A few years ago, my father called my brothers and me, and asked what we all wanted to do with him before he was too old to venture out into the wilderness anymore. I immediately replied that I wanted to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and raft the Grand Canyon. We climbed Kilimanjaro in 2014, and last summer, we rafted the upper half of the Grand Canyon. It was fast, cold (and hot once you meandered more than 10 ft from the water), slightly dangerous, exhilarating, and a literal blast. In short, it was a perfect adventure and vacation for us. One of our guides recommended a book at the end of the trip – the story of the (then) fastest run thru the Grand Canyon – the story of the Emerald Mile.

In 1983, during one of the strongest El Nino events ever recorded (the book claims it was the strongest, but the internet claims otherwise), the West Coast was battered with record snowfalls. The Colorado River, by now a network of basins and dams that included untouched stretches such as the 277 mile long Grand Canyon, quickly began to rise. The drainage basins, such as Lake Powell, began to fill as the snow melted. The Lake is fenced in by Glen Canyon Dam, just 16 miles above Lee’s Ferry, the starting point of the Grand Canyon. As the flood waters continued to rise, the dam operators (damn operators to some) allowed more and more water to flow through their turbines, and eventually through the emergency spillways. The Grand Canyon water levels rose, the speed of the current increased, and the rapids became exponentially more dangerous. It was at this time, when the water was flying through the canyon at full speed, that three intrepid and foolhardy river guides decided to race the river and attempt to set the speed record for the fastest non-motorized descent of the Canyon (even though two of them already held the previous record). On June 27, 1983, a wooden dory named the Emerald Mile completed its record breaking speed run down 277 miles of river in just 36 hours, 38 minutes, and 29 seconds.*

The Emerald Mile and her adventurous crew during a calmer section of their epic speed run. Photo taken from here.

Years later, after the lead rafting guide, Kenton “Factor” Grua, had passed away, Kevin Fedarko heard of the story. His book, The Emerald Mile, chronicles far more than just the hair-brained antics the three guides onboard a wooden boat plunging through life-threatening rapids of massive size. Rather, it covers the vast history of the Grand Canyon, starting with a Spaniard named Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, a squadron leader of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado (yes, the Coronado who was searching for the Seven Cities of Gold).** In 1540, Cardenas and his 12-man squad were the first Europeans to set eyes on Grand Canyon (at a time when there was not a single European settlement along the coast of what would one day become the United States, and more than 67 years before the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown). They were followed centuries later by Major John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran who led the first known expedition down the Colorado River in 1869, and who bestowed the name “Grand Canyon” on the geologic formation. Powell set out with 9 other men in his party, 4 of whom would depart along the way (3 disappeared after quitting and hiking out of the Canyon, never to be seen again). When the group finally reached the Virgin River after 3 months of rafting along 930 miles of the Colorado, they were virtually emaciated and had only 1.5 days of food remaining. When he died in 1902, Powell was ranked alongside other great explorers such as Columbus, Magellan, and Lewis and Clark.

As the story winds through history, it also tells of the rise of the environmental movement, much of which came about as a response to a dam-building bender led by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation from the 1930’s through the 1960’s. The Sierra Club’s growth and their victories over proposed dam projects up and down the Colorado, including in the Grand Canyon, are explicit detailed in action-packed tales of successful public policy campaigns (well…as action-packed as bureaucracy can get). This battle, between water usage and control, which has enabled irrigation and cheap power across America, provided commodities like fresh vegetables in the Winter, and helped control floods over the past 50 years, rages against the desire to preserve nature in its most pristine form. Fedarko gives credit to both sides, but definitely leans towards the need for nature to be kept free. During my own trip down the Canyon, I visited scars of this battle, as my brothers and I explored tunnels dug at mile 40 of the Canyon where the proposed Marble Dam was almost built. I was glad the Canyon remained pristine, but these massive dams also prevent the use of huge amounts of fossil fuels annually and provide millions with access to fresh water. Fedarko acknowledges this, but also seems to recognize that the battle is not always between those who would use nature and those who would let it be; but rather it is between those that try to accomplish something grand and those that chose to remain ignorant. He sees that America has “swung decisively toward something smaller and more selfish than it once was” and that “in addition to ushering in a disdain for the notion that wilderness might have a value that extends beyond the metrics of economics or business, much of the nation ignorantly embraces the benefits of engineering and technology while simultaneously rejecting basic science.”

The book also tells a fourth story: the story of modern life inside the canyon. It speaks to how park rangers and river guides today work together with thousands of annual tourists like me at the bottom of the Canyon, and millions at the top along the South Rim. This was the most meaningful story, as guides and others venture into the vast expanses of the Canyon, and stare at the massive walls of stone, question the meaning of life, their own future, and the “universe’s implacable indifference to [their] hopes and longings.” Yet at the same time, these guides and rangers and tourists – they (we) all seem to find happiness sleeping under the stars, dodging the massive ants, plunging through the waves, enjoying the “harrowing beauty” in this “cathedral in the desert,” and pondering the “Canyon’s inscrutable wonder – its seductiveness, its complexity, [and] its symphonic merging of the evanescent and the eternal.”

My trip down the Canyon was very different that Grua’s and his friends. My family and I paddled in rafts, rowed in oar boats, and even spent some time in duckie kayaks along the way. We went slow and enjoyed ourselves. The trip was effervescent and fleeting and gone far too fast, leading us to return to our less adventurous and, at times, mundane lives. But we only rafted the top half of the Canyon. The bottom half, with the bigger and faster rapids, is still calling.

Score: 8.5. I want to go back.

*In 2016, the record was broken twice in 2 days by groups of kayakers, leaving a new record of 34 hours and 2 minutes.

**The book even mentions the “giant, three toed Shasta ground sloths” that inhabited the Canyon 11,000 years ago. I had to look these creatures up. They seem amazing.