nightmare when it squeezes through a narrow, rock-choked channel.
Like the five-year-old with a hose, Powell understood perfectly well that a narrow channel meant fast, tumultuous water. The difference is that Powell was on the receiving end of the waterpower, like a ladybug caught in a hoseâs blast.
The problem for Powell and his crew of novices was that their experience in other domains, such as driving wagons, provided little guidance in river running. In similar fashion, beginners today often run into trouble because they assume that a boat on a river will behave like a car on a highway. But in crucial ways, rivers and highways are opposites.
On man-made roads, traffic speeds up on the straightest, broadest stretches and slows down where the road suddenly shrinks from six lanes to two. With rivers, as we have seen, the opposite applies. The more a river narrows, the faster it flows. To picture the plight of novices in white water, imagine a highway where drivers have only the most rudimentary control of their carâs steering wheel, gas pedal, and brakes. Suppose, further, that each carâs speed changes automatically and inevitably, depending on the road conditions. Picture, in particular, that the worse the roadâthe more suddenly it squeezes itself into a single lane with a cliff on one side and a sheer drop on the otherâthe faster each car hurtles along. On such a diabolical highway, we might begin to appreciate the special, unnerving qualities of white water.
In fact, it is worse than that. The speed of the current is not the greatest hazard in a rapid. Waves in a rapid ricochet off rocks and cliffs and collide with one another; water rushes over rocks and dives down into holes and moves upstream to fill in âemptyâ spaces behind obstacles. The problem is not that the current is moving so fast but that it is flowing in so many different directions at so many different speeds, downstream and upstream and even straight down toward the bottom of the river. Think of our diabolical highway again, and this time throw in not only a bottleneck but a hairpin curve and some potholes and patches of ice and broken-down cars abandoned in the middle of the road. If this highway behaved like a river, it would not only speed up as it narrowed but would form itself into a complex series of mini-roads, some heading straight into a ditch, others speeding toward junked cars or ice slicks orâperhapsâsafety.
The rocks in the river, it should be noted, provide a double dose of danger. They make trouble, first of all, by choking the channel and providing the structures that create waves and falls and boat-sucking holes. But even in their passive role, as obstacles rather than as creators of chaos, rocks can be formidable. The risk, as Powellâs men had already found, is in getting hung up sideways against a boulder, pinned against an unyielding obstacle by the concentrated force of a surging river. Here highway analogies fall short. Think instead of a pythonâs prey, immobile in the giant snakeâs relentless coils, struggling fiercely but futilely against a vastly stronger opponent.
â¢Â      â¢Â      â¢
On June 7, Powell and some of the men climbed the cliffs to survey the new canyon. It was not an easy climb, for the rocks were split with dark, threatening fissures. The cliff top, which proved to be 2,085 feet above the river, provided a river view of some six or seven miles. From this vantage point, the Green looked small and harmless, almost inviting. On returning to the river, the men quickly found that rapids that looked easy from half a mile above were not so easy when seen from a bucking, tossing rowboat. Andy Hall, undaunted, dredged up from his memory a bit of English verse by Robert Southey about a waterfallâs âRising and leaping, / Sinking and creeping, / Swelling and sweeping,â and so on. The poem, which
Like the five-year-old with a hose, Powell understood perfectly well that a narrow channel meant fast, tumultuous water. The difference is that Powell was on the receiving end of the waterpower, like a ladybug caught in a hoseâs blast.
The problem for Powell and his crew of novices was that their experience in other domains, such as driving wagons, provided little guidance in river running. In similar fashion, beginners today often run into trouble because they assume that a boat on a river will behave like a car on a highway. But in crucial ways, rivers and highways are opposites.
On man-made roads, traffic speeds up on the straightest, broadest stretches and slows down where the road suddenly shrinks from six lanes to two. With rivers, as we have seen, the opposite applies. The more a river narrows, the faster it flows. To picture the plight of novices in white water, imagine a highway where drivers have only the most rudimentary control of their carâs steering wheel, gas pedal, and brakes. Suppose, further, that each carâs speed changes automatically and inevitably, depending on the road conditions. Picture, in particular, that the worse the roadâthe more suddenly it squeezes itself into a single lane with a cliff on one side and a sheer drop on the otherâthe faster each car hurtles along. On such a diabolical highway, we might begin to appreciate the special, unnerving qualities of white water.
In fact, it is worse than that. The speed of the current is not the greatest hazard in a rapid. Waves in a rapid ricochet off rocks and cliffs and collide with one another; water rushes over rocks and dives down into holes and moves upstream to fill in âemptyâ spaces behind obstacles. The problem is not that the current is moving so fast but that it is flowing in so many different directions at so many different speeds, downstream and upstream and even straight down toward the bottom of the river. Think of our diabolical highway again, and this time throw in not only a bottleneck but a hairpin curve and some potholes and patches of ice and broken-down cars abandoned in the middle of the road. If this highway behaved like a river, it would not only speed up as it narrowed but would form itself into a complex series of mini-roads, some heading straight into a ditch, others speeding toward junked cars or ice slicks orâperhapsâsafety.
The rocks in the river, it should be noted, provide a double dose of danger. They make trouble, first of all, by choking the channel and providing the structures that create waves and falls and boat-sucking holes. But even in their passive role, as obstacles rather than as creators of chaos, rocks can be formidable. The risk, as Powellâs men had already found, is in getting hung up sideways against a boulder, pinned against an unyielding obstacle by the concentrated force of a surging river. Here highway analogies fall short. Think instead of a pythonâs prey, immobile in the giant snakeâs relentless coils, struggling fiercely but futilely against a vastly stronger opponent.
â¢Â      â¢Â      â¢
On June 7, Powell and some of the men climbed the cliffs to survey the new canyon. It was not an easy climb, for the rocks were split with dark, threatening fissures. The cliff top, which proved to be 2,085 feet above the river, provided a river view of some six or seven miles. From this vantage point, the Green looked small and harmless, almost inviting. On returning to the river, the men quickly found that rapids that looked easy from half a mile above were not so easy when seen from a bucking, tossing rowboat. Andy Hall, undaunted, dredged up from his memory a bit of English verse by Robert Southey about a waterfallâs âRising and leaping, / Sinking and creeping, / Swelling and sweeping,â and so on. The poem, which
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