, too. Seneca had misgivings, but agreed to go when he saw his older brother’s conviction. Three men would walk out, the remaining six having “come to the determination,” wrote Bradley, “to run the rappid or perish in the attempt.”

  They parted amicably, if sadly; “each party,” reported Powell, “thinks the other is taking the dangerous course.” Hawkins divvied up the remaining rations. Powell gave copies of the journals to Howland. The Howlands and Dunn took two rifles and a shotgun. Sumner solemnly handed Howland his pocket watch, the one article he had safeguarded through nearly three months of demanding travel, with explicit instructions to deliver it to his sister Libby Byers in Denver should he not make it back. Powell gave Oramel a letter to Emma. The Howlands and Dunn entrusted no letters to the six who were continuing on.

  Powell left Emma Dean tied to the bank, also abandoning most of their scientific equipment and collections—the broken barometers, boxes of fossils and minerals, and most of their remaining ammunition that the men who were leaving had not claimed. The boats thus lightened would prove far more buoyant, increasing their chances of surviving the cataract ahead. If they could not travel more than a few miles a day, their food would run out in the gloomy confines of their granite prison—and they would probably have no way to climb out.

  The three men soon to depart helped the others manhandle the two freight boats over a twenty-five-foot boulder and lower them into a tiny cove just below. Powell recalled a rather solemn parting. “They left us with good feelings,” recorded Bradley, “though we deeply regret their loss for they are as fine fellows as I ever had the good fortune to meet.” The trio climbed a crag to watch the others in a final gesture of goodwill.

  Powell joined Andy Hall and the cook aboard Kitty’s Sister, which then pushed off into the current, shooting along the rock wall, then dangerously grazing one large rock. Just before reaching the second fall, they pulled directly into the smooth tongue of water that poured into the mouth of the whitewater. But an unseen hole caught them, their boat filling with water, and they smacked into a giant wave. But in a second, the boat punched through the wall of water. Pulling their oars for all they were worth, Hall and Hawkins muscled Kitty’s Sister across the river with Powell shouting commands, narrowly avoiding the great, dangerous rock in mid-channel. They slammed through in little more than a minute. Maid followed the same line through the uproar; both boats escaped damage. Scouting—and hard-earned experience—had paid off with their lives.

  Below the fall, the exhilarated men signaled the Howlands and Dunn to join them, hoping they might follow in the small boat. But the trio turned away to begin their journey. Powell would name this spot Separation Rapid. “Boys left us,” he noted simply in his journal. They would never be seen again.

  All that morning the remaining two boats battled down a series of terrifying rapids, until at midafternoon they encountered yet more volcanic rock and an unrunnable section of whitewater that they would dub Lava Cliff Rapid. They determined to line the rapid by tying together several lengths of rope. Bradley volunteered to keep Maid off the rocks from within the boat. Walter and Sumner carried 130 feet of rope and scrambled up the rocky cliff, Bradley soon obscured by the overhang. With Bradley fending off the rocks and walls with his oar, the boat lurched foot by foot as the men high above paid out the rope. Maid rolled and tumbled, the now-soaked Bradley fighting for balance. In short order, as the men climbed even higher above the river, the rope ran out. Walter wrapped the end around a rock knob, while Sumner dashed back for more. Meanwhile Bradley bounced violently in Maid.

  The boat shuddered badly each time it slammed against the rock; Bradley realized that he did not have much longer. With remarkable coolness—“just as I always am, afraid while danger is approaching but cool in the midst,” as he himself admitted—Bradley unsheathed his knife, ready to sever the line, all the time desperately scanning the foaming cataract downriver for “the best channel through.” He paused for several long moments, waiting for the men above to deal him more slack, but none came. At the exact moment he leaned forward to cut the line, the force of water ripped the stem post right out of Maid’s bow with such violence that it flew thirty feet into the air, still attached to the rope.

  Like a rocket, Maid shot forward into the maelstrom, Bradley getting off a first, then a second stroke to swing the bow into the waves before the water took complete control. Just when the men above glimpsed Maid, it plunged into a deep hole and disappeared. In the next instant, Maid spat out, crested a massive standing wave, only to smash into yet another wall of water. Narrowly skirting some rocks, due more to luck than to Bradley’s flailing efforts, Maid then simply vanished into the madly foaming whitewater. “We stand frozen with fear, for we see no boat,” remembered Powell. “Bradley is gone!”

  But then, far below, a dark object emerged from the froth. Somehow the boat, with its man still in it, had come through intact. The hard-breathing Bradley waved his sodden hat in exultation. But he had not yet quite escaped; a massive whirlpool swung Maid in its steely grip. Not aware of how badly Maid might be damaged—was it in fact sinking?—Powell yelled for his brother and Sumner to get Bradley a line. In the most dangerous, impulsive decision of the trip, Powell, Hall, and Hawkins raced down the cliff face—then all jumped into Kitty’s Sister and frantically pushed off to the rescue.

  On this journey, Sumner had always been the one engineering emergency descents and rescues, but this time Powell took charge. So the one-armed Major and the expedition’s two youngest members drove right into the river’s maw, not quite able to swing their bow directly downstream. Powell realized the impetuousness of his decision the moment they smashed headlong into the first wave. He thought he had seen a line through the rapid, but the waves washed away any such plan in an instant. At the foot of holes, waves act like animate beasts: Depending on when a boat hits it—often a matter of mere seconds—a wave may let it pass, but at other times will bend a boat so forcefully as to crush and collapse it back into the hole. What exactly happened then to Kitty’s Sister was lost in the madness of the moment. Bradley watched as they came inches from dashing themselves to pieces against the rocks. Powell later would reconstruct their passage as best as he could: “A wave rolls over us and our boat is unmanageable. Another great wave strikes us, and the boat rolls over, and tumbles and tosses, I know not how.”

  Bradley, who had escaped the whirlpool, now turned to rescue the rescuers, pulling each floating man into the safety of the eddy. Only the watertight compartments of each boat had prevented it from sinking. It is doubtful whether the vessels, if heavily loaded, could have survived that awful tumult.

  They righted and bailed Kitty’s Sister, then climbed aboard and rowed over to the bank to await Sumner and Walter coming down the cliffside. Only luck had saved them this time from Powell’s most impulsive bid. Bradley, who had for months proclaimed almost every new rapid to be the worst encountered, left no doubt about this one: “It stands A-No. 1 of the trip.”

  There was nothing else to do but shake their heads and turn their drenched, aching bodies downstream once again. In two or three miles the river turned northwest and passed ou
t of the granite. By noon the following day, August 29, the cliffs dropped away, the mountains receded, and they entered a valley they knew to be the Grand Wash. They had finally left the Grand Canyon behind them, a little more than twenty-four hours since the others had started their overland journey.

  As he wrote his expedition report in the safety of his study, Powell would reach for an apt metaphor to voice the relief the entire party felt after three months of “pain and gloom and terror.” Those claustrophobic days brought to mind the time he spent in the makeshift hospital at Shiloh, battling the tides of pain from his shattered arm. It is a rare disclosure of feelings for a man who rarely acknowledged them:

  “When he who has been chained by wounds to a hospital cot until his canvas tent seems like a dungeon cell, until the groans of those who lie about tortured with probe and knife are piled up, a weight of horror on his ears that he cannot throw off, cannot forget, and until the stench of festering wounds and anesthetic drugs has filled the air with its loathsome burthen,–when he at last goes out into the open field, what a world he sees! How beautiful the sky, how bright the sunshine . . .”

  That evening they stayed up past midnight, reveling in their freedom, but deeply concerned for their three comrades. No one could dismiss the cruel irony of the situation. “Are they wandering in those depths, unable to find a way out? Are they searching over the desert lands above for water? Or are they nearing the settlements?” asked Powell.

  * * *

  On August 30, while fishing from the bank where the Virgin meets the Colorado, Brother Joseph Asey and his two sons beheld a most remarkable sight. Weeks earlier, Brigham Young had directed that Mormons building a new town at the confluence keep an eye out “for any fragments or relics of [Powell’s] party that might drift down the stream.” But here were no remnants, but an almost biblical vision of the Israelites emerging from the desert: six bearded, mostly naked men crowded into two battered boats, paddling slowly and clumsily with driftwood oars. The apparitions croaked out the question, Is this the Virgin River? It was.