Barging down Lake Powell

So I turned in the houseboat, the boys drove back to Phoenix, and I tossed my sleeping bag and gear into the ski boat, determined to photograph the sunset and sunrise.

The houseboat's twin 60-horsepower outboards hacked and coughed and complained, barely audible over the whistling of the wind that was making a determined effort to drive the 50-foot-long pontooned "mobile home" onto the high sandy beach at Lake Powell. I muttered something unprintable and punched the big black starter buttons on the houseboat's console. The right-hand outboard motor sputtered indignantly, cleared its internally combusted throat, and caught. The left-hand outboard merely whined. Vaguely I wondered whether the wind had yet driven the houseboat over Jeff, my son's friend, last seen standing in waistdeep water heaving with all of his adolescent might to prevent the blow from bullying the houseboat sideways onto the beach. Through the window, I glimpsed my 19 year old, Caleb, trying to use the 18-foot ski boat to tow the houseboat's stern away from the shore, so we could back off the beach. Caleb appeared to be performing some complicated dance, either an antirain dance or a reaction to his imminent grounding. Sean, another friend, sat in some befuddlement beside Caleb. Briefly I considered abandoning ship and seeking the shelter of the beach until the wind subsided. But that would entail a substantial surrender of middle-aged macho under the gaze of these pointy-headed teenagers, invited along on my houseboat adventure on the nation's second-largest reservoir. Some 3.6 million people each year flock to this 186-mile-long red-walled lake, which boasts more shoreline than the West Coast of the United States. I looked once again at my scattered gesticulating crew, the nautical equivalent of the Keystone Kops, and then trotted back past the living room, kitchen, two bunkbedded bedrooms, and bathroom, complete with a hot shower and flush toilet. On the rear deck, I knelt before the silent outboard and pumped the little bulb that squirts gas from the boat's 140-gallon tanks into the motor's carburetor. Trotting back to the steering wheel, I again punched the starter and was rewarded by the reluctant firing of the second outboard. In no time at all (if you count in the effects of relativity), we were launched. Then we "steamed" on down lake toward Padre Bay, where in November, 1776, the Franciscan priests Silvestre Escalante and Francisco Dominguez and nine companions found the Colorado River crossing while racing starvation after abandoning their quest to find a trail from Santa Fe to Monterey across the rugged badlands of southwestern Colorado, central Utah, and northern Arizona. I felt cautiously triumphant, taking my bearings on a profusion of sheer buttes and cliffs composed of petrified sand

Continued from page 26 Dunes laid down some 200 million years ago. I'd journeyed to Lake Powell often enough before, including one unforgettable trip when our little family of five plunked down $80 a night for a two-bedroom mobile home at Bullfrog Marina in midlake, then rented a skiff to trundle through the astonishing meanders of glowing red canyons. But on this trip I thought I'd try something more adventuresome. It seemed to be working. After all, my teenage charges had gotten moderately sunburned and thoroughly exhausted spattering across the warm waters of the lake yesterday, struggling like crippled coots to stand upright on their speeding skis. They'd made good and sufficient fools of themselves, falling repeatedly with a great flailing of arms and legs like the dives of a spastic pelican. Granted Caleb had run the ski boat over a submerged rock, converting the propeller into a small abstract sculpture. But we had mounted the spare prop provided by the folks at Wahweap Marina.

On the whole, things had gone swimmingly especially the unscheduled star-watching session on the roof of the houseboat. We'd just finished Caleb's first effort as a chef: hamburgers as thick as a hibernating black bear, carbonized on the outside and still red and cold in the center.

We swam briefly in the summer-warm water, toweled off in the tender breeze, then stretched out to watch satellites whiz across the sky. The Milky Way was a broad band from horizon to horizon as we stared toward the throbbing heart of our galaxy, where a monstrous black hole waits to devour unwary stars like a 100-pound catfish in the bottom of a hole.

I lay there and listened to the looping, darting, chortling conversation of three teenagers, marveling at the unlikely survival of civilization in the face of such an odd use of the brain. Gradually they yielded to the spell of the sky, waiting eagerly in actual sporadic silence for the next flash of a shooting star.

As we chugged for the next night's anchorage, I took some quiet satisfaction. But I had underestimated the ability of teenagers to do the unexpected.

"Dad," said Caleb uncertainly, "we have to go back."

"When?" I asked unconcernedly because they'd already signed up for the three-day trip.

"In about an hour," he said.

Turns out, they'd all decided they wanted to attend a rehearsal for graduation. I thereupon abandoned any hope of understanding the teenage mind. I refuse to believe that I once had one.

So I turned in the houseboat; I couldn't picture myself sporting about the lake alone in a behemoth that costs about $300 to fill with gas. The boys drove back to Phoenix. Undaunted I tossed my sleeping bag, fishing gear, and ice chest into the ski boat and skimmed happily up lake, determined to photograph the sunset and sunrise denied me so far by clouds on the horizon.

A few hours later, I found a likely beach at the head of Padre Canyon, having snatched a few shots of glowing red rocks illuminated at sunset through a hole in the clouds. I slipped overboard and swam about as the moon rose above the cliffs.

Occasionally I had to stifle a spurt of panic as my feet brushed the submerged tops of salt cedar trees drowned by the spring runoff that raised the lake level by nearly 60 feet. Earlier a multiyear drought had driven the 160,000-acre reservoir's water level down more than 90 feet below the high-water mark.

I climbed back aboard my boat and listened to the soulful sound of a dulcimer coming from the direction of two house-boats moored out of sight around the curve of the shoreline. Later I heard someone calling excitedly after discovering a large bass lurking off the stern, evidently drawn by the houseboat's lights. Lake Powell offers some of the best fishing fishing in the state with three kinds of bass, two kinds of trout, carp, crappies, bluegill, pike, walleyes, channel catfish, sunfish, and even the occasional pike.

I rose at first light and sped across the mirror-smooth water, eager to photograph the rocks at sunrise. The sun almost cooperated, glowing whitely through thin places in the clouds that engulfed the horizon. No matter, I had the lake to myself. I half expected to find fresh dinosaur footprints in the sand turned to stone, which glowed in the diffuse filtered light. The Navajos believe that human beings emerged from the Fourth World into this, the Fifth World, somewhere near here. I found the notion plausible, waiting out the dawn on a tiny sculpted island of rock Amidst the quiet lapping of the water.

Then I hopped back into the boat, set on photographing as many people having fun as I could crowd into my viewfinder. It wasn't hard.

I tumbled across a swarming nest of teenagers just up the lake, reveling in a parental houseboat and a platoon of jet skis. They swarmed me when they spotted my camera, zipping back and forth with star-struck abandon. Eventually the kids and I cut our engines out near the main channel and spent a companionable half hour waiting for one of the big tour boats that set out from the marina for Rainbow Bridge to pass by. These dudes figured jumping such bodacious wakes would be just totally awesome. Soon we all felt like old friends.

Later I cut my engine abreast another houseboat to watch its occupants dive off the roof into the water. I shuttered through several rolls of film as these refugees from the Texan plains swan dived, cannonballed, and flopped off the roof. They waved and laughed. There's something about Lake Powell that dissolves our civilized barriers.

Here people who wouldn't lift their eyes from the cracks in the sidewalk in the city, smile and wave like reunited high school comrades.

Navajo Mountain, right middleground, rises above the lake. Named for Maj. John Wesley Powell, who first explored the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in the 1860s and '70s, the waterway is the centerpiece of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

Maybe that's why two people stopped within five minutes after I ran out of gas on the approach to Dangling Rope Marina. I swear the gas gauge had barely started to bounce back and forth between one-quarter and one-half a tank. No matter. I received a friendly tow to the dock and had no teenagers along to enter the incident on my permanent nautical record.

I hurried back to Wahweap Marina for some sunset photos, down to my last roll of film and thrilled to discover that no clouds blocked the horizon.

I scouted a location as the wind rose, inciting the waves into a frothy chop. I found a perfect assemblage of cliffs and monoliths, but the waves were breaking so enthusiastically on the rocky shore that I decided the picture wasn't worth bashing holes in the bottom of the boat.

At length I settled on a long row of spires jutting out into the lake, which in 20 minutes would be illuminated like a scene from the Book of Revelations. I sought the shelter of a nearby cove to await my moment. Running the boat up onto the soft sand, I hopped ashore and set off to investigate the spit of sand for photographic possibilities.

Returning 10 minutes later, I discovered that the waves had driven the boat sideways up against the beach. I heaved and hauled and groaned without noticeable effect as the sun reddened to perfection on the designated cliffs.

Fortunately a Park Service ranger happened by no doubt looking for landlubbing fools with rental boats and insufficient sense to come in out of the wind. He jumped cheerfully into the water and helped rock the boat off the sand.

Speeding to my selected point, I squandered half a roll on the dark outlines of the once-glowing cliffs. Then I floated on the water as the wind died away and the stars appeared, listening to the slap of the water against the hull, straining to catch a glimpse of the fish that plopped in the darkness, and wondering whether having spent so much time with teenagers would have any permanent effect on my brain.

Photo Workshop: Join the Friends of Arizona Highways and photographer Gary Ladd on a Photo Workshop backpack to Rainbow Bridge National Monument, September 26-30, 1994. The trip will also include the area between Navajo Mountain and Lake Powell. For information, call the Friends' Travel Office, (602) 2715904. See information about other trips on page 45.

WHEN YOU GO

The town of Page provides the southernmost entry to Lake Powell, about 136 miles north of Flagstaff and 282 miles north of Phoenix on U.S. Route 89. Page offers an abundance of accommodations, restaurants, and everything from rental equipment to fishing guides. You can fly above the lake, raft the river below the dam, or take one-day excursions to spots on the lake like Rainbow Bridge. For information, contact the Page Chamber of Commerce at (602) 645-2741 or write to the chamber at 106 S. Lake Powell Blvd., Page, AZ 86040. ARA Leisure Services, the concessionaire at Wahweap Marina on Lake Powell, rents houseboats, ski boats, fishing boats, jet skis, fishing gear, and all manner of nautical equipment.

equipment. ARA also runs a resort hotel at the marina and rents three-bedroom house trailers, complete with fully equipped kitchens. You'll also find a busy RV park near the marina, a swimming beach, boat ramps, picnic tables, and other facilities. Make reservations well in advance for spring and summer. Rates drop and availability soars during the winter off-season. For information and reservations, call toll-free 1 (800) 528-6154 or write to ARA at P.O. Box 56909, Phoenix, AZ 85079. Other things to see and do in the area include Page's John Wesley Powell Museum, which exhibits photographs of the canyons and the Colorado River on which Powell's expedition traveled, as well as a replica of a Powell boat used by Walt Disney in Ten Who Dared, a film about the colorful one-armed Civil War veteran's river adventures. Free tours inside the labyrinth of Glen Canyon Dam are fascinating; for an awesome view of the exterior, park on either side of the bridge crossing the canyon and walk out onto the span.