A Wild Ride

August 21.

Below, the river turns again to the right, the canon is very narrow, and we see in advance but a short distance. The water is swift, and there is no landing place. From around this curve comes a mad roar, and down we are carried, with a dizzying velocity, to the head of another rapid. High over our heads on either side are overhanging granite walls. The sharp bend cuts off our view, so a few minutes will carry us into unknown waters.

I stand on deck, supporting myself with a strap fastened on either side to the gunwale, and away we go on one long winding chute. The excitement is so great that we forget the danger -- a wild, exhilarating ride for ten miles -- until we hear the roar of a great fall below, back on our oars and succeed in landing.

John Wesley Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, August 21, 1869

On the River Rolls

July 24.
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. Among these rocks, in chutes, whirlpools, and great waves, with rushing breakers and foam, the water finds its way, still tumbling down.

We are compelled to make three portages in succession. We stop for the night, only three fourths of a mile below the last camp. A very hard day's work has been done. At evening I sit on a rock by the edge of the river, to look at the water, and listen to its roar.

The waves are rolling, with crests of foam so white they seem almost to give a light of their own. Near by, 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.

Darkness comes. The river tumbles and rolls on.

John Wesley Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, July 24, 1869

See On the River Rolls II

Canon of Desolation.

July 8. 

This morning, Bradley and I go out to climb, and gain an altitude of more than two thousand feet above the river, but still do not reach the summit of the wall.

After dinner, we pass through a region of the wildest desolation. The canon is very tortuous, the river very rapid, and many lateral canons enter on either side. These usually have their branches, so that the region is cut into a wilderness of gray and brown cliffs. In several places, these lateral canons are only separated from each other by narrow walls, often hundreds of feet high, but so narrow in places that where softer rocks are found below, they have crumbled away, and left holes in the wall, forming passages from one canon into another.

Piles of broken rock lie against these walls; crags and tower shaped peaks are seen every where; and away above them, long lines of broken cliffs, and above and beyond the cliffs are pine forests, of which we obtain occasional glimpses, as we look up through a vista of rocks.

The walls are almost without vegetation; a few dwarf bushes are seen here and there, clinging to the rocks, and cedars grow from the crevices— not like the cedars of a land refreshed with rains, but ugly clumps, like war clubs, beset with spines. We are minded to call this the Canon of Desolation.


John Wesley Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, July 8, 1869