On leaving Alcove Brook we ran a rapid and then another a little farther on, but they were easy and the river was much calmer though the current was still very swift. At the same time the walls to our satisfaction began to give indications of breaking. They became less high, less compact, and we ventured to hope that our battle with the waters of Lodore was about over. The Major said that, as nearly as he could remember, the end of the great gorge was not very far below. Though the sky was beginning to show the evening tints we kept on and ever on, swiftly but smoothly, looking up at the sky and at the splendid walls. The sun went down. The chasm grew hazy with the soft light of evening and the mystery of the bends deepened. There was no obstruction and in about three miles from Alcove Brook we rather abruptly emerged into a beautiful small opening, where the immediate walls were no more than six hundred feet high. A river of considerable size flowed in on the left, through a deep and narrow canyon. This was the Yampa, sometimes then called Bear River. By seven o'clock we had moored the boats a few yards up its mouth and we made a comfortable camp in a box-elder grove. We had won the fight without disaster and we slept that night in peace.
Lodore is wholly within the State of Colorado. It is 20-3/4 miles long with a descent of 420 feet,[9] mostly concentrated between Disaster Falls and Hell's Half-Mile, a distance of about 12 miles. The total descent from the Union Pacific crossing was 975 feet in a distance, as the river runs, of about 153 miles.
Echo Park.
Mouth of Yampa River in Foreground, Green River on Right.
Photograph by E. O. Beaman, 1871.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Professor Thompson's diary says he landed first after a hard pull, "and then caught the other boats below, they not succeeding in getting in."
[8] In his report the Major ascribes the naming of this cliff to an evening on the first voyage. The incident could hardly have occurred twice even had the camps been in the same place.