River Runner

Great News from the Grand Canyon!

Late, heavy snow. Slow melt in the Rockies. Then, unusually hot weather. Abruptly in June, 1983, a record gush of muddy water surged down the Colorado River causing $50 million in damage to federal facilities and more than $10 million to private property in Arizona. El Toro Colorado. The Red Bull. In its greatest flood of a century, the Colorado reminded the American Southwest of the days when that river could doze as a tiny trickle and overnight stampede out of its banks to destroy entire towns.And while media saturated the airwaves with news about flood disaster below Hoover Dam, the upriver section was quietly forgotten. That upriver section is Arizona's number one scenic attraction: The Grand Canyon. What effect was the 90,000 cubic feet per second roar of water having on the Canyon's magnificent wilderness which every season sends thousands from every state and as many foreign countries to rafting the great river. Was it all suddenly -irrevocably-all washed up?

Great News

The amount of water that each hour rushes through Glen Canyon's giant turbines in northern Arizona and then races on into the Grand Canyon depends on the Southwest's varying demands for hydroelectric power. Cool days when desert air conditioners ease off, volume of water shrinks to 1000 cubic feet each second (cfs). During hot spells it can rise to 31,000 cfs. But for 20 years, from the time Glen Canyon Dam was finished in 1963 until the early summer weeks of 1983, the rule-of-thumb average was about 14,000 to 15,000 cfs.

Over the years those became dependable figures to plan by. But in June, 1983, unprecedented run-off in the Rocky Mountains required officials at the dam to release, for a time, up to 90,000 cfs-six times the annual average. Colorado River boatmen rafting tourists through the Grand Canyon were suddenly confronted by a river completely outside their experience. Beyond creating immediate emergencies, what effects would the roaring flood have on the river's future?

Consider a single example. Under the force of 90,000 cfs of water, the standing wave below the notorious "hole" in Crystal Rapid burst explosively upward to nearly the height of a three-story building and then curled thunderously back on itself. Thirty-seven-foot-long pontoon rafts turned over when they tried to plow through. Baggage and travelers were strewn for miles, the latter clinging to whatever projections they could lay hold of. Intensive and skillful work by National Park Service helicopters rescued approximately 132 of them. Boats skirting the hole picked up others. Despite concentrated efforts by dedicated professionals, one traveler drowned and 15 were injured.

When the discharge of water from Glen Canyon Dam reached 92,000 cfs, the Park Service suspended launchings. Forty-eight hours later, when it seemed no new problems were arising, the suspension was ended. Then, as the water slowly receded, boatmen began wondering what longrange effect the catastrophe would have on the riverine environment and sandy beaches that together account for much of the Canyon's wilderness charm.Background is necessary here. Prior to completion of Glen Canyon Dam, three parallel belts of vegetation were clearly distinguishable on the slopes above the river. Small ephemeral plants that were scoured out by the floods that swept down the canyon each spring were at river level. Next, just above the highwater line, grew clumps of small, thorned trees-gnarled mesquite and catclaw acacia, with short, curved, piercing thorns.

Intermingled were beavertail and prickly pear cactus and Apache plume, a bush with small white flowers that develop into handsomely crested seed heads. Still higher and widely spaced among the talus boulders are brittle bush, barrel cactus, and, in the lower sections of the canyon, ocotillo and creosote bushes.

When Glen Canyon Dam brought a 20-year pause to high spring floods, a new green belt of tamarisk (salt cedar) and willow took over the stabilized river margin.

Not everyone loves tamarisk: clumps of tall, thin stems and twiggy branches supporting tiny, scale-like leaves. In spring the outer ends of the branches are tufted with pale lavender blooms that produce such incredible numbers of seeds they ride breezes like a palpable mist.

Imported from the Mediterranean at the end of the last century to help control desert erosion (and to furnish ornamental borders around desert landscapes), the tamarisk exploded along the Colorado into impenetrable riverbank thickets that can burst into devastating wildfires but also deny campsites to river voyagers. The plant does furnish a rich habitat for many kinds of native wildlife. For example, an expanded Grand Canyon bird population, especially warblers and vireos, who nest in its dense branches.

Then came the spring flood, and for adventurers who resumed river running while the water levels of 1983 were still abnormally high, a marked change in the environment appeared: the once-persistent tamarisk had all but vanished. They decided the roaring floodwaters uprooted the massed clumps. But investigations during early August, when water volume dropped to about 40,000 cfs, threw doubt on those speculations.

Most of the tamarisk clumps, it seemed, broke off rather than uprooted and were beginning to sprout. More significantly, unharmed patches still stood in moist places beside high sandbars or back in bends of occasional side streams, ready to grow and scatter new billions of seeds. But native Comments and questions from around the state, the nation, and the world.

YOURS SINCERELY

The just received September, 1983, issue brings sharply to mind an old saying which seems strikingly appropriate: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

From east of the sun, west of the moon, and from out where the morning stars sing together, I orbit Telstars sparkling with congratulations to all the staff, to Pam Hait, and to Robert McCall on the supreme September, 1983, edition of Arizona Highways.

Each page is like a Saturn 5 rocket boosting my mind into new orbits of joy and excitement.

What a thrilling way to help celebrate our country's Silver Jubilee in Space.

On January 31, 1958, Explorer 1, America's first satellite, was put into orbit. Although Explorer 1 weighed only thirtyone pounds, this tiny moonlet announced to the world that America had entered the Space Age.

You may be certain that I'll be making use of this September issue again and again in my science classes.

The one painting, above all others, that has me completely fascinated is the one that spreads across the top half of pages 8 and 9.

Thanks for giving us a universe that is "optimistic, fantastic, and gee whiz!"

Don't you think we get enough of space ships and shuttles on TV and the media?

Congratulations on your September issue which is a real delight to the eyes! Never before have I seen reproductions of art work in outer space that are so appealing in form and color. I have enclosed a bank draft for an extra 12 copies which I would like to distribute to my friends.

Let the space age stay in that kind of magazine. It doesn't belong in the usually beautiful Arizona Highways.

September issue out of this worldartwork, photographs, and page layouts terrific!

The gentleman may be a good science fiction artist, but that is not what I purchase the magazine for. Especially the part where he thinks he can improve on nature.

I have just finished a copy of your magazine (September, 1983) and i just love it!!! It's nice to see a great artist like Mr. McCall receive much deserved recognition.

You have ruined it. Maybe you are a good friend of James Watt!

There has never been a better looking or better reading issue, in my estimation, in the history of the magazine. This is said with some care, since I have a collection of the magazines which extends back to the first issue.

The colorful and imaginative layout deserves special note, and the modern style should not alienate those who have read the magazine faithfully over the years. All the best components of Arizona High-ways are well-represented the color, top quality writing, and historical perspective.

All in all, truly the finest Arizona High-ways Magazine ever produced.

Tradition is fine, but what a knock-out the September issue is.

How dare Mr. McCall deface the natural beauty of the Grand Canyon with his painting, Grand Canyon, from the South Rim.

Your September issue is breathtaking! I would very much like to get some reprints of Robert McCall's paintings.

Give us the Arizona we all enjoy: back trails, Indians, history, deserts, ghost towns, and places to travel to besides space.

I have just received the September, 1983, Arizona Highways, and I am just enchanted with this issue as with the previous issues.

There's probably a place for such but not in Arizona Highways!

Thank you for your September, 1983, issue. It's always a refreshing experience!

I hope you never again issue a number so far removed from the traditional historical and scenic material as the cover story of the September issue.

Fine September issue.

Shame on you!

I enjoyed the September issue of Arizona Highways and am interested in obtaining some prints of Robert McCall's paintings.

I don't find fault with the work of the space artist-I just object to finding it in Arizona Highways.

Regarding the September, 1983, issue of Arizona Highways, does Robert McCall sell posters of his art work? I just totally love your magazine!

text continued from page 35 willows also were reasserting themselves, and this time the battle may not swing so solidly in favor of tamarisk, which will also please the canyon's beaver, who delight in a diet of willow bark. Another surprise: floodwaters rose gradually and beaver, mice, wood rats, ground squirrels, lizards, and a variety of insects climbed to safety ahead of it. But what of the birds that nested in the tamarisk thickets? They may have been lucky. If normal schedules prevailed, their eggs should have hatched well before the inundation, and the fledglings perhaps were able to escape. Certainly we saw a few young Lucy warblers and Bell's vireos, though without being able even to guess whether the numbers were in any way representative of the birds' rate of survival. What reduction in preferred habitat will mean, for at least a few years, is still undetermined. Only careful research will generate firm answers about the adaptations the riverine birds have been and will be able to make. Birds nesting above the waterline have been largely unaffected. Their food supplies appear little changed. Sandbars were the greatest surprise. They are crucial to successful Grand Canyon trips. They are the only comfortable places to sleep, and in addition river runners like to camp on natural beaches where there is no crowding. Yet the number of sandbars in the Canyon has always been limited, particularly in the narrower sections of the gorge. Those bars that did exist before the flood were already threatened with extinction as a result of the building of Glen Canyon Dam.

Lake Powell is a huge sediment trap. The clear green water that pours out of it transports only about 15 percent as much particulate matter as the turbid Colorado carried in pre-dam days. Though thunderstorms will sometimes send thick flash floods down the Canyon's tributaries and cause red mudfalls to spout over the rims of the cliffs, these additions add little to the freight of sand which the river continually drops into slowly revolving eddies below rapids or into the slack water beside the soaring cliffs. Thus by the 1970s it was clear that beaches immediately below Lees Ferry (put-in point for all river trips) were eroding faster than they could be rebuilt by the altered river. As the process continued inexorably downstream, doomsayers predicted river runners would soon be reserving beach space much as other travelers reserve motel rooms. And if any single thing could spoil the Grand Canyon as a wilderness experience, that limitation would. Consequently the first people to ride 1983's high water regarded each patch of sand they saw

38/Arizona Highways Magazine

Great News

With anxiety. Were those disintegrating beaches now likely to be washed completely away? Concern slowly abated. By the time water levels dropped to 40,000 cfs, it was evident more beaches were created than destroyed. Throughout the flooding tremendous exchanges of sand took place. For example, the beloved bar at the mouth of Monument Creek was chewed to pieces (its delta of rocks creates Granite Rapids), but the huge eddy below the fall brought in enough new sand to cover most of a mammoth field of once uninhabitable rocks - a fair exchange. Other bars, deposited when the river flowed at a much greater rate than 40,000 cfs, rose high and steep against the towering walls. They made good lunch stopsbut for how long? They may rest on stable bars still buried beneath the turbid water, or they may be orphan deposits that will disappear when flow returns to lower levels. As in the case of tamarisk, only time will give firm answers. Nevertheless, acres of new sand are being spread along the stream, and the question is, where did it come from? Not from Lake Powell. Even at its highest levels, the reservoir continued functioning as a settling pond. Not from the Canyon's tributaries because during the time of the river's greatest flow there were few rains in the area.

As the mystery grew, people recalled how red the river ran during its highest stages-90,000 cfs. Such a thunder of water created tremendous currents that must have scoured far deeper into old deposits of sediment than happened at any time during the previous 20 years. Those surges, it seems likely now, whirled the sand out of long-undisturbed resting places, spun it into coves and eddies, and in the process created brand new bars or enlarged old ones. Does the number exceed the old ones destroyed? Will they remain where they are? As yet, no one knows. What a chance for a new start! Rafting on the Colorado River was virtually uncontrolled until 1972. The habit of keeping beaches clean came slowly-and too late. Before wood fires were prohibited, bits of charcoal worked into the sand. Human carelessness-more than 10,000 people go through the Canyon each year-left traces of human waste close to the edges of the bars. Grease too often poured out of cooking pots was trampled into the sand. Bits of spilled food attracted flies and the lizards that preyed on the flies. Red ants multiplied. As trails to nearby scenic areas were impacted, cobbles began appearing to stub unwary toes. Now nature has unexpectedly restored that part of the Canyon's glory. The new

(Right)

In the lower reaches of the Grand Canyon, the spindly ocotillo and other typical desert plants sprout in the dry rocky soil. The ocotillo adapts to the semi-arid climate by sprouting leaves and blossoms during the wet months and dropping them during times of little moisture. Michael Collier photo (Right, below) Glen Canyon Dam, completed in 1963, controls the flow of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. For 20 years, the average water release into the Canyon averaged around 15,000 cubic feet per second, but during the flood of 1983, releases peaked at over 90,000 cfs - six times the average. Gary Ladd photo Sand is as soft as talc and as white almost as snow. For a few weeks at least flies and ants were far rarer than they have been for several years past. If every major contamination is hauled outside and if every speck of food spilled from a plate or sandwich is dropped into the river, something of the Canyon's original wildness can be recaptured and preserved. All this where once destruction was expected! It makes one wonder whether the authorities might not work out ways of creating new, controlled floods every few years to help restore the balances upset when Glen Canyon Dam first went into operation 20 years ago.

While conditions reported by the author in his first-hand review of the Grand Canyon flooding seem to indicate negligi-ble damage, it may be too early to tell exactly what the future may hold. Editor.

David Lavender has written more than 25 books on the American West and is currently at work on a history of river running in the Grand Canyon.

Additional Reading

Desert River Crossing, by W.L. Rusho and C. Gregory Crampton, Peregrine Smith Inc. Salt Lake City, 1975. Exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons, by John Wesley Powell, Dover, New York, 1961. The Story of Man at the Grand Canyon, by J. Donald Hughes, Grand Canyon Natural History Association, Grand Canyon, 1967.

ARIZO GIVING BIRTH... TO A MUSEUM

As Arizona Highways Magazine enters its 60th year of publication, we are pleased to announce the beginnings of the Arizona Highways Museum of Printery, devoted to the printing craft of the first half of the 20th century. Centerpiece of the museum will be a restored German-made Miehle flatbed press upon which Highways was printed in its early years. We are seeking donations of type, typesetting equipment, composition paraphernalia and other apparatus associated with letterpress printing, and Arizona Highways memorabilia. Located at Highways headquarters in Phoenix, the museum will be open to the public during business hours. For more information contact Don Dedera at 2039 West Lewis Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85009, (602) 258-6641.

ART OF THE ANCIENTS EXPLAINED

Enormous red, white, and black cloaked figures stalk across the towering sandstone canyon walls of southeastern Utah, and myriad tiny spirals, footprints, and animals scurry across the rocks along Northern Arizona's Little Colorado River. What do these figures mean? Who created them? How long have they been there? The spectacular petroglyphs (images pecked into stone) and pictographs (paintings on stone) of the Southwest have confused and intrigued scientists and lay persons alike since their discovery centuries ago. Now, in their exhibit of Rock Art of the Colorado Plateau, the Museum of Northern Arizona unravels many of the mysteries surrounding these uniquely Southwestern aboriginal art forms. The display presents interpretations and the scientific methods used to record and date rock art. The museum is one mile north of Flagstaff on Fort Valley Road (U.S. Route 180). For more information, write: Museum of Northern Arizona, Route 4, Box 720, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, or call: (602) 774-5211.

P

Phoenix proudly announces the opening of the Arizona Museum of Science and Technology (AMSTEC) this month. The Museum, a nonprofit, privately funded science center at 80 North Second Street, contains over 50 hands-on exhibits featuring computers, mathematics, robotics, photronics, lasers, energy, and more. AMSTEC emphasizes participation in all its exhibits, providing a unique educational adventure for all ages. For more information, call (602) 256-9388.

Above are only a few of the fascinating events scheduled this month in Arizona. For a more complete calendar please write: Arizona Office of Tourism, 3507 North Central Avenue, Department CE, Suite 506, Phoenix, AZ 85012

NIQUES

and a guide to places, events, and people unique to Arizona and the Southwest.

Two PGA tournaments will draw hundreds of top professional golfers, celebrities, and thousands of fans to Arizona this month for the Phoenix Open, and the Seiko Tucson Match Play Championship (formerly the Tucson Open). The pros pursue a $1 million purse at the Seiko Tucson Championship from January 2-8 with the Pro-Am on the 5th. And they swing into action at the Phoenix Open, offering a $400,000 purse, from January 16-22. The Phoenix Open features two Pro-Ams on the 16th and 18th. Proceeds from both tournaments benefit Arizona youth athletics. For more information contact: The Tucson Conquistadores, 10 North Norton, Tucson, AZ 85719, (602) 792-4501, and the Thunderbirds, 100 West Clarendon, Suite 1905, Phoenix, AZ 85013, (602) 263-0757.

PRECIOUS PENNYROYAL Warning: Do not bend, fold, spindle, or otherwise mutilate Hedeoma diffusm Greene (better known as the Flagstaff pennyroyal). No, it's not a disease or a hotel. It's a small perennial herb in the mint family recently recommended for "threatened" status with the federal government. Characterized by one to three clusters of flowers and small oval leaves, the scarce plant forms very small populations on limestone outcrops in mature ponderosa pine forest communities around Flagstaff. If approved as a threatened species by the federal government, it would join the five other plants exclusive to Arizona already on the list.

INDIAN CULTURE TOUR

You can stroll through 2000 years of Arizona history at Gila Heritage Park, just 35 miles south of Phoenix on Interstate 10. The story of Arizona's Gila River cultures unfolds as you tour authentic replicas of Indian villages from the Hohokam, a people who farmed the desert between 300 B.C. and A.D. 1400, through such modern tribes as the Papago, Pima, Apache, and Maricopa. Story boards along the way fill in the facts about each tribe. Special tours of the park, including performances of traditional dances by Gila tribes in native costumes, can be arranged for a fee. And while you're there, be sure to visit the Gila Indian Center, featuring a museum, gift shop, and dining room. For more information, write or call: Gila Heritage Park, P.O. Box 457, Sacaton, AZ 85247, (602) 963-3981.

QUILTS IN YUMA

The Yuma Arts Center celebrates and explores the rebirth of the artistic, social, and ethnic craft-cum-artform of quilting. The five week exhibition, Quiltmaking in Yuma: A Collaborative Program, opens January seventh and includes displays of over 50 historic, modern, and ethnic quilts; seminars; a film series; panel discussions; and quilting demonstrations. For more information, contact the Yuma Arts Center, 281 Gila Street, Yuma, AZ 85364, (602) 783-2314.