by Will Hobbs
Star and Adam took their places in the front, got their holds. They looked back for instructions. “No bump run for us,” I said. “I’m gonna use my Scoot, like the dory did, only I know what I’m shootin’ for. If I do it right, we’re going to go over a little pourover. There’s gonna be a big snap.”
“Got it,” they said.
I was already rowing out into the river, farther out than any of Canyon Magic’s boatmen had gone. The River Thunder turned up, up, up. If sound could kill, we were dead.
We saw Troy drop sideways over the horizon line. He was right where he wanted to be when he dropped from our vision. Good luck, Troy, I thought as I started to race down the right-hand side of the current line.
Stand up. Look over the brink. Find that marker and that pourover. There they are.
Something caught my eye where I shouldn’t be looking. Troy’s raft going over down in the hole! He’d flipped!
Nothing you can do about that. Sit down. Focus. Cock the stern downstream. Row!
I was over deep water, out in the river but not too far out. I kept pulling with long, deep strokes, building up speed to the right as I looked over my shoulder. I was approaching the brink. Suddenly we were over the edge, off the tongue and plummeting. I kept my angle and kept rowing hard. Over my right shoulder I could see the pourover and my cairn on the shore. I kept rowing with fast, shallow strokes, flying down the steepest pitch of the rapid. We were right on line to crunch the pourover with the back of the boat. “Hang on!” I yelled, and lifted the oar blades high out of the water.
I braced myself. Despite the rigidity of the raft, we took a violent snap and I was pitched onto my back. But I felt the momentum pulling us through the small hole below the pourover, and I still had my oars. Struggling back up, I saw we were virtually on the shore, with the lateral wave coming up fast. The raft’s stern was so close to the shore, all I had to do was take a few shallow strokes. We shot through the beginning of the lateral where it was soft.
We were safe.
For a moment I rested, immensely relieved and in awe of the hole in Crystal, so close at hand, as well as the three-story wave breaking back into it. Then I started to row. “Where are they?” I yelled.
“Can’t see ’em!” Adam yelled back. “You just row!”
I started working to the right. Crystal was long, like Hance. There were holes to be avoided, I could see, all across the center. I kept working right and got into a big rolling wave train down the right side. Star pointed. “There they are! Ahead of us, way over on the left by the cliff!”
I caught a glimpse of the black bottom of Troy’s raft. Two people had pulled themselves up on it, but not the third. A major hole at the bottom of the wave train caught my eye. I started working to avoid it.
Troy’s boat was at least a hundred yards ahead of us, where the river narrowed again, and it was moving fast. I spun mine around to face downstream and pulled hard to catch up.
“There’s Rita!” Star yelled. “She’s out in the river, way in front of their raft!”
Riding the overturned raft with Pug, Troy waved for me to catch up. No matter how hard I pulled, I couldn’t gain on them. Star was looking at the mile-by-mile guide. She said Tuna Creek Rapid was going to come up soon after we rounded the bend.
We rounded the bend and I could hear the noise coming from that next rapid. Then we saw boats on the shore, at the head of the eddy before the rapid. It was Canyon Magic, poised to catch Rita and our flipped raft behind her.
We caught the eddy and I managed to beach the boat. I was completely spent. On the shore, I fell in a heap while Adam tied off to a boulder.
Troy’s boat was brought to shore next to the two of theirs that had flipped. One was already in the process of being righted. Canyon Magic was all business putting warm clothes on everybody who’d swum, and turning boats over. Shivering despite a rain-top and a wool cap, all Rita had to say was, “I’m alive, Jessie.”
“Nobody’s hypothermic,” I heard Gail saying. “I’m just glad we had so many boats upright, especially the first couple, and that it’s so hot out. Nobody was in the water more than about five minutes.”
Adam, Star, and I went to help pull on the flip lines. Troy and Pug joined us. I took that for a good sign, even though Troy wasn’t making eye contact with me and Pug was glassy-eyed. Kit, wearing a fleece jacket, was everywhere at once, making sure all the passengers were all right. I asked Ray if she was always the trip leader. “We rotate,” he said. “This trip it was her turn.”
As soon as the last raft was turned over, Kit raised her voice so everyone could hear. “There’s a high-water camp at Mile 103,” she announced. “It should only take us half an hour on this current to get there. We’re going to read ‘n’ run Tuna, Lower Tuna, and the first three of the Jewels—Agate, Sapphire, and Turquoise. Let’s get down to 103 before it gets late on us. Full moon tonight, everybody. Let’s have an ABC party!”
“American Broadcasting Company?” a man called.
“Alive Below Crystal!”
As we were launching, Kit ran over and shook my hand. “I want to hear all about your run when we get to 103!”
Shortly after running Turquoise, I spotted a straw hat snagged on a tammie along the shore, in the eddy. I realized it was Kit’s. We beached so I could walk upstream and get it. At that point all the Canyon Magic boats were ahead of me and Troy was right behind—at least he had been as we’d rounded the previous bend. But as we pulled back into the current, Troy still hadn’t caught up. We were so close to camp, we decided to wait for him there.
“Should we unload?” Adam wondered when we joined Canyon Magic at 103.
I was looking anxiously upstream. “I don’t know. Let’s not do anything until we can figure out what’s going on with Troy. Kinda long for a pit stop. I hope nothing’s happened.…”
“He’s probably airing out his head,” Star guessed.
Canyon Magic’s boatmen and customers had made short work of unloading their boats. Kit waved me over to hers and handed me a fruit drink from her drag bag. She was sitting cross-legged on the big deck in the front. “Now, tell me about your run, Jessie.”
“I was afraid to do the bump run,” I confessed. “I just aimed for that little pourover with a downstream ferry and it worked.”
“Right over it?”
“Right over it. Fast.”
She laughed. “Next time I run Crystal at 70,000, I think I’ll try that!”
“Was it awful in the hole?” I asked her. “It looked like you were down for a long time.”
“Was it ever dark down there. I won’t lie to you—it was bad, real scary. I was beginning to wonder, I’ll tell you. Something to tell the grandkids, I guess, if I ever have any. It was definitely an experience in life, but not one to be recommended.”
“Have you flipped before this?”
“Never on the Grand. I suppose if I had one coming, there’s some consolation that it was Crystal at 70,000 that got me. It’s a tough, tough level. I’m real concerned about what could happen to other people there—I just hope the water comes down fast now.”
Troy’s boat came into view. Strangely, he wasn’t stroking toward shore. Pug and Rita were looking right at us, but Troy wasn’t pulling over. I jumped up and said, “You guys okay?”
“We’re fine,” Troy called. “Going to find a camp. Hey, Canyon Magic—thanks a lot! Appreciate it!”
Kit said to me, “I thought you were going to camp with us tonight.”
“So did I, but we never really discussed it among ourselves. I guess Troy figured we’d worn out our welcome.”
Troy was already too far past to be able to pull over for the camp. So much for democracy, I thought.
“Well, I better catch up,” I said. Then I suddenly remembered Kit’s hat. “Wait a second, I’ve got something of yours.”
I ran down to my boat and fetched it. Kit was tickled to see her beat-up old friend. She was about to put it on her head, then sudd
enly put it on mine. “I want you to have it,” she said, and snugged it down.
When I started to protest, she said it had been given to her, and now was the time to pass it on. “Got backup headgear in my bag,” she said. “Really, keep it. Hang on to it in Lava, though!”
A couple of minutes later, Star had the rope coiled up; we were just about to go. Suddenly Kit came running over with a little piece of paper in her hand, and stepped onto the raft. “We might not see you again,” she said. “We’re so far ahead of schedule, we’re going to be doing a lot of long hikes now, and at least one layover.”
I looked at the piece of paper. It was her name, Kit Herrera, as well as her address in Flagstaff and her phone number. “I’ve talked to the rest of the guides,” she explained. “We want you to think about swamping for us sometime.”
Chapter
18
It was nine in the morning. The shade was still on the gorge, but it wouldn’t be for long. I had found a comfortable spot molded to fit my body in the polished formations at the river’s edge. My perch jutted into the river barely upstream of our miraculous cove-camp with its plentiful sand and giant tamarisks.
I’d been sitting in my riverside perch since seven-thirty with no thought to rouse anybody or to do anything except enjoy the occasional canyon wren and the surging and gurgling sounds of the river. I was keeping track of the golden morning light as it descended the sandstones and limestones, visible once again now that the gorge was breaking up and starting to tail back into the river.
Alive Below Crystal. We were ten miles below Crystal, at Mile 108. None of us could have guessed we’d have this kind of luck, to land in an unclaimed paradise, maybe the best camp we’d seen the entire trip.
Looking upstream, I was surprised to see a flash of yellow boats coming down the river. Canyon Magic, I realized. As usual, they’d made an early start.
The guides had the bows of the boats pointed downstream and they were pushing on the oars with a beautiful motion very much like pedaling a bicycle. I dared to imagine I might be in that lineup one day.
They floated by all in a row, soundlessly pushing downriver. No one called out to break the trance of the morning, and I didn’t call to them. I just gave each of the boats a wave and a smile. But when Kit came by, she yelled out, “See you on the river, Jessie!”
I took off her hat and waved it. “See you on the river!”
As soon as the sun hit the cove, it became another broiling hot day. Rita wanted another day off from bossing breakfast. Adam and I made a mountain of French toast. Nobody was talking about Crystal or the events of the day before, or what was to come. Troy was moody; so were Pug and Rita. It was going to take a while for the effects of their horrendous swims to begin to wear off. Everyone was relieved that no one wanted to get back on the river. It was nice to have something we were so completely agreed upon: laying over and resting.
As Star and I were putting away the dishes, we heard Rita yell, “Hey, you guys! Come see this! Somebody left a big plastic lizard!”
Everybody went over to see her plastic lizard. It was about a foot long from nose to tail, with a yellow head, two black bands around its neck, and bright turquoise-blue beads all over its body.
“Totally lifelike,” I commented.
“It’s mine,” Rita said.
As she was speaking, the lizard turned its head and eyeballed us, then blinked.
Rita jumped back and shrieked, in spite of herself. “It’s alive!”
Troy had just turned away and was looking at something. “Check out the junk coming down the river.”
Adam squinted. “Airplane crash?”
We ran down to the rock formations along the river to see what it was. A white lid from a huge cooler, a red dry bag, a yellow boat cushion, none of it within reach. “Crystal,” Troy said.
More and more flotsam came down the river, and it wasn’t long before we heard the sound of a motor upstream. It was two motor rigs, and as they came into view we could tell that something was terribly wrong. The first raft had forty or fifty people jammed onto it. The second raft had only the shredded remains of its huge frame and big boxes. It was carrying only one passenger plus the motorman.
As they pulled into the cove, we went running down through the tammies to meet them.
What we found, I’ll never forget—a boatload full of people in deep shock. Some of them were moaning, a few were crying out in pain, but mostly they just looked lost, utterly disoriented and helpless. Some of them looked old—they could have been in their seventies. I saw all kinds of people with bandages, and blood showing through the bandages. The eyes of the boatman tossing Pug the line were as big as grapefruit.
The second boat, parking alongside, was a total wreck. A woman tossed Adam a line. She lowered herself off the front of the raft onto the beach and ran over to help with the passengers. “What can we do?” I asked.
“We got people with advanced hypothermia. Help ’em into the sun, away from the river.”
“I’ve taken all the classes for E.M.T.,” Adam told her. “Let me help you.”
“Work with Sam,” she told him, “the guy with the red bandanna around his neck. Help him get the first-aid stuff off the boat. We’ve got a major triage situation here, and we’ve lost the first-aid stuff from two out of our three boats. Treat for shock; we need to get some splints going.”
“Got it,” Adam said calmly.
Three boats? I wondered. I was only looking at two.
The rest of us started helping people onto the shore and steered them up to the rock outcrops where it was real hot. Some of them couldn’t move under their own power; they were so cold they weren’t even shaking. Some were muttering incoherently, some couldn’t speak at all. I saw people with their arms askew—fractures or dislocated shoulders, I guessed. There was a man still on the raft with a sharply broken bone sticking out below his knee, and a woman next to him stretched out flat with a bandaged head.
A boatman sprinting through camp with an ammo can in one hand and a two-way radio in the other ran by our sleeping bags under the tammies. He recruited Star to take our bags as well as any other warm stuff we could get our hands on to the people on the rocks. “Watch out they don’t burn their legs on those rocks,” he said. “Got any bail buckets?” he yelled at me.
“Two,” I answered. “And two spares with stuff packed in ’em.”
“We can use everything you’ve got. Even big pots and pans. We’ve radioed for helicopters—just got through about fifteen minutes ago. There’s a landing spot right above you here, and I’m going to put an orange X on the spot for the choppers. We need to wet down that whole area to keep the sand from blowing. Anything that’ll carry water …”
He ran up toward the flats above camp. We recruited passengers who were able to help, a dozen or so, and got a bucket brigade going.
Of their six guides, two were hypothermic themselves and out of commission. The boatman with the radio was on the hill making his X, another was staying on the boat with two people who couldn’t be moved, and two, along with Adam, were giving first aid to the people in the sun.
As soon as we had the area on top wetted down, Rita realized that people were probably getting dehydrated. She ran for the five-gallon water cooler off the motor rig and told me to grab all our frozen lemonade from the dry-ice freezer on Troy’s boat. There were a half dozen large cans in there, not frozen anymore but still cold. The lemonade mixed up fast. Rita had me throw all our drinking cups into one of our big pots, and she started off with the water cooler in one hand and the pot full of cups in the other.
I ran over to the triage area, where Adam was splinting a man’s forearm. Star was rocking an elderly woman whose eyes were fixated on her. “What’s your name?” the woman asked in a weak voice.
“Star.”
“Star,” she repeated. “Star … Star-bright.”
As people warmed up, Troy and Pug and I helped them into the shade of the tammies. We cou
ld hear the chop-chop-chop of the first helicopter coming in. Green and white with the letters NPS emblazoned on the side, it flew down the gorge and made straight for the landing spot. It kicked up a terrific amount of wind and some sand as well, despite all the water that had been dumped up there.
“I found out what happened to them up at Crystal,” Pug told us. “Their first rig flipped, and everybody from that raft ended up swimming a couple miles. That rig is still hung up on some rocks below Crystal. Their second rig surfed real bad in the hole. Their third rig came in right on top of it—wiped it out bad, and that’s where people really got hurt. Some of the people from those two boats went into the river, too.”
The two passengers who were hurt worst were stretchered up the hill. The helicopter took off a few minutes later. We raced to wet the area down again. Five minutes later we heard the second helicopter coming down the gorge. The boatman who was up there told us to stand back in the tammies. We helped with the next three people to be evacuated.
As it landed, the helicopter made a terrific amount of noise. A nurse stepped out, and behind him a ranger in a Park Service uniform and hat. The evacuees were walked, crouching under the rotor blades, and helped into the helicopter. The helicopter took off; the ranger stayed behind and began to survey the situation on the beach.
We had to keep the water coming to the landing spot—it kept drying out fast in the full sun. Troy was fading. Rita told him he wasn’t drinking enough water. I took a good look and noticed he wasn’t even sweating. “I already have a mother,” he told her. “And one is one too many.”
“Testy,” she said. “Needs hydrotherapy.”
We were all on our way down to take a plunge in the cove when the ranger signaled us and said, “You’re a private group, I take it.”
“We’re legal,” Troy replied defensively.
The ranger smiled. “I’m sure you are. I wanted to thank you for helping out here. They can use all the help they can get. You the permit holder?”
