Wet and Wild Lake Mead

WATER WORLD

Lake Mead, the country's largest man-made lake, begins where the Grand Canyon ends the sun's last coppery rays shone on the slopes below Fortification Hill. A pair of kayaks glided over the cove's calm surface and created a kaleidoscope of shifting orange and turquoise reflections. Nearby, a western grebe stretched its graceful neck toward a quicksilver shimmer, where a boil of "stripers"-striped bass-hunted a school of threadfin shad. At least a dozen grebes dove and splashed among the fish, calling softly to each other, drawing the attention of a shadowy form on shore. The coyote waited patiently, then, in a burst of activity, dipped paws and muzzle into the water. Again and again she leapt, missed and shook water from her fur, ignoring the kayaks only 20 feet away as she doggedly pursued dinner.

On Lake Mead's Kingman Cove

Welcome to the wild side of Lake Mead, where water flirts with the edge of the desert, drawing humans and animals alike to its hidden coves. Even on the busiest summer day, it's possible to find a private nook along the nearly 700 miles of rugged shoreline. Stretching 110 miles from Hoover Dam to the western mouth of Grand Canyon, containing 27 million acre-feet of impounded Colorado River water and measuring 500 feet deep in places, Lake Mead is the country's largest man-made lake. The vast Lake Mead National Recreation Area, which straddles Arizona's northwestern border with Nevada, also includes 67-mile-long Lake Mohave.

The Arizona shore of Lake Mead is especially wild, with only one developed marina and two paved boat launches. Solitude-seekers in kayaks or canoes can slip into the water almost anywhere at the end of a backcountry road and paddle to adventure.

Narrow and light, sit-on-top kayaks are navigable in only 6 inches of water, so it's possible to hug rocky cliffs, pull up on small islands and slip through reeds and brush-or among a flock of water birds.

"Anyone can use them," said Larry Thompson, owner of Desert River Outfitters. He recently supplied a group of seniors who paddled from Pearce Ferry to Bullhead City, nearly 200 lake miles.

Lake Mead begins at the Grand Wash Cliffs, where the Grand Canyon ends. The cliffs tower some 2,000 feet above Pearce Ferry Road, a scenic route leading to the lake's eastern end. The paved road crosses 47 miles of lonely desert bounded by the Black Mountains, Cerbat Mountains and White Hills and marked by creosote bushes and Joshua trees. Those who stop to explore will find other Mojave Desert plants-brittlebush, desert trumpet, old man cactus, holycross cholla and the tall, spiky Mojave yucca. As the road climbs Grapevine Mesa, the stone curtain of the Grand Wash Cliffs rises above a sprawling forest of Joshua trees.

Near the retirement community of Meadview (population about 1,000), pullouts offer astonishing views of the lake, a jewel-like blue set deeply into a series of mountain ranges that seem to stretch into infinity. Pearce Ferry Road descends toward the lake and, after a few miles, splits in two. The right fork, a steep dirt road, leads to Pearce Ferry. Here a low delta marks the end of Grand Canyon National Park and the beginning of Lake Mead.

The road's paved left fork winds downward to South Cove, where the open waters of Gregg Basin can be accessed by the first of two paved boat ramps on the Arizona side. (The other is at Temple Bar.) On a hot day, the lake's lure proves irresistible. Nearby, a group of teens took turns leaping into the water from a rocky outcropping, while sunbathers lounged at the water's edge. Even long after Labor Day, the water will remain comfortably in the mid-70-degree range.

To the east, Sandy Point stretches far into the basin, its long beach lined with houseboats.

Across the basin to the north and west, mountain ranges shelter desert bighorn sheep and feral burros, descendants of those used by miners in the 1800s. Bighorns depend on nearby water sources, and boaters may spot one drinking along the lake's edge. Old ferry routes, now hidden beneath the dark blue waters of Gregg Basin, offered miners a way across the Colorado River to Nevada's Gold Butte mines.

Heading west, in the direction the Colorado once flowed, Gregg Basin pinches down to a mile-long rocky passage at Virgin Canyon. On the other side of the narrow canyon lies a U-shaped cove protected by granite peaks and ridges. This cove, Greggs Hideout, is named for William Gregg, who operated a ferry in the late 1800s. To reach the cove's primitive campground going overland, take one of the recreation area's approved backcountry roads.

At Greggs Hideout and elsewhere on the lake, low water levels have exposed sandy beaches and increased the size of camping areas. (Levels have dropped in recent years due to scanty snowfall in the Upper Basin states-Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming from which Lake Mead gets 96 percent of its volume.) A broad apron of sand slopes down to the water, where a woman and her sons fished from camp chairs as sunset colored the cove's surface pale blue and pink. Fourteen lake miles west of Greggs Hideout, boaters reach Temple Bar. The "Temple," a large reddish sandstone monolith that today looms from Lake Mead's waters, was named in the 1860s by Mormons who settled what was then a dry desert basin, establishing farm-ing communities near river junctions and ferry routes. The church hoped to supply the Mormon state of Deseret with goods and converts by gaining access to Pacific trade routes via the Sea of Cortes and the Colorado River. The transcontinental railroad's completion in 1869 made the river route obsolete. Then Hoover Dam was built, and the Mormon towns now lie under water.

Temple Bar, the only developed resort on the Arizona shore, is accessible from the east via the unpaved Temple Bar back road. It winds past abandoned mines and around washes and hills bristling with Mojave yuccas and Joshua trees and, in the spring, graced with poppies, verbenas, desert stars and other wildflowers. Where the dirt road meets paved Temple Bar Road, the National Park Service operates a ranger station and campground.

The resort's bayside amenities include an 18-unit motel, fishing cabins, a convenience store and restaurant. The marina rents out personal watercraft, patio boats, fishing boats and ski boats. This section of Lake Mead delights water-skiers, who can skim across Temple Basin for 20 miles in each direction. But visitors who linger in Temple Bar's small-town atmosphere soon learn that the real passion, especially among locals, is fishing. Anglers try their luck for largemouth and striped bass, channel catfish, bluegill, rainbow trout or crappie.

A waitress at the Tail O' The Whale restaurant confided that her husband bought a boat, a fixer-upper, as soon as they moved to the lakeside village. "He thought it was a real bargain, until he started buying the parts to fix it up," she moaned, adding that she is now a fishing "widow."

Most mornings, fishing boats head into Temple Basin at first light,

Thayer's gulls, western grebes and great blue herons compete for fish, while flickers and other birds search for insects and freshwater clams among the tamarisks and willows along the shore.

Across the basin to the north, Bonelli Peak's triangular 5,334-foot summit thrusts above the surrounding mountains. The peak, like Bonelli Bay and Bonelli Landing, carries the name of a Mormon pioneer who owned a ferry at St. Thomas, a farming town established in 1865 at the confluence of the Virgin and Muddy rivers. Townsfolk abandoned St. Thomas in 1938, three years after Hoover Dam's completion, when the waters of the Colorado entered its streets. Today its only human visitors are scuba divers.

Bonelli Landing, about 25 lake miles west of Temple Bar, looks north onto the wide-open expanse of the Virgin Basin and up the lake's Overton Arm, which stretches 50 miles into Nevada. White gypsum Cliffs surround Bonelli Bay, contrasting sharply with the lake's aquamarine hue. Visitors with kayaks and other small craft can easily explore the waterand wind-sculpted islands and coves here.

The overland dirt road reaching Bonelli Landing's primitive campground travels through the Detrital Valley. This broad alluvial plain once served as a freight route for wagonloads of farm goods going to mines scattered throughout the Cerbat Mountains, White Hills and Black Mountains. Earlier peoples also used Detrital Valley as a passageway. Camping in brush shelters as they traveled seasonally in search of wild foods, the Mojave and Cerbat-Pai Indians left petroglyphs marking routes to the

river. Today's backcountry roads suitable for

four-wheel-drive vehicles lead west into the Black Mountains, where passersby can still see evidence of placer and hardscrabble mines in the form of old prospects (exploration holes), shafts, head frames and campsites. (Gaze but keep going, because a chance fall into an exploration hole or mine shaft will spoil any desert jaunt.) On the other side of the Black Mountains, tucked below lava-topped Fortification Hill, lies colorful Kingman Cove, accessible from a 4-mile dirt road leading off U.S. Route 93. The cove marks the unofficial boundary between wilderness escapes and wild fun. Its intimate embrace looks onto vast Boulder Basin, where visitors can choose among a staggering array of activities, from paddle-wheel cruises on the Desert Princess to sailboarding and jet-skiing. Boulder Basin, only 30 miles from Las Vegas, is the entry point for many of the recreation area's 9 million annual visitors.

The Alan Bible Visitor Center, near Boulder City, Nevada, offers information and programs, including ranger-led hikes in October. Nearby, the Railroad Tunnel Trail follows the route used to haul supplies and materials for the construction of Hoover Dam. Though nearly 90 percent of the park's lands are desert, best explored November through March, most visitors come in the summer to enjoy the lakes.

After asking a ranger where they could find a backcountry experience in their compact car, a trio of young women from Vancouver, British Columbia, "discovered" Kingman Cove. They spent several days swimming, relaxing and hiking among the vivid red hills called the Paint Pots.

Just around the corner from the cove lies Hoover Dam, marking the end of Lake Mead, although the 1.5 million-acre recreation area stretches another 70 miles to the south, through Black Canyon and down Lake Mohave all the way to Davis Dam. That section of the old Colorado River is rich with scenery and history, following the route of steamboat captains of the 1800s and Puebloan traders who camped along the shore a thousand years ago. Centuries later, these rugged shores still draw us. Offering us recreation and escape, the lake also links us with those who once depended on this water for survival when it was still "wild." The splashing leap of a largemouth bass, the regal silhouette of a bighorn ram, the sweet scent of willows in bloom-all remind us that the magical heart of this desert is water. AH After gliding with grebes and watching a coyote fish, Sedona-based Kathleen Bryant is counting on future Lake Mead adventures.

As he explored the shoreline of Lake Mead, Larry Lindahl found himself reminiscing about childhood summers spent swimming. He lives in Sedona.

Perfect Ruins

DROPPING INTO A PRISTINE ANCIENT NEIGHBORHOOD