The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon (80 page)

“It just seems like it’s going to go on forever and then—
boom
”
: Grua, oral histories, NAU.

“He’s the most considerate person I know”
: Author interview with Rist.

“Christ, he could be impossible”
: Author interview with a colleague of Grua’s who wishes to remain anonymous.

Harvey Butchart, a mathematician from Flagstaff
: See Butler and Myers,
Grand Obsession.

was published by Colin Fletcher
: See Fletcher,
Man Who Walked Through Time.

“the first man ever to have walked through the entire length”
: Ibid., jacket copy.

“Somebody else needs to do it and do it right”
: Author interview with Petschek. Also see Grua, oral histories, NAU.

Grua started scoping out his route during his first season
: Details of Grua’s Grand Canyon transect come primarily from his oral histories, NAU.

11: Speed

“And so in time”
: Bode,
First You Have to Row a Little Boat
.

“You could do this until you died”
: Grua, oral histories, NAU.

“You could do it straight through the year”
: Ibid.

“the best drug in the world”
: Ibid.

a sequence of ferocious arguments between Grua and Regan Dale
: Author interview with Regan Dale.

Kenton, these people aren’t our guinea pigs
: Ibid.

How could he have been so
selfish
?
: Ibid.

he broke out his tools and applied himself
: Author interviews with Petschek, Rist, and Tuck Weil.

the advent of the water-jet engine
: Lavender,
River Runners of the Grand Canyon
, 108.

modeled along the lines of a Higgins landing craft
: Ibid. Also see the website of the Grand Canyon River Heritage Coalition,
http://www.gcrivermuseum.org
(accessed 7/27/2012).

Propelled by a seventy-five-horsepower inboard engine
: Lavender,
River Runners of the Grand Canyon
, 117. Also see Brune, “Historic River Running.”

had stampeded and strewn fuel cans all over the trail
: Lavender,
River Runners of the Grand Canyon
, 118.

Jim Rigg, the older of the pair
: Rigg,
USGS Old-Timers’ Collection
, September 10, 1994, NAU.

“Man, we got rocks on the oars”
: Ibid.

“We’re going the right way!”
: Ibid.

a brand-new speed record of fifty-two hours and forty-one minutes
: Martin,
Big Water, Little Boats
, 68.

the most impressive feats of boatmanship the canyon has ever seen
: Author interview with Petschek.

that stretched the principle of slow-boating to its outer limits
: Author interviews with Regan Dale, Ote Dale, O. C. Dale, and Petschek.

Bernard Moitessier, the great French yachtsman
: See Moitessier,
Long Way.

an Oregon gas-station attendant named Buzz Holmstrom
: Welch, Conley, and Dimock,
Doing of the Thing
, 121–23.

“I had once thought—once past here—my reward will begin”
: Ibid.

At the center of the book is a scene in which Hemming
: Salter,
Solo Faces
, 63–64.

“There are routes the boldness and logic of which are overwhelming”
: Ibid.

another speed run formed a major topic of discussion
: Author interviews with Rist and Petschek.

12: Thunder on the Water

“Once it was a boat, quite wooden”
: Sexton, “The Kiss,” from
Complete Poems
, 174.

Wayne Aspinall, traveled to Page
: Rusho, “Bumpy Road for Glen Canyon Dam.”

a good time to conduct a partial test-drive of the spillways
: Ibid.

lower the gates and crimp the flow
: Ibid.

driven primarily by Wally Rist
: Author interview with Rist.

Petschek had been born into a family of
: Author interview with Petschek.

“test evacuation procedures”
: Ibid.

They launched at just after 4:00 p.m.
: Details of the 1980 speed run come from author interviews with Rist and Petschek, as well as Petschek’s handwritten notes of the run, which record their progress through the canyon.

“Well, did you do it?”
: Author interview with Petschek.

Part V The Gathering Storm

“And farther off, where darkness met it”
: Wolfe,
Of Time and the River.

13: Deluge

“Even this may be the eventful year”
: Thoreau,
Walden & Other Writings
, 296.

were showing up outside the entrance to San Francisco Bay
: Lindsey, “California Journal,” 22. Also see Lea and Miller, “Shark Attacks,” 136–50.

The first of the ’83 El Niño superstorms
: “El Niño Storms Make Weather Top Topic.”

sending semiliquid avalanches slumping
: Cott, “Calmer County Keeps Mopping Out.”

the queen of England was forced
: “Queen Elizabeth Braces Stormy U.S. Weather.” Also see “Storm Halts Queen’s Sail to ’Frisco.”

The eighteen-foot seas and the fifty-mile-an-hour
: Thomas, “Royalty of Hollywood and England Get Together.”

restarting
the Pony Express
: Lindsay, “Pony Express Rides Again.” Also see Youngblood, “Resurrected Real Pony Express Service.”

much of the Great Basin, an arid hardpan
: The runoff roared down Ophir Creek into the Washoe Valley, between Carson City and Reno, destroying homes and vehicles. “Mud Smothers 3 Mountain Towns.” See Reisner,
Cadillac Desert.

Pacific’s railroad bed to keep
: “Floodwaters Start to Recede.”

Crested Butte in the Elk Mountains
: Stoner, “Oral History Interview,” 37.

an even bigger storm dumped another two feet
: “Snowpack Buries Colorado; California Braces for Rain.”

“All that we can hope and pray for”
: “Floodwaters Start to Recede.”

seven hydrologists ran the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center
: Accounts of events at the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center in Salt Lake City come primarily from author interviews with Don Laurine and David Westnedge, both of whom were meteorologists working at the CBRFC during the runoff of 1983.

the information that was streaming into his office
: Cox, “Raging River Scuttles Forecasts.”

the snowpack in January had burgeoned to 14 percent above normal
: Paltrow, “Who, If Anybody, Is to Blame for Floods?”

Then on Saturday, May 28
: Ibid.

no precedent in the thirty years
: Cox, “Raging River Scuttles Forecasts.”

Never before had it melted off with
: Ibid.

the government simply had not placed enough snow-telemetry
: Mathews, “Huge Surge of Mountain Water.”

far less water had been lost to evaporation and infiltration
: “Summary of 1983 River Operations,” 4, US Bureau of Reclamation Archives. Corroborated by author interview with Westnedge.

“Our models are among the best in the world”
: Cox, “Raging River Scuttles Forecasts.”

“You can’t go in and completely model”
: Ibid.

almost no resemblance to what the river was actually doing
: Normally, most of the snowpack is gone by June 1. Indeed, snow data on the first of June was so limited that typically it was not even used in adjusting the forecasts—there simply was not enough of a historical record on which to build a comparison.

freighting the runoff of a region whose landmass
: The Upper Basin of the Colorado amounts to nearly 108,000 square miles. Source: Colorado River Water Users Association,
http://www.crwua.org/ColoradoRiver/RiverUsers/Reclamation.aspx
.

approached the size of Poland
: The drainage basin for the entire river is 243,000 miles, roughly the size of Somalia, but the Upper Basin is considerably smaller (see previous note). Also note that Poland, at 117,000 square miles, is slightly larger than the Upper Basin.

In the summer of 1921, for example
: Martin,
Big Water, Little Boats
, 146.

the flooding may have surpassed 240,000
: Ibid.

a cat trapped in an apple tree
: Ibid. Also see Webb,
Grand Canyon.

On more than a dozen
: Fifteen, to be exact.

Among the sixty-four Reclamation employees who worked at Glen
: Author interview with Tom Gamble.

14: Into the Bedrock

“Rivers, rivers, we can never”
: Abbey,
Down the River
, 3.

Tom Gamble was a trim
: All details about Gamble—his childhood, early career, ideas about engineering and environmentalism, and his time at Glen Canyon—come from a series of author interviews conducted at Gamble’s home in California.

Shasta stood as one of the Bureau of Reclamation’s jewels
: Rogers, “Lecture on Dam Safety.”

five members of a newly formed environmental organization
: Lee,
Earth First!
, 45–46.

back in the late 1950s
: See Abbey,
Desert Solitaire.

“No man-made structure in modern American history”
: Lee,
Earth First!
, 45–46.

Oregon to urinate off the parapet
: Farmer,
Glen Canyon Dammed
, 171.

Each winter, these conflicting demands
: See Carothers and Brown,
Colorado River Through Grand Canyon.

From the beginning of March through the first week of April
: US Bureau of Reclamation, Upper Colorado River Region Reservoir Operations, Lake Powell. See
http://www.usbr.gov/uc/crsp/GetSiteInfo
.

in charge of the river gathered in Boulder City
: Dozier, “Summary of Communications and Actions,” 3, Bureau of Reclamation Archives.

Glen was equipped with two such tunnels
: See
Glen Canyon Dam and Powerplant.

At 1:00 p.m. on the afternoon of Thursday
: Rusho, “Bumpy Road for Glen Canyon Dam.”

At first, everything proceeded smoothly
: Ibid.

They planned to hold it there over the weekend
: Moyes and Burgi,
Glen Canyon Dam Chronology
, “Spillway Discharge Tables,” 13–15, Bureau of Reclamation Archives.

When the pair of operators
: Ibid. Also, author interview with Richard White, manager of the Control Room at the Glen Canyon Dam.

This was the assistant operator’s task
: Most details of what happened inside the Control Room on June 5 through 7 come from the author’s interview with Richard White.

“Did you see that?!”
: Author interviews with Gamble and White.

It’s into the bedrock
: Author interview with White.

15: The Mouth of the Dragon

Bureau of Reclamation’s Engineering and Research Center
: Details of the E&R Center and the Hydraulics Lab derive from the author’s tour of the facility in the summer of 2011 and interviews conducted on-site.

When Gamble got through to the E&R Center
: Author interview with Gamble.

he barked into the receiver, “Concrete dams!”
: Wolf, “How Lake Powell Almost Broke Free.”

the three men conducted a quick huddle
: Details of Burgi’s meetings at the E&R Center, his background, his first trip to Page, and his descent into the east spillway come from the author’s interview with Burgi and from Burgi’s own notes.

“that He may have an answer to the first question”
: Ibid.

The east spillway tunnel intake
: For specs on the spillway gates and tunnels, see
Glen Canyon Dam and Powerplant.

If this gate fails
: Author interview with Burgi.

When work on the dam began in 1956
: For details on the reasons behind the spillway design, see Martin,
Story That Stands Like a Dam.

“Jiminy Christmas”
: Author interview with Burgi.

This force, called cavitation
: Henry Falvey, Burgi’s colleague at the Hydraulics Lab, wrote a definitive monograph on cavitation:
Cavitation in Chutes and Spillways.
Also, author interviews with Falvey.

this repair at Glen Canyon had been scheduled to start on June 1
: Rogers, “Hoover Dam,” 195, 212. Also see Moyes and Burgi,
Glen Canyon Dam Chronology of Events
, Bureau of Reclamation Archives.

Burgi discovered a total of six holes
: Author interview with Burgi. Also see Moyes and Burgi,
Glen Canyon Dam Chronology of Events
, Bureau of Reclamation Archives.

Christmas tree
: Author interviews with Burgi and Falvey. Note: Burgi estimated at this point that fifty cubic yards of concrete had already been excavated from the tunnel invert.

16: Raising the Castle Walls

“The distant lightning glowed”
: McCarthy,
All the Pretty Horses
, 67.

the dam’s maintenance department summoned his crew
: Details of the actions taken by the dam’s maintenance crew come from the author’s interview with Richard Parsons, a member of the crew, who was present at the dam throughout the spillway crisis in 1983.

“I want most of you guys to get up to the warehouse”
: Author interview with Parsons.

Henry Dhieux, the foreman of the mechanics crew
: Details of the actions taken by the welders come from the author’s interview with Henry Dhieux, foreman, who was present at the dam throughout the spillway crisis in 1983.

“Let’s grab our gear”
: Author interview with Dhieux.

Within hours the outlets’ expansion joints were leaking
: Moyes and Burgi,
Glen Canyon Dam Chronology of Events
, Bureau of Reclamation Archives.