Patrolling the Colorado with the Ecology Cops

THE IRRESISTIBLE CHALLENGE OF THE WILD RIO COLORADO Text by Photographs by RICHARD L. DANLEY

(LEFT) To follow the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon means surviving its rapids. Hermit Rapid rates a nine on a scale of one to 10.

he Colorado River almost escapes, almost becomes wild again, where it enters the Grand Canyon. The green-blue water, freed from Glen Canyon Dam, ducks into a shadowy chasm for 277 miles. A rear guard of perilous rapids discourages pursuers.

To follow to track the river to its farthest lairs you must get around those rapids, or through them, and in one piece. The challenge is irresistible. People set out in rafts and kayaks, on foot down desperate trails, on mules and horses. A couple of daredevils even used parachutes.

Someone has to make sure things don't get completely out of hand. So we set out in twin motorized 18-foot pontoon rafts painted white to mark them as U.S. National Park Service patrol boats. On deck are four park rangers, two Arizona game wardens, two U.S. Coast Guard officers, a photographer, and me. And we're all working. We're not supposed to be having fun, but it's hard not to.

The river appears strangely vacant after Lees Ferry, the teeming put-in place for rafts, but river district Ranger Mark Law dispels the illusion. Strung along the river backcountry every few miles, today and every day, he says, are several hundred river runners, backpackers, fishermen, bird-watchers, amateur geologists and archaeologists, and day hikers. The pressure on the river and its archaeological treasures is relentless.

The four-stroke outboard whispers our coming. Sneak-in campers and poachers and those who wander down without permits, unaware they are in the national park, further swell the river population, but they go uncounted among the 200,000 who, one way or another, go to the river. Backcountry users are counted apart from the 4.2 million visitors who each year swarm the Canyon top.

Ecological damage is inevitable. "People are not aware of the damage they do," Law says. "That's why we are down here: to capture their attention."

For seven days, we talk to every sort of backcountry pilgrim, from those who pay big money to ride five-ton rafts which defeat rapids in the same way a heavyweight wrestler pins an opponent, to adventurers enduring arduous climbs, to the walking wounded battered in the rapids or vanquished by the Inner Canyon trails. On the river, there are always winners and losers.

to adventurers enduring arduous climbs, to the walking wounded battered in the rapids or vanquished by the Inner Canyon trails. On the river, there are always winners and losers.

The Colorado burrows continually deeper into Marble Canyon, river gateway to the Grand Canyon, baring its fangs in corners where rocks have tumbled out of side canyons to create rapids. Rainbow trout grow large in such places because fishermen rarely reach them.

But how they try. Down every climbable way scramble fishermen, and they are the first people we encounter on the river.

Charles Lee of Phoenix and his daughter Judy, a Tucson medical student, are not regular hikers. Nevertheless, they set out at 3 A.M. and seven hours later wet lines at the end of the crude trail down Salt Wash at Mile 12 on the river. "In the first 30 minutes, I got three," Lee reports, displaying his biggest, a 16-incher, taken with a night crawler. Lee has fished here before. "The first time I had a limit in two hours."

Other fishermen nearby are less lucky. The wardens ticket one without a fishing license, and rangers shoo several others without camping permits.

Back on the river. Transplanted desert bighorn sheep come to water's edge. A peregrine falcon, half-folded wings trimmed for speed, stalks mallard ducks that hug the river surface for their lives. A yellow-crowned night heron tiptoes along the shoreline.

House Rock Rapid suddenly appears dead ahead, hissing through curled white-water lips. "This is a real rapid," river Ranger David Desrosiers warns. On a scale of one to 10, House Rock Rapid rates seven to nine, depending on how much water is freed from the federal dam. "It has two hydraulic pools that can hold you in their grip."

Whoomp! A British Broadcasting Company camera crew watches as we plunge in, water flying, but the river spits us out. Everyone grips the raft with two hands. From now on, we hold on tight.

Huw Cordey of Bristol, England, explains how the BBC and Public Broadcasting Service will produce a 50-minute documentary on the environmental impact inside the Grand Canyon. While the river may act like a mugger, this filming reminds us it's really a sensitive ecosystem, turned topsy-turvy after Glen Canyon Dam began trapping Colorado River water in 1964.

Christopher Leck and his wife, Pamela, of Spencer, Washington, have come to fly fish. When their oar raft group pulls ashore for lunch, the Lecks break out rods. "This is the best fishing we've ever had," she says. "Even in Yellowstone [Park] there was too much fishing pressure. The fishes' lips were ripped apart because they had been caught so many times."

A commercial raft spills paying customers onto the beach below Nankoweap Rapids for the 30-minute climb to a cliffside Anasazi granary, one of 2,700 archaeological sites along the river. Katherine Polzin, an environmental scientist from St. Petersburg, Florida, sprawls in beach sand. She has found relief from "flat country." Raft mates Thomas Bauer, a Houston naval architect, and his wife, Sarah, share the adventure of their lives. "Indescribable," says Thomas. "It just gets bigger and better."

But drop your guard and the river pounces. Ed Page of San Diego, California, a veteran of the 110-mile Alaskan Iditayhak kayak race, slams into a curl-wave at six-rated Kwagunt Rapid that flips his 10-foot inflatable rubber kayak. Now the river has him, pulling at his clothing, trying to peel him like a banana. He pops up looking hammered, with one sunglass lens gone and his sneakers out ahead.

"A huge wave just threw me bottom up and threw me right over before I could react," he says, beaming after the close combat. "I could feel the river sucking off one shoe and then the other." Again, a broad smile. "It gives you an appreciation for the force of the river."

Where the pastel-blue mineral water of the Little Colorado River blends with the mainstream, we overtake a private oar-powered rafting party led by Boise, Idaho, environmental lawyer Jeffrey Fereday. Shielded in wet suits and helmets, Fereday and his brother Jamie, a Coos Bay, Oregon, science teacher, run rapids all day.

Fereday rates most Colorado white water as four on the difficulty scale of six used by kayakers. "It's also cold," he adds, "so you have to add something for that."

Twice a day the river rises and falls several feet in a rhythm regulated by peak power demands of Western cities like Phoenix. The river sheds its sediments behind the dam, spilling clear and cold downstream to produce premier trout fishing, while killing native warm-water fish.

"It [the regulated flow] doesn't represent a really true natural Colorado River," Law says. But he grudgingly concedes some benefits. Invading tamarisk and mesquite bind the banks and provide cover for mule deer and wild turkeys. Where once only canyon wrens were heard, now the birdsong is polyglot.

We plow 12 miles downstream on the first day and camp on a brown sand beach laid down when the Colorado was truly wild with spring floods full of silt robbed from upstream farms and forestlands. I drag a spinning lure through a riffle and, in an hour's fishing, beach 10 rainbows before setting them free.

Fereday would probably give a six to the difficulty of obtaining a private rafting permit. Only 273 are issued each year. "You have to be on the list," he says, "and seven years later you get a permit."

The rapids become navigational landmarks that connect stretch-es of "flat water" like links in a chain: Tanner Rapid with mid-stream boulders like dragon teeth; Unkar, an ancient Anazasi village site and junkyard for broken props; Hance, another rock garden where I first met Ranger Law the previous year, coming ashore at my backpacker camp in a crippled patrol raft.

A short hike brings us into the Indian ruins on Unkar Delta. Potsherds lie piled on hut foundations, disconnected from their ar-chaeological past.

"With tens of thousands of visitors, the sites become impacted," Law says. "They stack objects up so other people can see them. We try to minimize those impacts by sending people along well-defined trails through those sites."

Hikers unknowingly cause most of the damage, says Janet Balsom, NPS archaeologist for the Grand Canyon. "Hikers get to the most places. And a good campsite 1,000 years ago is a good campsite today." The tendency to stack artifacts produces remark-able results.

"We have a classic photograph taken by Robert Brewster Stanton in 1889 of a site referred to as Cardenas Fort," Balsom says. "In 100 years, the only thing in that photograph that has grown is the size of the walls. We have lots of photographs taken in the mid-'70s, and you can see the progression of wall height."

At the bottom of Tanner Trail at Mile 68, where the Grand Canyon is a mile deep, we find emergency room physician Paul Smythe of Ely, Minnesota, snoozing in a tent after an arduous ledge-creeping nine-mile climb. His only object was to get to the river, so "I just took whatever [permit] was available to me," he says. Smythe, a portly man, will discover a Canyon truth: up is steeper than down. News of a helicopter medical evacuation upstream crackles on the ranger radio. Later I learn the call is for someone I know.

upstream crackles on the ranger radio. Later I learn the call is for someone I know.

"We were in Nevills Rapid," Bob Rink, a Phoenix city photographer, recounts later. "I was sitting inappropriately in the raft. The boat 'tacoed' - the front and rear bent in - and I was holding onto a strap on the frame, sitting more on the tube than the frame, and I was catapulted forward." Rink's face collided with a metal camera case, badly splitting his lower lip.

The 24-mile ride to the clinic at Grand Canyon Village cost him $1,200 and 14 stitches, but the next morning, at daybreak, he hiked seven miles down Bright Angel Trail to rejoin his group for 13 more days on the river.

While Rink awaited the rescue helicopter that fetches the lame and the sick from the Canyon bottom, I watched as paramedics prepared retired real estate salesman William C. Shreve Jr. of Falls Church, Virginia, for evacuation from the Phantom Ranch helipad. Shreve had visited the Grand Canyon Rim the year before and decided to "do a river trip." About 75 miles downriver, he sprang youthfully from a commercial raft onto wet sand “that didn’t give,” injuring an ankle. I watched the helicopter haul him off. “Last year we had 475 search and res-cues,” says chief backcountry Ranger Nick Herring. “There have been days when we had so many emergencies going that if there had been one more, we would not have been able to respond.”

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youthfully from a commercial raft onto wet sand “that didn’t give,” injuring an ankle. I watched the helicopter haul him off. “Last year we had 475 search and rescues,” says chief backcountry Ranger Nick Herring. “There have been days when we had so many emergencies going that if there had been one more, we would not have been able to respond.” The worst cases are triaged for airlift, but, says Law, “Where a trail is accessible, we encourage people who have minor problems to hike out and rescue themselves.” Half our patrol party leaves at Bright Angel. Five of us continue, and six miles later nine-rated Granite Rapid heaves itself into our path. The water churns, still spoiling for a fight that comes at nine-rated Hermit Rapid. Before tumbling in, we see the color of a tent ahead.

Physician Alan Ungaro and his brother-in-law John McCullough, a conflict resolution mediator, both of Syracuse, New York, have hiked 14 miles to get to Hermit, an aptly named place where, Ungaro says, “We knew we would not run into many people.” Rafters sped by, but we are the first to stop. Ungaro has the look of an athlete, but McCullough confesses, “I’m a desk jockey. This is my first backpack in 30 years, since the Boy Scouts.” Ungaro once floated the Colorado in an oar-powered dory. “If I had a choice,” he says, “I’d backpack. You get to see things, and there’s no crowds.” We leave them alone and move on.

By Mile 100, the best trout fishing is behind us. The river takes on salt from natural seeps and becomes more turgid. By the time it reaches Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam, you can taste the salt. After Deer Creek Falls at Mile 136, the Canyon closes more tightly around us, shutting out hikers, and from now on we meet only rafters. Richard Simmons of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, a mechanical engineer, part-time farmer, and jokester, boards us from a 22foot S-Rig commercial raft. He has convinced 25 old college buddies and their wives to raft with him.

“My minister is with me. I think that’s one of the reasons we’re getting all the nice weather,” he wisecracks. Inside joke. Cold, rainy weather sent us to bed with the shakes one night.

I remember the nudists camped upstream. Straight-faced rangers went ashore to check permits. “What did your minister think of the nudies?” I ask.

Simmons grins mischievously. “Live and let live,” he says.

Matkatimiba Canyon with its wet hanging garden is our next stop, then we motor past the mineral-blued confluence with Havasu Creek. Everybody on the river now talks about Lava Falls Rapid,

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the “Big One,” a 10, at Mile 179. Lava Falls drums the air. In just 100 yards the river drops 14.4 feet, hurtling itself over huge boulders until the water curls into a giant mitt, waiting to catch boats.

Commercial guides stand reverently above the rapids, not talking. Lava Falls can dump a big raft. We come to look and watch a private-party oar raft ram a center-stream boulder and high side before spilling everyone into the tumult.

Our turn. Rock and roll. A big wave washes over. I hear the outboard gulping and racing, the prop searching for a grip. River Ranger Doug Deutschlander steers through, past the washed-up survivors of the oar boat already drying in the sun.

Now I sense the river gradually losing momentum. Most of the 2,000-foot drop to Lake Mead is behind us, and the river begins to leave its lair as the rimrocks lower and the gorge yawns wide, exposing us to the desert sun. Around Mile 180, I develop sharp eyes. Cans of unopened cold beer, lost from rafts upstream, drift by. With ecological zeal, I grab all I can. The missed cans, I think, must arrive like spawning fish at Lake Mead.

Diamond Creek at Mile 226 is where we pull out. The river continues on to captivity. For a short time, the Colorado seemed free, and we had all been freedom riders, searching for a memory of wildness.

Author's Note: For a list of licensed concessioners that offer rafting trips on the Colorado River, contact either Grand Canyon National Park, River Permits Office, Grand Canyon, AZ 86023 or Grand Canyon National Park Lodges, Grand Canyon National Park, P.O. Box 699, Grand Canyon, AZ 86023.

River Rafting Photo Workshop: Join the Friends of Arizona Highways, the magazine's volunteer auxiliary, and photographer Gary Ladd when they raft the mighty Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, September 1 to 9. Between bouts of heart-stopping excitement while running the rapids, participants savor the scenic wonders of the majestic chasm, and pick up tips on how to produce magazine-quality photographs from Ladd. For more information, call the Friends' Travel Office, (602) 271-5904.