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Outside Magazine, June 2005

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Ain't it Just Grand (cont.)


	WORTH KNOWING: afternoon light on the canyon's Redwall limestone (Kurt Markus)

THAT, AS IT TURNS OUT, isn't entirely true.

For more than two weeks, Litton has graciously resigned himself to his subordinate role, cheerfully needling Blaustein while Tim Dale gets the Sequoia through the worst whitewater. But as the trip enters its final phase, the frustrations bottled up inside Mr. No Compromise are about to collide with the biggest obstacle on the river.

Just below the Toroweap Overlook, 179 miles downstream from Lees Ferry, the Colorado drops off a ledge and detonates. This is Lava Falls, a chaos of water and rock that, over the years, has ravaged more boats than any other rapid in the canyon. Even today it's a gamble, and when things go wrong, the results can be frightening: boatmen blown from their seats, oars cartwheeling through the air, passengers swimming for their lives.

The night before we reach Lava, Litton has a message for Bronco: "I've never been a passenger through Lava, and I'll be damned if I'm going to start now," he declares. "I'll walk around."

The next afternoon, the river is flowing at 9,000 cubic feet per second, not a bad level for running Lava. We'll go down the right side, a route whose entrance is extremely hard to judge. The tongue runs just to the right of a massive ledge hole that claimed the life of a client named Norine Abrams in August 1984.

A boatman who threads this entrance perfectly has just enough time to square up his bow before the current drives him directly into the center of an enormous, V-shaped standing wave. The hope is that this wave will push the boat slightly to the left. If it does the opposite, the boat rockets right and washes alongside a glistening slab of lava called the Big Black Rock. The rock is where Lava's other victim, a client named Andalea Buzzard, was stripped of her life jacket and drowned in August 1977. (Neither fatality occurred on an OARS or Grand Canyon Dories trip.)

After the crew ties the boats off to the right-hand bank and scouts the rapid, Litton and Bronco put their heads together for a powwow. Then Litton returns to the Sequoia and, without any ceremony, takes his seat at the oars.

"Let's move," he says quietly.

As we drift into the current, things suddenly get very quiet. Sitting in the Sequoia's bow with Curtis Newell, I can hear only the creak of the oars and the muffled roar of the falls. "Well," Litton announces, "here we go."

He handles the entrance flawlessly: You could spit into the ledge hole as we flash past it and slice down Lava's incline toward the V-wave. Litton gets in two good strokes, lining up the dory. Then the V-wave smashes us with the force of a runaway coal truck. The river gathers into a fist and punches straight over the bow, a haymaker of solid water as thick as wet cement. The decks and the footwells are swamped. The boat reels.

In the midst of this mess, I turn to see that one of the Sequoia's oars has been wrenched out of its oarlock. I also can't help noticing that Litton—who's been drenched and spin-cycled like a cat in a washing machine—looks happier and more alive at this moment than any sane 87-year-old probably should. The old fart is actually grinning.

Then I face forward to see that we're sluicing directly toward the Big Black Rock. Litton heaves on his remaining oar with everything he's got. No dice: The rock's coming up fast, and we're about to hit it.

As the river rolls around the massive rock, it tends to create a pillow of moving water that rises and ebbs with each surge. Through a combination of angle, timing, and Littonian luck, the Sequoia arrives just as this pillow is building. Instead of slamming us into the rock, the water cradles the boat for a second, then gives it a nudge and washes us around the left side. The rock's dripping surface races past, almost within reach, and we find ourselves back in the main current, bucking through the tail waves.

"You did it, Martin! You did it!" the boat's four passengers yell.

"I didn't do anything at all!" he protests. "I was rowing shabbily. Very shabbily."

"Jesus, Martin," someone calls out, "if you didn't do it, who the hell else did?"

"Why, the boat, of course," he says, indignant at having to spell out something so obvious. "It was the dory that did it."

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