HELL’S HALF MILE
We began our work the next morning where we left off the night before
by bringing the remaining boat down along the edge of the “Triplets.”
Then, while Emery cooked the breakfast, Jimmy and I “broke camp.”
The beds came first. The air had been released from the mattresses
before we got up,--one way of saving time. A change of dry clothing
was placed with each bed, and they were rolled as tightly as the
two of us could do it, after which they were strapped, placed in a
rubber sack, with a canvas sack over that, both these sacks being
laced at the top. The tent--one of those so-called balloon silk
compositions--made a very small roll; the dark-room tent, with its
three plies of cloth, made the largest bundle of the lot. Everything
had been taken from the boats, and made quite a pile of dunnage, when
it was all collected in a pile ready for loading. After the dishes
were washed they were packed in a box, the smoke-covered pots and
pans being placed in a sack. Everything was sorted and piled before
the loading commenced. An equal division of nearly everything
was made, so that the loss of one boat and its cargo would only
partially cripple the expedition. The photographic plates and films,
in protecting canvas sacks, were first disposed of, being stored in
the tin-lined hatches in the bow of the boats. Two of the smaller
rolls containing bedding, or clothing; a sack of flour, and half of
the cameras completed the loads for the forward compartments. Five or
six tin and wooden boxes, filled with provisions, went into the large
compartments under the stern. A box containing tools and hardware for
the inevitable repairs, and the weightier provisions--such as canned
milk and canned meats--went in first. This served as ballast for the
boats. Then the other provisions followed, the remaining rolls of
bedding and tents being squeezed in on top. This compartment, with
careful packing, would hold as much as two ordinary-sized trunks, but
squeezing it all in through the small hatchway, or opening on top,
was not an easy job. One thing we guarded very carefully from this
time on was a waterproofed sack containing sugar. The muddy water had
entered the top of this sack in our upset, and a liquefied sugar, or
brown-coloured syrup, was used in our coffee and on our breakfast
foods after that. It gradually dried out, and our emptied cups would
contain a sediment of mud in the bottom.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Kolb Bros._
“THE CANYON WAS GLOOMY, AND DARKENED WITH SHREDS OF CLOUDS.”]
Such was our morning routine, although it was not often that
everything was taken from the boats, and it only happened in this
case because we made a portage the night before.
Our work was all undone an hour later, when we came to the sharp
descent known as Hell’s Half Mile. A section of a cliff had fallen
from above, and was shattered into a hundred fragments, large and
small; gigantic rocks were scattered on both shores and through the
river bed, not an orderly array of rocks such as that found at Ashley
Falls, but a riotous mass, looking as though they had been hurled
from the sky above. The stripped trunk of an eight-foot tree, with
roots extending over the river, had been deposited by a recent flood
on top of the principal barrier. All this was found about fifty yards
below the beginning of the most violent descent in Lodore Canyon. It
would have been difficult enough without this last complication; the
barrier seemed next to insurmountable, tired and handicapped with
heavy boats as we were.
With a weary sigh we dropped our boats to the head of the rapid and
prepared to make the portage. Our previous work was as nothing to
this. Rounded limestone boulders, hard as flint and covered with a
thin slime of mud from the recent rise, caused us to slip and fall
many times. Then we dragged ourselves and loads up the sloping walls.
They were cut with gullies from the recent rains; low scraggy cedars
caught at our loads, or tore our clothes, as we staggered along; the
muddy earth stuck to our shoes, or caused our feet to slip from under
us as we climbed, first two or three hundred feet above the water,
then close to the river’s edge. Three-fourths of a mile of such work
brought us a level place below the rapid. It took nine loads to empty
one boat.
Darkness came on before our boats were emptied, so they were securely
tied in quiet water at the head of the rapid, and left for the
morning.
The next day found Emery and me at work on the boats, while Jimmy
was stationed on the shore with the motion-picture camera. This wild
scene, with its score of shooting currents, was too good a view to
miss. With life-preservers inflated and adjusted, Emery sat in the
boat at the oars, pulling against the current, lessening the velocity
with which the boat was carried down toward the main barrier, while
I followed on the shore, holding a rope, and dropped him down, a
little at a time, until the water became too rough and the rocks too
numerous. All directions were given with signals; the human voice
was of little avail in the turmoil. We kept the boats in the water
as long as it was safe to do so, for it greatly lessened the hard
work of a portage. With one end of the boat floating on the water, an
ordinary lift would take the other end over a rock with insufficient
water above it to float the boat. Then the boat was balanced on the
rock, the opposite end was lifted, she was shoved forward and dropped
in the water again and another threatening rock was passed. Foot
by foot we fought our way, now on the shore, now waist deep in the
water below some protecting boulder, threatened every moment by the
whirling water that struggled to drag us into the torrent. The sand
and water collecting in our clothes weighted us down; the chill of
standing in the cold water numbed our limbs. Finally the barrier was
reached and the boats were run out close to the end, and tied in a
quiet pool, while we devised some method of getting them past or over
this obstruction.
Directly underneath and beyond the roots of the tree were large
rounded boulders, covered with slippery mud. Past this barrier the
full force of the water raced, to hurl itself and divide its current
against another rock. It was useless to try to take a boat around
the end of the rock. The boat’s sides, three-eighths of an inch
thick, would be crushed like a cardboard box. If lifted into the
V-shaped groove, the weight of the boats would wedge them and crush
their sides. Fortunately an upright log was found tightly wedged
between these boulders. A strong limb, with one end resting on a rock
opposite, was nailed to this log; a triangle of stout sticks, with
the point down, was placed opposite this first limb, on the same
level, and was fastened to the upright log with still another piece;
and another difficulty was overcome.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Kolb Bros._
“IT TOOK NINE LOADS TO EMPTY ONE BOAT.”]
[Illustration: _Copyright by Kolb Bros._
“AN UPRIGHT LOG WAS FOUND WEDGED BETWEEN THE BOULDERS.”]
With a short rope fastened to the iron bar or hand-hold on the stern,
this end was lifted on to the cross-piece, the bow sticking into the
water at a sharp angle. The short rope was tied to the stump, so we
would not lose that we had gained. The longer rope from the bow was
thrown over the roots of the tree above, then we both pulled on the
rope, until finally the bow was on a level with the stern. She was
pulled forward, the ropes were loosened and the boat rested on the
cross-pieces. The motion-picture camera was transferred so as to
command a view of the lower side of the barrier, then the boat was
carefully tilted, and slid forward, a little at a time, until she
finally gained headway, nearly jerking the rope from our hands, and
shot into the pool below.
We enjoyed the wildest ride we had experienced up to this time in
running the lower end of this rapid. The balance of the day was spent
in the same camp below the rapid. Our tent was put up in a group of
box elder trees,--the first trees of this species we had seen. Red
cedar trees dotted the rocky slopes, while the larger pines became
scarce at the river’s edge, and gathered near the top of the canyon’s
walls. The dark red rocks near the bottom were covered with a light
blue-tinted stratum of limestone, similar to the fallen rocks found
in the rapid above. In one land-slide, evidently struck with some
rolling rock, lay the body of a small deer. We saw many mountain
sheep tracks, but failed to see the sheep. Many dead fish, their
gills filled with the slimy mud from the recent rise, floated past
us, or lay half buried in the mud. These things were noticed as we
went about our duties, for we were too weary to do any exploring.
The next morning, Monday, October the 2d saw us making arrangements
for the final run that would take us out of Lodore Canyon. No doubt
it was a beautiful and a wonderful place, but none of us seemed sorry
to leave it behind. For ten days we had not had a single day entirely
free from rain, and instead of having a chance to run rapids, it
seemed as if we had spent an entire week in carrying our loads, or in
lining our boats through the canyon. The canyon walls lost much of
their precipitous character as we neared the end of the canyon.
A short run took us over the few rapids that remained, and at a
turn ahead we saw a 300-foot ridge, brilliantly tinted in many
colours,--light and golden yellows, orange and red, purple and
lavender,--and composed of numberless wafer-like layers of rock,
uptilted, so that the broken ends looked like the spines of a
gigantic fish’s back. A sharp turn to the left soon brought us to
the end of this ridge, close to the bottom of a smooth, sheer wall.
Across a wide, level point of sand we could see a large stream, the
Yampa River, flowing from the East to join its waters with those of
the Green. This was the end of Lodore Canyon.