From Baldy Mountain to the Sipapu

Little Colorado Adventure Trek From Baldy Mountain to the Sipapu

Text by Sam Lowe/Photography by Nick Berezenko (Left) "A true virgin wilderness undefiled by man," Captain George M. Wheeler wrote of this Mt. Baldy area of eastern Arizona in 1873. There, where the Little Colorado River is born, Nick Berezenko, below, begins his 315-mile, 36-day adventure.

(Left, bottom) Twelve miles north of Springerville, the Little Colorado River canyon opens up. Sheltered in the bottom land, cottonwoods and willows have leafed out with spring growth.

The Little Colorado River begins as a drop of melted snow high in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona, then rather casually pursues a 315-mile course through sand and brush, pine trees on mountain slopes and verdant meadows in the valleys, through sheer canyons and travertine pools and over waterfalls that surpass the famed Niagara before quietly joining the waters of the Colorado River.

Some men have tried to traverse the course of the Little Colorado; few have succeeded.

Nick Berezenko tried. And succeeded.

For 36 days in the spring of 1982, Berezenko chased an ambition. The pursuit began on top of a mountain and ended on the floor of a canyon.

Equipped with only a backpack, an inflatable raft, camera equipment, and plastic jugs filled with water, the former Park Service Ranger challenged the river's whims and emerged with a victory.

Some rivers are constant.

The Little Colorado isn't one of them. Its course has been altered by fiery eruptions of the earth, its flow is continually altered by the seasons, and its name has been altered by just about everyone.

During the wet season, it is a raging torrent of muddy water; during the other eight or nine months, it is reduced to a stream of discolored water often described as "too thin to plow but too thick to drink." And sometimes portions of it dry up completely.

When there is water in the river, it detours around a natural dam formed by the eruption of a long-dead volcano in the Merriam Crater area. A lava flow ran downhill and entered a deep canyon of the river, damming the channel so the river filled to the level of the surrounding plateau. Then it went around the lava and now cascades back into the gorge from the rim of its own canyon, creating what is now called Grand Falls, a stairstep configuration with an overall drop of 185 feet, making it 18 feet higher than American Falls between Goat Island and the New York shore at Niagara.

The river was left pretty much to its own devices until the mid-1800s. Prior to that, the changes made by man were in name only. During its recorded history, it has been known as Rio del Lino (flax river), Rio Bermejo (bright red river), Rio Jaquesila de San Pedro (the unruly little river of St. Peter) and Colorado Chiquito (little red).

What actual taming there has been of the Little Colorado began in the 1870s, when Mormon Church leaders selected a group to spearhead the colonization of northern Arizona.

The early settlers came to a country described as "desolate beyond description. As the years passed, it proved to be a land of extremes, with alternating periods of droughts and floods, undependable seasons, and devastating spring winds."

But some of the pioneers struggled through, and today their descendants bear witness to their tenacity and courage in such river towns as St. Johns and Woodruff.

From its beginnings high on the snowcovered slopes of Mt. Baldy, to its confluence with the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, Nick Berezenko hiked and photographed the entire 315-mile course of the Little Colorado River. The trek took 36 days, from May 7, to June 11, 1982.

(Left) Vince Butler, cattleman. "Very early one morning, I came upon this hardy rancher putting out hay," says Berezenko. "His grandmother, Molly Butler, pioneered the Greer area in the 1870s!" (Below) After trekking 18 miles through winter-like snow and cold, Berezenko comes across a mare and her foal, at the South Fork of the Little Colorado, reminding him that it's actually springtime in the world at large.

Yet although the settlers adjusted to the river, they were not successful in their effort to conquer it. In that struggle, the river's instability was its greatest defense, and even today, its chances of being weakened to the extent of its larger namesakethe Colorado River-are minimal.

But Berezenko was well aware of the river's caprices long before he challenged it.

Chronologically, the seeds of his odyssey were planted as early as 1978, when he read an article about the Little Colorado in Arizona Highways. He had spent three years as a Park Ranger in the Grand Canyon and frequently looked at the Little Colorado from a vantage point at Desert View.

"Hiking to the gloomy depths of the narrow, twisted gorge promised to be something quite different from the open, sunlit grandeur of the main canyon, and I knew someday I'd have to get down there," Berezenko remembers.

A year later, he left the Park Service to become a newspaper photographer. In 1982, unable to withstand the lure of the Little Colorado any longer, he quit his job and began making preparations for his hike.

Having made his decision, he found himself in an instant dilemma, caused by the fickleness of the river.

Because the river is dry most of the year, Berezenko logically feared he wouldn't be able to find water if he went during that time period. But on the other hand, when the river does run, the lower gorge would be impossible to walk because anyone caught between the narrow walls would be swept away by the angry water.

Berezenko weighed the available information and selected April to make a reconnaissance run in a four-wheeler.

Utilizing the information gained on that junket and the knowledge he had previously acquired, he made his final plans.

And on May 7, 1982, clad in snow gear, he set out for the top of Mount Baldy.

"I wanted to experience the way nature built the river," he said. "To follow one drop of water all the way from the very top of the mountain down into the river and in the river, until it melts into the Colorado."

As he stood atop the 11,590-foot mountain, his thoughts turned to what lay before him: "Somewhere out there, the Little Colorado was flowing to its destiny in the desert, where I would soon be following it. But right there, under the mantle of frozen snow beneath my feet, drop by melting drop the river was being born."

And thus his journey began.

At the base of the mountain, the river assumed the first of its many transformations, turning into a brook which bounced along for 10 miles until it reached Greer and graduated into a frothy torrent.

By that time, the river had worked its charm on Berezenko, and he became hopelessly entrapped.

"Rivers are mysteries in themselves," he said. "We only see them when we cross them on a bridge. They're truncated. Yet I

Little Colorado Adventure Trek

(Right) Berezenko peers through what remains of a window frame in a derelict cabin near St. Johns. Area pioneers considered the region a land of extremes “...with alternating periods of drouths and floods, undependable seasons, and devastating spring winds....” (Opposite page) On May 3, during his automobile reconnaissance of the area, Berezenko saw Grand Falls after a soaking thunderstorm. On June 1, when he reached the falls during the actual hike, only large pools of water remained, continuing on for 12 miles to Black Falls. “Then they too ran out.” have always wondered what lies beyond the next bend. What is the river like along the way? How does it change? How is it transmuted? I wanted to be able to experience that-from the beginning to the end.” Despite such thoughts, doubt was a frequent companion from the outset until about the halfway point. “Water was the theme,” he said. “When I found out that there wasn't water where I had been told there would be, I began questioning whether it was worth it. “Other times, in a dry river bed, the tamarisk trees would be so thick that I'd have to crawl through them on my hands and knees. “They extended back from the river almost a half-mile in some places, so I had to ask myself: If I need water and there are pools underneath the trees, can I withstand the task of getting the water from them?” But he persisted, sometimes through sheer determination, other times because it was easier to go forward than turn around. And by the time he reached Holbrook, the doubts were gone. “I knew then I'd be all right,” he says. “I told myself, 'Yeah. I can do it.'” When Berezenko reached Sunset Crossing, about 20 miles south of Winslow, he had already been through what he called “a desert that had exploded into summer.

The days were now stiflingly hot, and the river, temporarily amplified by tributary creeks carrying runoff from the Mogollon Rim, was a wide and sluggish weave of gooey mud and sand... impossible to walk in, difficult to get around. “The three days it took me to get to Winslow were absolute hell. I got hit with everything-mosquitoes, quicksand, tamarisk so thick the only way to get through it was to crawl on all fours, (and) one night, I was engulfed in a tremendous lightning storm.” In a sense, his words echoed those of Martha Summerhayes, who, as a young Army wife, spent four years (1874-1878) in the wilds of Arizona and gave a graphic description of her encounter with the Little Colorado in her book Vanished Arizona. “The morning of the 28th of April dawned shortly after midnight, as mornings in Arizona generally do at that season,” she wrote, and a Mexican guide was assigned to ford the Little Colorado to determine whether the wagons could safely cross what was already known as Sunset Crossing.

“First they hitched the ten mules to one of the heavily loaded baggage-wagons, the teamster cracked his whip and in they went,” her narrative continues. “But the quicksand frightened the leaders and they lost their courage. Now when a mule loses courage in the water, he puts his head

(Above) Near Tolchaco, on the Navajo Reservation, Berezenko has a surprise encounter with his first and only rattler. Confused by its coloration, he fails to identify it and moves on. (Right) "This little fellow, a collared lizard, stayed quite motionless, waiting for the sun to warm him and his rock!"

Little Colorado Adventure Trek

Though Berezenko would spend the next month by himself, he was never alone. "All along the hike, from the first day out, I'd been having marvelous contacts with people," he said. "Most everyone was extremely friendly and eager to help." A postmistress opened her windows early so he could mail a package; a rancher offered him a ride to Springerville; a young couple invited him in for an early breakfast. At St. Johns, Keith Udall, a descendent of David King Udall, the bishop who founded the Mormon part of the town, versed him in the town's history and folklore, and a young couple honeymooning on a ranch replenished his water supply 50 miles from Holbrook. North of Winslow, shortly after entering the Navajo Reservation, he was offered another ride, this time by a group of Indians. And at Leupp, the Chee clan befriended the intrepid hiker, fed him, and took him to a quaint Anasazi ruin along the Little Colorado's shores. "What struck me most about the Chees was their obvious reverence for the land around them," Berezenko wrote later. "As Gilbert (one of the sons) put it, 'The Navajo way is to seek the pattern of all things. Not to change it, but to find its beauty and live in harmony with it.' " At this point, one major adversity was already behind him. It was the result of a language barrier. "I had iodine tablets along to purify the water, of course, but I didn't need them from the mountain to Greer because the water was fresh, cold, and clear. But from Springerville on down, I got worried because the river water had a lot of froth on it. I knew there were cattle along that stretch, so I thought I'd try to get along without river water. I checked my maps and there was supposed to be water near some place called Richville. When I got there, I found a clear little spring right in a batch of cottonwoods. The map said they were the Salado Springs." Overjoyed at such a find, Berezenko filled the two plastic hospital IV bottles he carried, without sampling the water. "The springs looked so fresh and beautiful, I guess it never occurred to me to check them. There's a rule I heard once that says you can trust the water if there's anything living in it. I saw one little bug swimming around, so I filled up. "I suppose I should have guessed that it might not be good water, but I thought 'salado' meant 'salad' or 'green' or 'fresh' or something like that." He would discover the next day what most Arizonans learn in a hurry-"salado" is the Spanish word for "salty."

"I noticed it right away when I started drinking the water," he says now. Then he compounded the error. "All along, I'd been pouring Wyler's (a packaged lemonade mix) into my drinking water to make it taste better, and when it didn't help the water from Salado Springs, I thought maybe the lemonade had gone bad, so I added some chocolate. That didn't help either." Looking back, he adds: "The funny part is that there I was, walking along perfectly good water in the river, and drinking salt water." He would drink river water, purified, for most of the remainder of the trip. A leaky air mattress caused him the only other major trauma. He'd picked it up in Cameron because his advance information had alerted him to the difficulty of traversing a river bank when the bank is 1500-feet high-and it goes straight up. "The sides of the canyons were pinched in by sheer drops, sort of like a funnel," he says. "There are sheer sandstone walls on either side, and I got to thinking that if a flood came along, it would be 75-feet high. "There's a feeling that you are descending to the bottom of the earth, and that night, as I camped in the Hellhole, I felt like I was in New York City but there weren't any lights on." On his first night out of Cameron, Berezenko elected to treat himself to a night off the thin Insulite blanket that had been his sole protection against the ground since he started. He blew up the mattress, flopped down on it, and apparently punctured it. It was too late to go back to Cameron for another one, so he decided to risk using the mattress he had. The mattress was a necessity in floating across the pools formed by the sandbars that populate the canyons. Strapping all his equipment to his back, he pushed the mattress in front of him from bar to bar to get him across areas where the water went above his head. "The first time, it worked fine," he said. "And it worked two or three times after that. But then I got into an area where the pools were getting larger, the walls were getting higher, and the water was flowing into the river so fast that it was building up terraces, and the terraces were causing rapids. "I got caught in some of the rapids, and they swept me down around a bend where the water had undercut the wall. My legs were sweeping out from under me; I didn't know what was beyond the next turn, it's 100 yards across the pool, and all I can hear is a hissing sound because my mattress is leaking."

Eventually, he managed to pull himself aboard the mattress and flail his way across by using both arms as sculling mechanisms. And so went the day, for seven sunspangled, blue-shaded, agonizing, glorious miles. By evening, the canyon had widened. Long strings of terraces regularly bridged the river, and Berezenko was able to put away the mattress and move along the bank, clambering on the rock-strewn slope of the shale that the river had entered. The sheer walls of the limestone layer, that had produced the pools, formed a wide avenue, and the river flowed down the middle. And in the shade, the light reflecting off the red-stained walls created

Little Colorado Adventure Trek

(Right) Berezenko was befriended by the Chee family on the Navajo Reservation. "They took me to an out-of-the-way Anasazi ruin perched on a bluff over the river. Many such tiny ruins dot the course of the river in this stretch." (Opposite page) In the Hellhole, Lower Gorge. Berezenko remarks: "The pools are hammered sheets of gold in the quiet dark. The mood is one of silence and enchantment." In the 57-milelong gorge, the river cuts into Kaibab limestone, and the layering of one age of rock upon another, he finds, is basically the same as in the Grand Canyon. an image of translucence, as if it were coming through stained glass.

"The water was brilliant blue, caused by the minerals, and it flowed down the white banks, over the travertine fans and the mineral deposits. It was almost too much to take in.

"There were golden carp swimming in water so clear that it resembled a huge goldfish bowl.

"I felt I was walking down the aisle of a magnificent cathedral," Berezenko said Later. "And then, the Little Colorado extended its benediction... a heavenly smell wafted up the cool drafts of the canyon. It was mesquite and camel thorn blossom, but for me, it was incense.

"It was one of the few times I missed having someone with me," Berezenko says. "I wanted to share the beauty."

But, as common to all things of grandeur, the magnificence also saddened him.

For practical purposes, his journey was over. He had made it to a point less than six miles from the confluence of the Little Colorado and Colorado rivers, and would finish his odyssey in two more days.

But the advent of a return to civilizationtion did not dim the spectacle that awaited him.

The next day, as his allotted time and the river ran out simultaneously, Berezenko realized a secondary goal, one that he had set months before.

"It's called the Sipapu," he explains. "It's a big travertine mound by the side of

of the river, and the Hopi Indians believe that the ancestors of the human race came from the underworld through it. They also believe that the spirits of their deceased linger in the area. "But the maps I had didn't show it, so I was really worried about missing it." His concern was without foundation. The Sipapu found him. "It was about 9:00 a.m., while one side of the canyon was in sunlight and the other shaded," he says. "Then the sun came across the cliff and illuminated the Sipapu. "I felt like I was watching the beginning of the world. There I was... at the dawning of time." Berezenko's 36-day voyage into the partially-known ended on June 11, after he hitched a ride with a river boat and walked out of the Grand Canyon.

He isn't the first human being to make the journey. But he is secure in the knowledge that he is a member of a minority. A very small minority roaming the world under the pseudonyms of Adventurer, Explorer, Vanishing Breed, The Curious. Those who can say, with justifiable pride, "...I have cast aside the shackles of convention and pursued my vision...."