Canyon walls, still higher and higher, as we go down through strata. There is a steep talus at the foot of the cliff, and in some places, the upper parts of the walls are terraced.
About ten o'clock we come to a place where the river occupies the whole channel, and the walls are vertical from the water's edge. We see a fall below, and row up against the cliff. There is a little shelf, or rather a horizontal crevice, a few feet above our heads. One man stands on the deck of the boat, another climbs on his shoulders, and then into the crevice. Then we pass him a line, and two or three others, with myself, follow. We pass along the crevice until it becomes a shelf, as the upper part, or roof, is broken off. On this we walk for a short distance, slowly climbing all the way, until we reach a point where the shelf is broken off, and we can pass no farther. Then we go back to the boat, cross the river and get some logs that have lodged in the rocks, bring them to our side, pass them along the crevice and shelf, and bridge over the broken place. We go on to a point over the falls, but do not obtain a satisfactory view. Then we climb out to the top of the wall, and walk along to find a point below the fall, from which it can be seen. From this point it seems possible to let down our boats with lines to the head of the rapids and then make a portage. So we return, row down by the side of the cliff as far as we dare, and fasten one of the boats to a rock. Then we let down another boat to the end of its line beyond the first, and the third boat to the end of its line below the second, which brings it to the head of the fall, and under an overhanging rock. Then the upper boat, in obedience to a signal, lets go. We pull in the line and catch the nearest boat as it comes, and then the last. Then we make a portage, and go on.
--John Wesley Powell journal entry for August 6, 1869
With some feeling of anxiety, we enter a new canyon this morning. We have learned to closely observe the texture of the rock. In softer strata, we have a quiet river; in harder, we find rapids and falls. Below us are the limestones and hard sandstones, which we found in Catarack Canyon. This bodes toil and danger. Besides the texture of the rocks, there is another condition which affects the character of the channel, as we have found by experience.
Where the strata are horizontal,
the river is often quiet; but,
even though it may be very swift in places, no great obstacles are found. where the rocks incline in the direction traveled, the river usually sweeps with great velocity, but we still have few rapids and falls. But where the rocks dip upstream, and the river cuts obliquely across the upturned formations, harder strata above and softer below, we have rapids and falls. Into hard rocks, and into rocks dipping up stream, we pass this morning, and start on a long, rocky, mad rapid. On the left there is a vertical rock, and down by this cliff and around to the left we glide, just tossed enough by the waves to appreciate the rate at which we are traveling.
The canyon is narrow, with vertical walls, which gradually grow higher.
More rapids and falls are found. We come to one with a drop of sixteen feet, around which we make a portage, and then stop for dinner.
Then a run of two miles, and another portage, long and difficult;
then we camp for the night, on a bank of sand.
--John Wesley Powell journal entry for August 5, 1869
At daybreak we walk down the bank of the river on a little sandy beach to take a view
of a new feature
in the canyon. Heretofore, hard rocks have given us bad river; soft rocks, smooth water; and a series of rocks harder than any we have experienced sets in. The river
enters the granite!
We can see but a little way into the granite gorge, but it looks threatening.
After breakfast
we enter on the waves.
At the very introduction, it inspires awe. The canyon is narrower than we have ever seen it.
The water is swifter. There are but few broken rocks in the channel,
but the walls are set on either side with pinnacles and crags.
Sharp, angular buttresses, bristling with wind and wave polished spires,
extend far out into the river.
Ledges of rocks jut into the stream, their tops sometimes just below
the surface, sometimes rising few, or many feet above; and island ledges,
and island pinnacles, and island towers break the swift course of the stream into chutes, and eddies, and whirlpools. We soon reach a place where a creek comes in from the left, and just below, the channel is chocked with boulders, which have washed down this lateral canyon
and formed a dam, over which there is a fall of thirty or forty feet;
but on the boulders we can get a foothold, and we make a portage.
Three more such dams are found. Over one we make a portage.
At the other two we find chutes through which we can run.
As we proceed, the granite rises higher, until nearly a thousand feet
of the lower part of the walls are composed of this rock.
About eleven o'clock we hear
a great roar ahead, and approach it very cautiously. The sound grows louder and louder as we run, and at last we find ourselves above a long, broken fall, with ledges and pinnacles of rock obstructing the river. there is a descent of perhaps seventy-five or eighty feet in a third of a mile, and the rushing waters break into great waves on the rocks, and lash themselves into a mad, white foam. We can land just above, but there is no foothold on either side by which we can make a portage. It is nearly a thousand feet to the top of the granite, so it will be impossible to carry our boats around, though we can climb to the summit up a side gulch, and, passing along
a mile or two, can descend to the river. This we find on examination;
but such a portage would be impracticable for us, and we must run
the rapid or abandon the river. there is no hesitation.
We step into our boats, push off and away we go,
first on smooth but swift water,
then we strike a glassy wave and ride to its top,
down again into the trough, up again on a higher wave, and down and up on waves higher and still higher, until we strike one just as it curls back, and a breaker rolls over our little boat. Still, on we speed, shooting past projecting rocks, till the little boat is caught in a whirlpool and spun around several times. At last we pull out again into the stream, and now the other boats have passed us. The open compartment of the Emma Dean is filled with water, and every breaker rolls over us. Hurled back from a rock, now on this side, now on that, we are carried into an eddy in which we struggle for a few minutes, and are then out again, the breakers still rolling over us. We find the other boats have turned into an eddy at the foot of the fall and are waiting to catch us as we come, for the men have seen that our boat is swamped. They push out as we come near, and pull us in against the wall. We bail our boat, and on we go again.
The gorge is black and narrow below, red and gray and flaring above, with crags and angular projections on the walls, which, cut in many places by side canyons, seem to be a vast wilderness of rocks. Down in these grand, gloomy depths we glide, ever listening, for the mad waters keep up their roar; ever watching, ever peering ahead, for the narrow canyon is winding, and the river is closed in so that we can see but a few hundred yards, and what there may be below we know not; but we listen for falls, and watch for rocks, or stop now and then, in the bay of a recess, to admire the gigantic scenery. And ever, as we go, there is some new pinnacle or tower, some crag or peak, some distant view of the upper plateau,
some strange-shaped rock, or some deep, narrow side canyon.
Then we come to another broken fall, which appears more difficult than the one we ran this morning.
A small creek comes in on the right, and the first fall of the water is over boulders, which have been carried down by the lateral stream. We land at its mouth, and stop for an hour or two to examine the fall. It seems possible to let down with lines at least part of the way from point to point along the right-hand wall. So we make a portage over the first rocks, and find footing on some boulders below. Then we let down one of the boats to the end of her line, when she reaches a corner of the projecting rock, to which one of the men clings and steadies her, while i examine an eddy below. I think we can pass the other boats down by us and catch them in the eddy. This is soon done and the men in the boats in the eddy pull us to their side. On the shore of this little eddy there is about two feet of gravel beach above the water. Standing on this beach, some of the men take the line of the little boat and let it drift down against another projecting angle. Here is a little shelf, on which a man from my boat climbs, and a shorter line is passed to him, and he fastens the boat to the side of the cliff. Then the second one is let down, bringing the line of the third. When the second boat is tied up, the two men standing on the beach above spring into the last boat, which is pulled up alongside ours. then we let down the boats for twenty-five or thirty yards by walking along the shelf, landing them again in the mouth of a side canyon. Just below this there is another pile of boulders over which we make another portage. from the foot of these rocks we can climb to another shelf, forty or fifty feet above the water.
On this beach we camp for the night, We find a few sticks which have lodged in the rocks. It is raining hard and we have no shelter, but kindle
a fire and have our supper. We sit on the rocks all night,
wrapped in our ponchos, getting what sleep we can.
--John Wesley Powell journal entry for August 14, 1869
Telemann: Concerto for Mandolin, Hammered Dulcimer and Harp
Bach: Oboe Concerto
We still keep our camp
in Music Temple today.
I wish to obtain a view of the adjacent country, if possible; so, early in the morning, the men take me across the river, and I pass along by the foot of the cliff half a mile upstream, and then climb first up broken ledges, then two or three hundred yards up a smooth, sloping rock, and then pass out on a narrow ledge.
Still, I find I have not attained an altitude from which I can overlook the region outside of the canyon; and so I descend into a little gulch, and climb again to a higher ridge, all the way along naked sandstone, and at last
I reach a point of commanding view. I can look several miles up the San Juan, and a long distance up the Colorado; and away to the northwest
I can see the Henry Mountains; to the northeast, the Sierra La Sal; to the southeast, unknown mountains; and to the southwest, the meandering of the canyon. Then I return to the bank of the river.
We sleep again in Music Temple.
--John Wesley Powell journal entry for August 2, 1869
We drop down two miles this morning, and go into camp again.
There is a low willow-covered strip of land along the walls on the east.
Across this we walk, to explore an alcove which we see from the river.
On entering, we find a little grove of box-elder and cottonwood trees;
and, turning to the right, we find ourselves in a vast chamber,
carved out of the rock. At the upper end
there is a clear, deep pool of water, bordered with verdure.
Standing by the side of this, we can see the grove at the entrance.
The chamber is more than two hundred feet high, five hundred feet long,
and two hundred feet wide. Through the ceiling, and on through the rocks
for a thousand feet above, there is a narrow winding skylight;
and this is all carved out by a little stream, which only runs
during the few showers that fall now and then in this arid country.
The waters from the bare rocks of the canyon,
gathering rapidly into a small channel, have eroded a deep side canyon,
through which they run, until they fall into the smaller end of this chamber.
The rock at the ceiling is hard, the rock below, very soft and friable;
and having cut through the upper harder portion down into the lower and softer, the stream has washed out these friable sandstones;
and thus the chamber has been excavated.
Here we bring our camp.
When Old Shady
sings us a song at night,
we are pleased to find
that this hollow
in the rock is filled
with sweet sounds.
It was doubtless made
for an academy of music
by its storm-born architect;
so we name it Music Temple.
--John Wesley Powell journal entry for August 1, 1869
We have a cool, pleasant ride today through this part of the canyon. The walls are steadily increasing in altitude, the curves are gentle, and often the river sweeps in an arc of vertical wall, smooth and unbroken; and then by a curve that is variegated by royal arches, mossy alcoves, deep beautiful glens and painted grottoes.
--John Wesley Powell journal entry for July 31, 1869
We make good progress today,
as the water, though smooth,
is swift. Sometimes the canyon walls are vertical to the top. Sometimes, they are vertical below, and have a mound-shaped slope above it. In other places, the slope with its mounds,
comes down to the water's edge.
Still proceeding on our way,
we find the orange sandstone
is cut in two by a group of firm, calcareous strata, and the lower bed is underlaid by soft, gypsiferous shales. Sometimes, the upper homogenous bed is a smooth, vertical wall, but usually it is carved with mounds, with gently meandering valley lines.
The lower bed, yielding to gravity, as the softer shales below work out into the river, breaks into angular surfaces, often having a columnar appearance. One could almost imagine that the walls had
been carved with a purpose,
to represent giant
architectual forms.
In the deep recesses of the walls, we find springs,
with mosses and ferns
on the moistened sandstone.
--John Wesley Powell journal entry for July 30, 1869
Max Romeo: One Step Forward
WESTWARD VIEW FROM OUTSIDE HORN CANYON (2)
OUTSIDE HANCE CANYON LOOKING EAST (2)
POIN'DEXTER PANORAMA
What Ed and I knew,
on some fundamental level,
is that once you’ve been
out in it long enough,
it becomes the top priority,
he told us as
we settled into the study. When you’re out
in it fully,
you recognize
it’s where you belong.
We concluded that
it took a good ten days
in the wilderness
until you began to change.
You need to live
in the spirit of nature,
so that it’s totally
and intuitively
in your system.
Then you don’t have any choice but to defend it. **
But most scientists studying the western climate believe the freak will become the norm. Researchers recently concluded that the extended dry period in the West over the last ten years is the worst in eight hundred years—that is, since the years between 1146 and 1151. Eight hundred years! If we were just talking about another decade of this or, worse, a decade of the type of heat we were seeing in the summer of 2012, the results would be catastrophic. But climate scientists believe it will keep getting hotter. If so even drought-resistant plants will die, reservoir levels will continue to fall, crop production will drop. Worse, as vegetation withers, it will no longer be able to absorb carbon dioxide, further exacerbating climate change. And now to this precarious and combustible mix we have decided to add fracking.
We have chosen to do this not with caution but on a massive scale, and to do it right next to our precious rivers, right smack in the middle of aquifers.
We go into these places and use, mixed with the millions of gallons of water, a secret recipe of chemicals, many of them poisonous to humans, which we then force into fissures of rock with high-powered blasts to flush out the fuel we are seeking. The man in the bar had warned about earthquakes, but fracking is, in essence, a small seismic event, designed to blast out minerals. We have decided to inject poisons into the ground, then shake that ground, in a region where potable water is more precious than gold. But not, we have decided, more precious than oil. One thing is crystal clear. Though fracking is unproven technology, we are not treating it that way. Instead we are conducting a vast experiment all over the country, from the hills of Pennsylvania to the deserts of Utah. Since we are moving into unfamiliar territory you would think, if we were wise, that we would carefully monitor any and all results. We are not. When people in the fracked area complain that their water is fizzling out of their taps in a foamy mix, smelling of petroleum, the companies are quick to offer other water sources, like cisterns, but not quick, of course, to question the enterprise itself. In fact, the corporate response to the contaminated water supplies and groundwater has been consistent. They tell the landowners and anyone else who complains that they are concerned but that they will not slow down until there is conclusive proof that what they are doing is dangerous and poses a health risk. This is standard operating procedure in today’s world, but it is also, to anyone with a dollop of common sense, an ass-backwards way of doing things. Despite the troubles people are having, we’ll keep going full-speed ahead until someone proves to us the trouble is real, they tell us. Never, Maybe we should slow down until we learn the facts. **
As far back as 1912, John Muir had protested against the building of the Hetch Hetchy Dam with these words: These temple destroyers, devotees of raging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. **
--David Gessner All The Wild That Remains:
Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West **
Achtung Alles Lookenpeepers!
Dies Machine is nicht
fur gefingerpoken
und mittengraben.
Is easy schnappen
der springenwerk,
blowenfusen und poppencorken
mit spitzensparken.
Is nicht fur gewerken
by das dummkopfen.
Das rubbernecken sightseeren
keepen cotten-pickenen hands
in das pockets - relaxen und
Watch Das Blinken Lights.
--note on North Rim
Backcountry Office copy machine
some guy sucking his gut in
Ms. Kate in lower Clear Creek Canyon
Vishnu Temple with pilgrims
outside Hance Canyon
We examine the rapids below. Large rocks have fallen from the walls--great, angular blocks, which have rolled down the talus, and are strewn along the channel. We are compelled to make three portages in succession, the distance being less than three-fourths of a mile, with a fall of seventy-five feet. Among these rocks, in chutes, whirlpools, and great waves, with rushing breakers and foam, the water finds its way, still tumbling down. We stop for the night, only three-fourths of a mile below the last camp. A very hard day's work has been done, and at evening I sit on a rock by the edge of the river, to look at the water, and listen to its roar. Hours ago, deep shadows had settled into the canyon as the sun passed behind the cliffs. Now, doubtless, the sun has gone down, for we can see no glint of light on the crags above. Darkness is coming on. The waves are rolling, with crests of foam so white they seem almost to give a light of their own. Nearby, a chute of water strikes the foot of a great block of limestone, fifty feet high, and the waters pile up against it, and roll back. Where there are sunken rocks, the water heaps up in mounds, or even in cones. At a point where rocks come very near the surface, the water forms a chute above, strikes, and is shot up ten or fifteen feet, and piles back in gentle curves, as in a fountain; and on the river tumbles and rolls.
--John Wesley Powell journal entry for July 24, 1869
On starting,
we come at once
to difficult rapids
and falls, that,
in many places,
are more abrupt
than in any
of the canyons
through which
we have passed.
From morning until noon,
the course of the river
is to the west.
The scenery is grand,
with rapids and falls below,
and walls above,
beset with crags
and pinnacles.
Just at noon
we wheel again
to the south,
and go into camp for dinner.
While the cook
is preparing it,
Bradley, Sumner
and myself
go into a side canyon
that comes in at this point.
We enter through
a very narrow passage,
having to wade along
the course of
a little stream
until a cascade
interrupts our progress.
Then we climb to the right,
for a hundred feet,
until we reach
a little shelf,
along which we pass,
walking with great care,
for it is narrow,
until we pass
around the fall.
Here the gorge widens into a spacious, sky-roofed chamber. In the farther end is a beautiful grove of cottonwoods, and between us and the cottonwoods the little stream widens out into three clear lakelets, with bottoms of smooth rock. Beyond the cottonwoods the brook tumbles in a series of white, shining cascades, from heights that seem immeasurable. Turning around, we can look through the cleft through which we came, and see the river, with towering walls beyond. What a chamber for a resting place is this! hewn from the solid rock; the heavens for a ceiling; cascade fountains within; a grove in the conservatory, clear lakelets for a refreshing bath, and an outlook through the doorway on a raging river, with cliffs and mountains beyond.
Our way, after dinner, is through a gorge, grand beyond description. The walls are nearly vertical; the river broad and swift, but free from rocks and falls. At this great depth, the river rolls in solemn majesty...
--John Wesley Powell journal entry for July 23, 1869
