We Must Run The Rapid Or Abandon The River

from the journal of John Wesley Powell:

August 14, 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.

from Hance Rapid (top)
Colorado River at Seventyfive Mile Canyon (middle)
from Serpentine Rapid (below)