The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon (61 page)

Then something seized him from below and he disappeared again, pulled down for the second and what, he was absolutely certain, must be the final time.

W
ith its flat bottom facing the sky, the
Emerald Mile
sped across the tops of the subsurface boulders. Petschek and Grua were now on opposite sides of the boat, and although neither man could see the rocks, their feet and shins were being dragged over them while the bowpost and stern of the dory took a series of brutal hits. Each impact registered as a muted concussion that reverberated through the hull of the dory.

“It was just
boom . . . boom . . . boom
,” said Petschek.

As the hammer blows continued, both men groped under the gunwales, fumbling for their spare line.

Retrieving the line, they flung it across the hull with a wet slap, then once more heaved their bodies onto the bottom for another attempt at righting the boat. And then came one of those odd moments of reprieve that the river sometimes grants those it seizes.

Like a giant opening his fist, the main current released its grip and a spin-off trail of water neatly shot them into the top of Thank God Eddy.

W
ren’s second dunking was neither as deep nor as prolonged as the first, but that hardly mattered. Savagely depleted and still reeling from the bowpost strike, he had only one aim when he flailed to the surface and caught his next breath.

“I just started swimming.
I don’t even know if I knew which direction I was going in. I just started swimming.”

He seemed to be making no progress—he was barely able to go through the motions of dog-paddling, and his life jacket was impeding whatever gains he made. In this manner, he was swept past Thank God Eddy, and now the only remaining point of sanctuary was a tiny indent in the cliffs just below. Once beyond that, he would have to brace for the start of the next rapid.

Somehow he made it, mustering a supreme effort to paddle into the little pocket, where he wallowed through the shallows and draped himself over a boulder, convinced he would collapse and drown if he attempted to make the final steps to shore.

When he wiped the blood away from his eyes, he looked upstream to Thank God Eddy and saw his companions on the bottom of the dory, heaving on the lines and trying, without success, to turn her right side up.

“
Please
right the boat,” he pleaded to himself. “
Please
right the boat.
I don’t want to get back in that water!
Please—please—please.
”

After several failed attempts, Grua and Petschek glanced downstream, caught sight of Wren, and glared at him. The meaning was unmistakable—

What the hell are you doing? Get out here!

With a groan, Wren slithered off the rock, slid back into the water, and started paddling. When he reached the dory, Grua and Petschek hauled him out, and together the three of them heaved on the lines until the bottom slowly rotated out of the water and the boat flipped over—once again dumping everyone into the river.

Clambering back aboard, they took a moment to collect themselves. Then they took stock of what had happened. Chunks of the bowpost and the stern were missing, one of the hatches was askew, and the top of their cooler had blown open, and as they cast their eyes around the surface of the water, they realized that the entire eddy was bestrewn with floating trash.

Some of that trash clearly belonged to the canyon—driftwood and twigs and little atolls of brown foam. But there were other objects too: soggy sandwiches, bobbing pieces of fruit, and a sodden lump that turned out to be Grua’s wallet. After a moment of confusion they realized their front cross-hatch had blown open and most of their gear had been hurled overboard.

Now they enacted a kind of Keystone Kops routine, scooping items into the boat as fast as they could and stuffing everything into the hatches while trying to dry of the battery and the spotlights. In the midst of this flurry, something hulking and huge emerged from the main current like a breaching whale.

It was a gray, thirty-seven-foot motor rig, plowing into the eddy so fast that it nearly smeared them against the rocks on the shoreline. In the stern was a guide with his hand on the throttle, and he was almost as surprised as they were.

“Wow, I’m glad I didn’t hit you, man,” shouted the boatman. “I’m sorry, but I have to make this eddy—and if I was you, I’d get outta here because in about two more seconds, another guy is pulling in right behind me, and he isn’t
nearly
as good at this as I am.”

With Wren still bailing and Grua continuing to snatch up pieces of fruit, Petschek scrambled into the cockpit, seized the oars, and pulled toward the eddy line. He snapped off a series of crisp strokes and had just broken through into the main current when something even worse than a runaway motor rig materialized.

Over the roar of the river, they heard a dull
thuk-thuk-thuk
and looked up to see that an orange-and-white helicopter was now hovering directly overhead.

The Park Service had arrived.

Is it wise to go on? . . . I almost conclude to leave the river. But for years I have been contemplating this trip. To leave the exploration unfinished, to say that there is a part of the canyon which I cannot explore, having already almost accomplished it, is more than I am willing to acknowledge, and I determine to go on.

—J
OHN
W
ESLEY
P
OWELL
,
August 27, 1869, as three of his crew announced their intention to abandon the expedition and hike out

W
HEN
the
Emerald Mile
performed its end-over-end flip in the explosion wave,
John Thomas reached immediately for his two-way radio. The signal from his transmission was picked up by one of the repeaters on the South Rim, bounced to the dispatcher’s office in the park’s Emergency Services building, then relayed directly to Thomas’s boss, Curt Sauer, who had reviewed and denied Grua’s permit application for the speed run several weeks earlier.
When Sauer heard that there had been an accident involving a lone dory, he knew it was Grua. Bracing himself for yet another airborne evacuation at Crystal, he ordered Thomas to summon Helo 210, which was now hovering just upstream over Phantom Ranch, barely five minutes away, to perform a sweep and find out if any of the boatmen were injured or dead.

When the chopper reached Thank God Eddy and hovered over the dory, Thomas spoke to the pilot by radio.

“You see the boat?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it right side up? What’s going on?”

“It’s upright.”

“How many people in it?”

“Three.”

“Do they have oars in the water?”

“Yeah, they have oars in the water.”

Thomas was relieved. The Park Service wasn’t going to need to stage an evac. But the wheels of law enforcement had now been set in motion. At the moment, however, that was only one of several big problems besetting the crew of the
Emerald Mile.

A
s Helo 210 rotored off, Petschek pulled the dory into a tiny pocket eddy just above the next set of rapids, and Grua tied them off to the rocks. They needed a time-out to collect themselves, attend to Wren’s injury, and make some decisions.

While Grua applied a butterfly bandage to the gash on Wren’s forehead and wrapped the wound in gauze, Petschek pulled a roll of duct tape from the repair kit and set about doctoring the dory. As they concentrated on their respective tasks, each boatman silently tallied up the cost of what had taken place.

Their situation was grim. Except for the fruit, most of their food was either lost or soaked, along with their spare clothing. The rangers obviously had a bead on where they were and what they were doing. Grua and Petschek were exhausted and almost as badly beaten up as the boat. Worst of all, their best oarsman had just been cut down.

As the youngest and strongest member of the crew, Wren was critical to the success of this venture. True, Grua and Petschek may have spent more time on the water, and in some ways they may have understood the river at a deeper level than Wren did, having weathered it under a wider range of its moods. But when it came to raw horsepower, Wren’s youth gave him the upper hand. He was capable of summoning considerably greater strength and, when necessary, forcing significantly more speed from the dory than either of his companions. In short, he was the closest thing the
Emerald Mile
had to a turbocharger—and now he was dazed, concussed, and bleeding like a stuck pig.

The collective weight of those facts seemed daunting, especially given what lay ahead. They were barely a third of the way through the trip, with 179 miles still to go—a stretch that included the rest of the Inner Granite Gorge and another three dozen rapids, including Lava Falls. And in another ten hours they’d confront their second sleepless night of rowing in the dark.

The Colorado had delivered a roundhouse punch to the speed run, a blow that had restacked the odds and so scrambled the logic that the prospect of continuing the quest now seemed ludicrous.

“At that point, we were very demoralized—I mean, extremely so,” Petschek later recalled. “We were so beat-up. I remember just wanting to get out of there—to not even
be
there.”

Sitting in the boat, all three boatmen acknowledged that the river might actually have done them a favor by creating an altogether acceptable excuse for them to call it quits. Right now, the most prudent course of action—indeed, the only option that qualified as remotely sane—was to haul the
Emerald Mile
out of the water, anchor her to the shore, then climb out of the canyon, limp home, and swallow whatever punishment the Park Service was preparing to dish out.

In many ways, this scenario wouldn’t be all that bad. Their dignity and their pride would still be intact. Their dory would still hold the speed record. No one in the river community would think any less of them for having been whipped by Crystal.

They looked at one another, each man seeking confirmation that his own instinct was shared by the others.

Screw
that
, they agreed—and scrambled back on board.