The Romance of the Colorado River / The Story of its Discovery in 1840, with an Account of the Later Explorations, and with Special Reference to the Voyages of Powell through the Line of the Great Canyons

by Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh

The Heart of Lodore.
Photograph by E.O. BEAMAN, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.

The Canyon of Lodore. Looking down Stream.
Photograph by E.O. BEAMAN, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
River here was extremely swift. Fall at left distance. Second expedition landed with difficulty on right at foot of tall pines. The dark lines at water’s edge are the boats.

The Canyon of Lodore. Looking across a Rapid.
Photograph by E.O. BEAMAN, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.

The temperature was now often 99 degrees F. in the shade, and rowing on the slow current was irksome, so we lashed the boats together and drifted along while the Major in his armchair read aloud selections from Scott, Emerson, and others, whose condensed poetical works and a couple of Bibles were all the literature to be found in the party, as books are heavy and weight was to be avoided. At times some of the men amused themselves by diving under the boats, swimming around and ahead of them, or surprised a coyote on the bank with a rifle-shot, and otherwise enjoyed the relaxation we had well earned by our toil in Red Canyon. The river was smooth and deep and about six hundred to eight hundred feet wide. At the very foot of the valley we made a camp under the shadow of that magnificent and unrivalled portal, the Gate of Lodore, which had been visible to us for many miles; the dark cleft two thousand feet high, through which the river cuts into the heart of the mountains, appearing as solemn and mysterious as the pathway to another world. From an eminence we could peer into its depths for some distance, and there was no sign of a rapid, but we were not deceived, having posted ourselves by extracts from Jack Sumner’s diary, whose description of “how the waters come down at Lodore” was contained in the frequent repetition of the words, “a hell of foam.” Lodore, indeed, is almost one continuous rapid for the whole twenty miles of its length, and the passage through it will tax the endurance of any man. The declivity is the greatest of the whole river with the exception of the First Granite Gorge of the Grand Canyon and a portion of Cataract Canyon. A diagram of it is given on page 57. I have space only to describe one or two characteristic incidents. The current of the river was extraordinarily swift; it must have been in some places nearly twenty miles an hour. The stream averaged about three hundred feet wide. The boats in a rapid fairly flew along amidst the foam, plunging and rearing in the “tails” of waves which always terminate rapids of this class. One day about noon we came shooting down over one of these places, having just run a rather bad rapid, when we saw only a few hundred yards below an ugly looking fall. The left wall came down very straight into the water and threw a deep shadow over it so that we could not tell exactly what was there. Opposite was a rocky wooded point, and between the two the river bodily fell away. Altogether it was a beautiful, though a startling picture. The whole set of the current was towards this drop with headlong fury. There were no eddies, no slack water of any kind. But we could not do such a foolhardy thing as to go into it without knowing what it was and therefore a landing was imperative. Accordingly we headed for the right bank, and laid to our oars till they bent like straws. We almost reached the shore. It was only a few feet away, but the relentless current was hurling us, broadside on, toward the dark rocks where the smooth water was broken and torn and churned to shreds of snowy foam. There was only one thing for us to do, if we did not want to run upon the rocks, and that was to leap overboard, and trust to bringing the boat to a stop by holding on to the bottom, here not so far down. This was done, and the depth turned out to be about to our waists; but for a little time the boat sped on as before. Planting our shoes firmly against the boulders of the bottom as we slid along, we finally gained the upper hand, and then it was an easy matter to reach the shore. Hardly had we done this when the Nell came tearing down in the same fashion. We rushed into the water as far as we dared, and they pulled with a will till they came to us, when they all jumped into the water and we tugged the boat ashore, just in time to plunge in again and help the Cañonita in the same way. Dinner over, the rapid was examined and it was discovered that by pulling straight out into it clear of the rocks, we could easily get through. This was accordingly done and one after the other the boats sped down as if towed by an express train. Then we ran a number of smaller ones with no trouble, and toward evening arrived at a place where the entire river dropped into a sag, before falling over some very bad rapids. We avoided the sag by keeping close to the left bank, and rounded a little point into a broad eddy, across which we could sail with impunity. Then we landed on a rocky point at the head of the first bad plunge, the beginning of Disaster Falls, where the No-Name was wrecked two years before. At this place we camped for the night. The descent altogether here is about fifty feet. In the morning all the cargoes were taken over the rocks to the foot of the first fall, and the boats were cautiously worked down along the edge to where the cargoes were, where they were reloaded and lowered to the head of the next descent, several hundred yards. Here the cargoes were again taken out and carried over the rocks down to a quiet bay. This took till very late and everyone was tired out, but the boats were carried and pushed on skids up over the rocks for twenty or thirty yards, past the worst of the fall, and then lowered into the water to be let down the rest of the way by lines. Two had to be left there till the following day. We had found a one hundred pound sack of flour lying on a high rock, where it had been placed at the time of the wreck of the No-Name, and Andy that day made our dinner biscuits out of it. Though it was two years old the bread tasted perfectly good; and this is a tribute to the climate, as well as to the preservative qualities of a coating of wet flour. This coating was about half an inch thick, and outside were a cotton flour-sack and a gunny bag. The flour was left on the rock, and may be there yet. Not far below this we came to Lower Disaster Falls, which a short portage enabled us to circumnavigate and go on our way. The current was so swift all the time that objects on shore flitted past as they do when one looks from a window of a railway train. Just opposite our camp on this night the cliff was almost perpendicular from the water’s edge to the height of about twenty-five hundred feet. The walls seemed very close together, only a narrow strip of sky being visible. As we sat after supper peering aloft at this ribbon of the heavens, the stars in the clear sky came slowly out like some wonderful transformation scene, and just on the edge of the opposite wall, resembling an exquisite and brilliant jewel, appeared the constellation of the Harp. Immediately the name “Cliff of the Harp” suggested itself and from that moment it was so called. Here and there we discovered evidences of the former journey, but nothing to indicate that human beings had ever before, that been below Disaster Falls. There we saw the same indications of an early disaster which Powell had noticed on the first trip, a rusty bake-oven, some knives and forks and tin plates, in the sand at the foot of the second fall. The day after the Cliff of the Harp camp we began by making a line-portage around a very ugly place, which took the whole morning. In the afternoon there was another similar task, so that by night we had made only three or four miles, and camped at the beginning of a decidedly forbidding stretch. Just below us were three sharp rapids which received the name of Triplet Tails. A great deal of work was required to pass these, and then we ran three or four in good style, which brought us, in the late afternoon, to where the whole river spread out amongst innumerable rocks and for more than half a mile the water was a solid sheet of milky foam, sending up the usual wild roar, which echoed and echoed again and again amongst the cliffs around and above us. Some one proposed the name of “Hell’s Half-Mile” for this terrible place and the idea was at once adopted, so appropriate did it seem. The turmoil of the dashing waters was almost deafening, and, even when separated by only a few feet, we could only communicate with each other by shouting at the top of our lungs. It was a difficult task to get our little ships safely below this half-mile, but it was finally accomplished, and on we went in search of the next dragon’s claw. At our camp the fire in some way got into a pine grove and soon was crackling enough to rival the noise of the rapid. The lower region seemed now to be sending its flames up through the bottom of the gorge and the black smoke rolled into the sky far above the top of the walls. Many and varied were our experiences in this magnificent canyon, which for picturesqueness and beauty rivals even the Grand Canyon, though not on such a giant scale. Its passage would probably be far easier at low water. At last, one evening, as the soft twilight was settling into the chasm, a strange, though agreeable silence, that seemed almost oppressive, fell around us. The angry waters ceased their roaring. We slid along on a smooth, even river, and suddenly emerged into a pretty little park, a mile long, bounded by cliffs only some six hundred feet high. Running our boats up into the mouth of a quiet river entering from the left we tied them up and were quickly established in the most comfortable camp since Brown’s Park. We were at the mouth of Yampa River. From a wonderful echo which repeated a sentence of ten words, we called the place Echo Park. Such an echo in Europe would be worth a fortune. The Echo Rock is shown on page 203.