Canyoneering

west clear creek canyon

At the bottom of West Clear Creek Canyon, a thousand feet below the Coconino Plateau, one of my hiking partners, Mike Kalshed, lurches through an immense thicket. Kalshed can't always be seen because the brush is dense, but his presence can be inferred from diverse signs. Where he is, rocks roll and branches crack. Trees shake from crown to root. When he wades the stream, his wake splashes noisily across otherwise quiet pools. Loud grunts, groans, and curses swirl around him. Animals flee his approach. You could mistake Kalshed for some other ornery creature, say a bear, except for the shocking-pink inflatable raft he holds above his head. Carried high in the air, the raft rides more or less free of the barbs and needles of the outrageous thicket. His commitment to the flimsy raft is total. When he can't squirm around especially bad tangles, he sacrifices patches of his hide from an elbow, a leg, the expanse of his back to protect the raft from puncture. Without it he can't float his pack down the long deep pools still ahead, and dumping the pack is not an option. Our truck is a hard day's walk away.

The canyon of West Clear Creek cuts across tableland above the Mogollon Rim 15 miles east of Camp Verde. Its inner gorge, often narrow and deep, is punctuated by pools that sometimes fill the canyon bottom. On a three-day trip down part of the creek in early September, we find 13 pools that can be passed only by swimming. Although they aren't long enough to make swimming them unbearable, the water is fairly cold. Happily the dry late-summer air warms us quickly between dips, so neither sunstroke nor frostbite is an issue on this trip.

We wade shallow pools most of the first day and make short forays into the brush when the water deepens.

When Kalshed breaks out of the brush, his momentum carries him to the edge of a rapids where I've been resting with our other partner, Greg Reece. Narrow canyon walls and a haze of water vapor combine to compress the view downstream. As far as we can see, perhaps half a mile, West Clear Creek roars through a field of boulders ranging in size from a basketball to a mobile home. With the view foreshortened, all the rocks seem jumbled into one cyclopean wall that can be scaled only in a single relentless push. The rushing stream is so loud we have to shout. Kalshed doesn't want to stop here, not to catch his breath or admire the view, not even to trace a plausible route through the boulder field below. He just wants to go for it. When I look closely, I see madness at the back of his eyes, but there's no sense trying to stop him. This is the inevitable result of hefting a big pack and a pink raft through a bad swamp. At least he's pointed in the right direction.

After a quick survey of his options, Kalshed tucks his raft under one arm then jumps to a rock in the stream, teeters there, regains his balance, hops to another rock, and another. With a rhythm established, he reels down the rapid just a step ahead of the iron law of gravity. Reece and I follow, also defying basic rules of physics. Our packs are heavy, so we can't stop or even turn on impulse. Minor changes in route require considerable (OPPOSITE PAGE) Lush vegetation and boulders crowd the creek banks in Willow Valley.

(ABOVE) Snakeweed blooms above a verdant cleft in the Red Boxes area.

forethought and preparation, as inertia drives us a couple of steps beyond every decision point.

The rapids eventually disappear into a deep pool formed where the canyon walls pinch together. Midway through the boulder field, I manage to stop to watch Kalshed enter the pool. We've already swum a half dozen pools, so he's got the crossing drill down pat. To keep his raft from washing downstream, he floats it in an eddy. When he shrugs his pack onto it, the raft bobs jauntily under the weight. Next Kalshed lowers himself into the water and, pushing raft and pack ahead,swims the hundred-yard pool. At the other end, he shakes himself dry, shoulders his pack, lofts the raft over his head, and plunges into the next thicket. Just another big varmint loose in the wild.

Yesterday we left our truck on the rim of the plateau, hiked north, and after a few detours over and around dead-end cliffs, finally slid to the bottom of West Clear Creek Canyon about noon. We were headed downstream for the next point where the canyon walls lie back enough for hikers to climb in and out without ropes. According to our plan, we will reach the canyonexit late on the second day, then take another day to climb out and trek back across the plateau to our truck. We wade shallow pools most of the first day and make short forays into the brush when the water deepens. Although the canyon is wide at the start, say 400 feet across, toward evening we enter a long stretch where its lower part progressively narrows at the same time that its sides rise precipitously. An old cowboy song emerges from my memory: And now we're in the river, and the rocks they are so high, You can't see out but one place and that's up to the sky. Our campsite is comfortable a sandspit at the end of an oxbow in the stream's channel but a little claustrophobic. Half the canyon bottom is occupied by a deep pool, and the other half is the beach where we camp. I try fishing the silent waters before dinner, but my casts create so vast a disturbance that if fish live in there, they choose to break off feeding for the night rather than risk getting tangled in my line. Without fish, dinner means beans and dried fruit. To hasten the process of healing our aches, we toast our feet by a small fire. After a day in wet tennies, my feet have shriveled, turned blue where they are bruised, turned ghastly white where they are not, and have about as much sensation as the end of a peg leg. When it comes time to turn in, Kalshed and Reece crawl into Kalshed's tent. But I consider the weather toofine and the air too fresh, so I toss my sleeping pad on the ground, spread my bag on top, and stuff spare clothes into my fleece coat for a pillow. I have a date with the stars. By the side of West Clear Creek, far from even the most remote dwelling, no artificial light dims the night sky. I can see right through the central plane of the Milky Way all the way to the edge of the universe, 20 billion light years away, give or take a couple of eons. In the middle of the night, a bull elk begins to bugle up on the rim. The noise is so unexpected, so loud and eerie, that it leaves me sitting bolt upright, shaking and unsure of my whereabouts. The elk's wails haunt the night. Bugling is meant to attract cows, although it's hard to imagine that any female even an elk could fall for so ghastly a noise. Up and down the scale the old bull blows, sometimes soprano, often bass. The noise is neolithic, recalling times when extremely large mammals dominated the Earth, and our highest achievement was to paint their images on the walls of smoky caves. The morning is perfect for fishing, and I head downstream before breakfast. As light enters the canyon, insects stir, then flit over the water. Vagrant breezes disturb the pools just enough to hide a line floating on the water surface. At the tail end of a likely pool, I wade out from the bank to toss my fly at a boulder set square in midstream. Big fish sometimes rest all day in slack currents behind large boulders. As I throw my line above the rock, I imagine such a fish mistaking the fly for another tidbit in the endless lunch delivered by the stream. I can almost feel the electric current that runs along a line when a good fish is hooked. Yet the fly passes the boulder completely unmolested. After a few more casts, I try the boulder's other side, then cast to a couple more rocks within my range, but I can't get a rise. I move upstream to try again. Same result. Fishless, I return to camp. Although I hate to get

Because I can't see either the snake or my feet through the thick brush, I don't know where to go when it starts buzzing.

west clear creek canyon

Skunked two days in a row, I recover from my funk by recalling the motto of Sparse Grey Hackle, the angling philosopher: "Although fish are essential to fishing," the wise man observed for the ages, "catching them is not." Avoid catching fish, he went on, and you have more time to admire your surroundings and commune with yourself. Indications are I'll have plenty of chances for both sight-seeing and introspection on this trip.

After breakfast we pull on our custom-designed hiking-swimming-sunning ensembles. In my case, this means a long-sleeved T-shirt, canvas swimming shorts, a floppy hat so lacking in style I can wear it only at the bottom of a remote canyon, synthetic socks that dry fast and stay warm when wet, and a pair of cheap tennies I'd bought in a discount store. A thick coat of sunblock completes the outfit. Not exactly high-tech, but I can't afford to soggify good stuff.

We leave our camp a little after nine and soon come to the first pool that can be passed only by swimming. After inflating our rafts, we lower ourselves into the water and commence our educations in ferrying gear down West Clear Creek.

To tell the truth, there's not much to it. Since the long deep pools can easily absorb the shock of water pouring out of rapids above, their surfaces are smooth 10 feet out from their heads. Yet the actual flow through the pools is strong enough to push a loaded raft without assistance.

Under these fortunate circumstances, our jobs reduce to staying afloat and making sure the rafts don't drift too far ahead. We easily adjust to watching the canyon float by as we steer our packs downstream.

But a rapid follows every pool, and rather than wade most of them, we take to land. The going is faster there despite the dense thickets, some nearly a mile long and a hundred yards wide. It takes ingenuity, luck, and a few world-class contortions to wiggle through these brush piles. Bathed in abundant sun and water, they contain a punishing mix of desert cactuses, riparian brambles, and poison oak. The rich plant community supports a variety of creatures. We see bugs, coyotes, jays, mice, and other small mammals, but mostly reptiles. Snakes in particular. Rattlers to be precise.

When I accidentally kick over a loose rock on the downstream side of the 10th pool, I stir up a rattlesnake. Because I can't see either the snake or my feet through the thick brush, I don't know exactly where to go when it starts buzzing, but if I could, I'd jump straight out of the canyon. Kalshed, who's right behind me, also hears the rattler. He's in the same predicament I am. Up to his neck in brush, all he knows is that an angry snake is somewhere in the neighborhood of his feet.

The snake inspires a demonstration of acrobatics that far exceeds our everyday abilities. Kalshed and I leap independently for the only safe spot within jumping distance, a small boulder sticking out of the undergrowth. Somehow we land on it side-by-side with arms linked. The weight of our packs forces us nearly to our knees, then we shout, "Hey!" and bounce to our feet like a couple of dancing cossacks. Reece, because he's last in line, can't identify the exact cause of our bizarre behavior, but he jumps onto the rock, too, acting on the sound principle that the instinct for self-preservation can lookpretty ridiculous, and Kalshed and I sure look silly now. "Snake!" Kalshed bellows in Reece's face. "Snake!" Reece hollers back, aware at last of the exact nature of our problem. Unable to climb each other's shoulders and maintain our precarious balance at the same time, we tumble into the bush. Meanwhile, the rattler has proved itself wise by crawling to a spot where it's unlikely to get squashed by a falling human. We do not meet again. Thus no one, man or snake, hurts much more than his pride in this encounter, but it takes us humans a while to untangle the heap of man and equipment the snake has left behind.

Around four in the afternoon, we make camp on a rock shelf about 30 feet above the creek bottom. Our campsite is right at the foot of a bushwhack trail leading up to the rim, so it should be hard to get lost tomorrow, at least at the start. To make camp, I just hang my food out of the reach of hungry squirrels and find a flat spot for my sleeping bag. With a couple of hours of daylight left, I have time to test the local trout.

This part of the creek consists of long glides connected by shallow riffles. I can survey a half dozen or so glides from our shelf. Each contains plenty of obvious trout lies: deep holes, protected banks, big snags.

I tie into a fish on one of my first casts, but it's not well-hooked and soon spits out the fly. After losing a few more, I try to set the hook harder when I get a strike. For the rest of the afternoon, I either snatch the hook out of the mouths of fish before they are committed to it, or I let them examine it so long even the dullest can identify the fly as a fraud. However, one fish, much unluckier than the rest, snags itself so badly on my hook that it can't get off without help, and I reel it in.

Kneeling in shallows at the foot of the pool, I unhook my fish, a nice fat rainbow 14 or 15 inches long. My shadow stretches across the riffle. Soon Kalshed, Reece, and I will build a small fire to hold back the dark. Later, elk may bugle on the rim. In the morning, we will climb out of the canyon, find our truck, and speed back to town. But now, holding the trout in my hands, I sit quietly on the banks of West Clear Creek and admire the alien beauty of a creature whose tribe has remained the same for 100 million years. As night falls, I let it go. M Editor's Note: To inquire about the West Clear Creek Canyon area, contact the Beaver Creek Ranger District, Coconino National Forest, HC64, Box 240, Rimrock, AZ 86335; (520) 567-4501.