Carol Burke
1934–1998

Carol and Fred Burke owned and ran Arizona River Runners throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Originally based at Lees Ferry, they later bought Vermillion Cliffs and turned it into a social hub and home for wayward boatmen.
“Carol was rock-solid,” remembers Lew Steiger. “She was tough as nails. Didn't suffer fools gladly, but once she decided to be your friend, boy, that was it. You had a friend for life. She was a hell of a worker, too. And, after a typical day of being a chef, secretary, accountant, den mother, social director, and guidance counselor up at VC, she wasn't afraid to call it quits and howl at the moon a little, either…”
“Carol lived life on her own terms,” adds Pam Whitney. “Sounds like a cliché but in Carol's case it was very true. She worked hard to make arr the success it was.
“I miss her very much but her love of life will stay with me always as an inspiration. Being sad is not an option on Carol's behalf. She was not one to dwell on the sad side and wouldn't want anyone else to either, especially for her.”
Contributions in her name can be made to Hospice of the Valley, Eckstein Center, 9494 E. Becker Lane, Scottsdale, AZ 85260.

Karen Hasse Ticknor
1954-1998

The Canyon said goodbye to a dear friend last month. After a courageous battle with cancer, Karen died on June 7 at home with her parents and her husband, Ed Hasse, a long-time AzRA guide. Karen worked and played on many Grand Canyon trips, including her first in 1986 when she and Ed met. A few years later, they were married overlooking the canyonlands they loved. She was a gentle, warm presence on her trips, sharing easily her love of the Canyon and its treasures. The home she shared with Ed in Sandy, Utah was always open to wayward guides and friends travelling through. Karen's generous and gracious spirit lives on in the quiet and reflective temples she loved and in her many friends who will miss her. Karen requested that memorial gifts be sent to Best Friends Animal Shelter in Kanab, UT, 84741.

Mary Ellen Arndorfer

Joy Ungricht Carber may have been the quintessential female river guide:
strong, fun, ballsy, and as handy with a cheesy song or an irritable pump as with a boat. She was 5'2", weighed about 115 pounds, and worked hard to be counted among the men she guided with in the '70s and '80s. There are documentaries and television features about her, and she's been the subject of poems, short stories and campfire tales. In 1992, when Joy was 40, she died of cancer.
Soon afterwards, her family and friends set up the Joy Ungricht Carber Memorial Scholarship, to foster the professional development of female river guides. The fund started with one scholarship a year, and now provides student aid for river skills, rescue and interpretive courses and for a graduate residency in environmental education. The courses are run by Canyonlands Field Institute in Moab, a fitting venue, since Joy was one of the “vortex victims” who planned to stay in town a few months and ended up staying a few years.
One of the things that's happened with this scholarship is that it highlights the ways that Joy is still here. She bears down with Laura Kruta, wrestling a dump-truck of a baggage boat down the San Juan River. She perseveres with Allison Kennedy, who's guided and survived in this hard-winter town long enough to tackle another goal, counseling women. She shares with Darah Sandlian, who joined cfi's first Whitewater Academy for Teens, and bothered to write to bqr about it, and will probably bother to do an awful lot more in her time. She conspires, grinning, with Jill Baxter, who had to tackle the Canadian border twice to get here and left to start her own outdoor education center on the Ottawa River. And she pushes through the pain with Rona Levein, who climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 64, in Joy's honor.
The thing that's less obvious is Joy's legacy. Living in this totally X-chromosome town in the late '90s, where six out of ten river companies have female owners or managers and every outfitter hires women, it's weird to hear a TV reporter describe Joy Ungricht in 1979 as “one of the only qualified women river guides in the world.” It's just as strange to hear Joy herself talk about longing for some female company on river trips where it was just her and the guys “constantly jiving.”
Then you remember she lived with firsts—first woman guide on Chile's Bio Bio, Turkey's Çoruh, Papua-New Guinea's Watut and Alaska's Tatshenshini and Copper Rivers. Member of the first exploratory party on Africa's Zambezi and India's Indus River. She led dozens of women's trips around the world, and helped design one of the first River Safety & Rescue courses, through cfi. She was wed at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.
The firsts aren't the only thing that stands out about her, though. In one interview, she reflected on the nature of rivers: “Rivers are arteries. They're bringing down the whole history of the area through them; they're not just rapids. I run rivers because they're just such a wonderful highway to inaccessible places. There are so many little bits of magic that come from being in that environment.”
The growth of women in the guiding industry and the idea that rivers are critical to our understanding as well as our adrenaline level are givens these days, at least to most of the younger women who apply for the Joy Scholarship. Joy's attitude and adventures are a lot easier to stomach for this generation than general concepts of feminism or activism or justice for women. But they accomplished at least as much in their way.
There's a quote of Joy's that gets used a lot to describe her beliefs and her bravery in facing cancer and death. It's from an interview with an Outside Magazine writer, on her last trip down the Grand Canyon. When he asked her if she was sad that everything was coming to an end, she reportedly smiled and countered, “One trip has to end so another can begin.”
In itself, that's an amazingly healthy philosophy. Somewhere in her adventurer's heart, though, you've got to wonder if there was a tiny gleam, if perhaps she still felt the way she did when she was 27 and said: “Mostly I think of all there is to do: the next adventure and the irons in the fire and which one's getting hottest and moving on to the next place and doing all the millions of things there are to do, and you can't possibly do them all in one lifetime, but you can keep trying.”
You can keep trying.

Lisa Taylor

The Joy Ungricht Carber Memorial Scholarship was, as first recipient Allison Kennedy put it, “established in celebration of this clearly extraordinary and inspiring individual.” To find out how to apply, or to make a contribution to the fund, contact:
Canyonlands Field Institute PO Box 68
Moab, UT 84532 435-259-7750
ltaylor@canyonlandsfieldinst.org