Dan Dierker

You can’t spend much time on the Colorado without running into the Dierker brothers, Dan and Brian. Brian, the younger, six-foot-six with a pony tail and a very large voice, has been omnipresent on the river for the last three decades. Dan, the elder, is not so tall, is more solidly constructed—accordingly nicknamed “The Wedge”—runs a somewhat lower public profile, but is a force to be reckoned with nonetheless. He has been around just as long, and run every sort of craft from triple-rigs to snout-boats, Avons to dories, motor-rigs to sportboats. A little while back he shared some perspectives of thirty years on the river.
Dierker: Okay. Well, I was born in Phoenix in 1952, after my sister Dena. My father was a doctor down there, both of my parents were only children, and we had a big family, like it was in the fifties. They moved up to Flagstaff to raise a family right after my sister Laurie had been born—that was in 1953. Coming up here was kind of when I first start remembering stuff, around two years old, three years old. But it seemed like a good place to grow up. Andrea came along, and then Brian, and then they adopted my youngest brother, Eric. My father was a doctor here, and he was also the director of public health for Coconino County.
One of the things that we did when I was young, right after they started the dam—when Page was getting set up—there was nothing at Page at that time—this is in 1957. Since [my father] was the director of public health, he had to go up there and look at facilities. So, as a little kid, every once in awhile I got to go up there with him and he’d be going up there for a weekend or whatever, and he’d be in meetings.
Steiger: So, what’d they have, just like an old dirt road up there?
Dierker: Yup, it was paved to the turn-off. But I think at first you had to go around a back way, before they did the big cut, going up the hill. You’d go out to Tuba City and that way. It was way out there. But yeah, it was all dirt road.
And I remember tents, and it was like an old western town. Bars and huge guys—of course I was little at the time, but I remember walking out to the edge. I was just a kid and I had to have a hard hat on, and I’d wander all around the construction site, because he’d be in meetings. I loved going out on that suspension bridge, that little, wire bridge with cyclone fencing on it, looking down into the gorge when they were building the coffer dam and stuff. It went clear across. And they also had cables—that’s how they’d take cars and stuff across, would be a platform they’d take on the cables that were set up to drop buckets or any machinery down to the bottom. They’d just take ’em over that way, because the bridge wasn’t there. Otherwise, you’d have to drive clear the hell around to go over Navajo Bridge which is way the hell around. But then one day, I was dropping pennies off that thing, and they blew the horn and they started chasing me to the end of the bridge (laughter) running me off, you know. I got in big trouble, because I could have killed somebody, I didn’t know. I was goin’, “Let’s see if I can hit this guy with a penny.”
And we did some driving around there down to Crossing of the Fathers and stuff, and you’re a little kid and you’re going, “This is all gonna be underwater!”
Steiger: So you’re like six years old or something.
Dierker: Yeah, six, seven years old.
Steiger: Yeah, just barely old enough to kind of, sort of understand.
Dierker: Not really, you know. When you’re a little kid and you’re looking at this huge place and they go, “Hey, this is all gonna be full of water,” and you’re going to go, “Cool!” So you don’t really understand. I never did any river running or anything back then. Just, you know, was a little kid raising up.
And then we always had Hopi or Navajo housekeepers when I was growing up and every once in awhile we’d go up for about a month out of the summer with our housekeeper up on the mesas, as a little kid. I was really blonde then, so they kind of thought I was a “piebald” and they were always petting me. This was back in the late fifties, mid to late fifties. I went up and spent a month up there when I was probably about seven or eight, and just played on the mesas with the kids. I was the only white thing around. That was all dirt road out to there, too.
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Dierker: [My father] was into the tribes. There were times that an Indian would come in that had been in a car wreck, or real sick, or whatever, and he’d take care of him. He was an early doc in Flagstaff. He’d take care of them, and he understood them and he just put a note in their pocket like, you know, “I took care of you, such and such,” and they’d show up later and sometimes they’d pay him, and sometimes they’d not. Sometimes they’d give him a rug, you know, but unsolicited—he did a lot of free medicine, and I think a lot of doctors did that back then, it wasn’t so much a business. I think it was much more altruistic. You didn’t have to bastardize your true love to make a living, so much as you do nowadays. It wasn’t nearly as contorted, and it wasn’t nearly as expensive. It was good medicine.
And he was really interested in old people. He really liked geriatric medicine. He would go around on Sundays, there were these old, old people. I remember going to these houses Sunday afternoon, we’d go to the grocery store, get a bunch of groceries, and he’d go visit these old people and talk to them, talk to them about coming out in the late 1800s when they came over to Arizona from Missouri or something, on horseback. (laughs) I remember listening to some of this stuff as a little kid, when my father was talking to these [people]. He would just have these rounds of really old folks that he would just kind of keep an eye on and just make sure they were okay.
Steiger: And when you were a kid, when you were in school, what were you thinking you were going to be when you grew up?
Dierker: Oh, I’ve always thought since my dad was a doctor, theoretically I was going to go and be a doctor too. So I graduated in 1976 with a biology degree, and never really pursued—took the mcats and this and that, but never really, fully pursued that, which is probably just as well. I don’t know, I think I’m maybe too selfish with my time to be a good doctor, or just seeing how bogged down they were with their lives. I appreciate it, but I don’t know, I think I could have really enjoyed it and probably would have done well at it, if I didn’t start going off on tangents and experimenting.
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Dierker: My father basically left in 1965, so it was just Dottie and the kids. Then, I got into Scouts a lot when I was young, and started hiking all over the place. Hiked in the Grand and had a really active troop and went all over here and there, but never still thought about doing any river running and stuff. Went to school here at Flag High, and then graduated from there in 1970 and then went into nau, and was going with sciences and stuff. Worked in the post office when I was going through college. I was on the ski team and this and that, and then graduated in 1976. Actually, right after I got out of high school—since we’re talkin’ river—that’s when [Dick] McCallum was first starting his company. I met Jim David when he was the manager for the Snow Bowl, when I was like twelve or so. He kind of knew us, knew Brian, and he was in the school system by then. McCallum was a counselor at Emerson School, and had met Brian. He was getting his youth trip idea up, so they invited Brian and me along for his twenty-eight-day river trip in June of 1970.
Steiger: Now, is Brian like a big football star?
Dierker: Not really, he was a snoozie. He was tired from growing two feet a year, between the ages of eight and twelve, so he mostly slept those years, which was probably good for everybody. At fourteen, he was a big, tall kid. But he was starting to come into his own then he was like six-four or whatever, six-two, or I don’t know. I hadn’t really noticed him much until then. It was starting to get more interesting to spend time together.
Steiger: Well, that first trip that you did, what sticks out in memory for you about that trip?
Dierker: I can remember that trip really well, because we were rowing on that galley boat, the steel frame. We went up there two days before we were actually going to leave. This was 1970. I don’t know if there were really launch dates, I think they were launch windows. (laughs)
So we get up there, and the boat’s never really been in the water. We put it all together and go out, and haven’t loaded any of the gear but decide to see how it rows. Well, just the steel frame almost put the damn floor in the water, much less putting any gear on it, the floor was almost dragging in the water at that point. (Steiger laughs) But, you go ahead and go on. So we get out there (chuckles), push off at Lees Ferry, out there just to take a spin, just offshore, and McCallum had gotten a smokin’ deal on all these old oarlocks. We go out there and, hell, we snapped three out of four of the oarlocks before we got back to shore, terrified. So we get back and McCallum hops in his truck and drives back to Flagstaff, has Mayorga weld up these steel rings and stuff. So they’re full-feathered oars.
They had basically one or two paid people on the trip; and some kid from back East, and we took a Navajo kid on there, and then a photographer—this guy named Dick Witmore—and Barney Andersen, and Jim David. And basically it was a snap-up thing with a full steel rigid frame, and just heavier than a son-of-a-bitch; sixteen-foot oars, four rowing stations, and Dick was runnin’ the sweep. You’d sit on top of these metal boxes, and pull your heart out for him. (laughter) Yeah, we made some great cuts, and then we also got our asses kicked.
So off we go the next day, and it’s cold and we go down and camp [at] Badger our first night. It’s bitchin’. I remember gettin’ off from camp on the right hand-side at Badger and there is toilet paper everywhere. It was messy, and you’d stop at camps and, we’d all go around and pick up toilet paper and stuff and burn it. Right then it was kind of getting trashy.
It was hotter than hell. It was in June. And I’d spent, from camping and hiking and stuff, spent probably a week at a time outside, but I never spent three weeks at a time outside.
Steiger: Was it a real impressive thing to be like going down the Grand Canyon?
Dierker: Oh, hell yeah. And you’re also rowin’ right off the get go. You know you’re part of a team.
Steiger: And hardly anybody else was, huh?
Dierker: There wasn’t a lot of rowing, there was mostly motors that we saw.
We camped at Redwall, which hell, it was a great camp. I had no clue. I think it was the first year that they recommended—unless it was an emergency—not to. We declared a shade emergency or somethin’. Well, we got in trouble there, ’cause Jim David, Barney and those guys had booze on the trip. And just to dick around with Barney, we buried a bottle of Jack Daniels or Jim Beam or something up in there. And we never found it before we left, and he was pissed! (laughter) You know they weren’t heavy drinkers. His booze bottle was the thing. He kept lookin’. And we never found it! So I looked for that for years, it never showed up, at Redwall.
Well, we had big runs. We had some really good runs. We made a really good run in Hance, I remember, and feeling cocky. We snuck it around there, and there was water, we were on the money, and then we had the huge ride that that picture’s taken of in Hermit—just a blast! I remember it being really—it was big. So, anyway, that was a big ride and we’re all jacked up, and we get to Crystal and we look and we all convince ourselves that if we go in that hole we’re all gonna die. So, we’re pumped. So we go in there. Totally blowin’ it—get out there and could not move that boat. I remember McCallum going, “We’re going in the hole!” (Steiger laughs) and I just (whimper and wail). Yeah, we slam in to there and then ping-pong down.
We hiked all over, it was great. Did the up and over at Tapeats and at Deer Creek, and went up there with nothing. He [McCallum] was practicing his youth survival, Nazi camp thing and we made it. He instilled that into us for the rest of his trips—kind of survival deal, you know. Take a sheet, take a few candy bars and go up and wander up and spend the night out in the middle of nowhere. Oh, he did that with his youth trips all the time.
It was cool. You got colder than hell up there. In June even at night, it got real cold. I remember just runnin’ around everywhere. It was a wonderful deal.
* * *
Dierker: But anyway, we went on this trip in 1970, and then I went and rode a motorcycle through Europe for the rest of the summer and came back to college. Then in 1971 I went on one trip, just kind of as a row along on a triple-rig—three Green Rivers. [rafts] And then in 1972 ,I did a couple, and then in 1973—well a couple, it was kind of a short season back then, or it was with McCallum runnin’ it. And then 1973, I got more into it and was runnin’ triple-rigs with Don Neff. I started raking in the big dough in 1973 at $25 a day. I was a heavy expense. Well, Moody came probably at 1974 or 1975. The first time I met him, he was loading a triple-rig with me. And he was just this beanpole out on the triple-rig, (Laughs).
Steiger: You didn’t torture him did you?
Dierker: I just told him to row faster, you know, keep up or something, I don’t know. He was a lot more water savvy than I was probably, but we’d grunt stuff in there.
Then I was doin’ snouts with Mike Yard 1976 and 1977 in the summer. I’d still go to school in the winter.
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Dierker: I rowed my first full season down there with Don Neff on triple-rigs, and you really learn the river. You start off with a triple-rig. What we’d do is we’d go down the first night and if there was somebody, or if Yard would be with us or somethin’, you’d break the triple-rig apart and take the most competent client and we’d give ’em their own boat until you got down to the gorge. And so we’d leave ’em in if they were doin’ fine. I rowed on my very first trip—it was with Brian, and Don Neff, and myself. So [we] broke ’em apart and you got your own boat.
Steiger: So every boat had four oars?
Dierker: Oh yeah, we always took a bunch of oars, these damn aluminum fully-pinned oars that had ball-bearing pins that took three wrenches and half-an-hour to change out if anything happened. Then you’d rig ’em up if the gorge was running big, or whatever, or if you really felt like you really needed to, just because of the type of clientele or the guy wasn’t cuttin’ it, or whatever. And, you’d rig ’em all together and then run the gorge, and then sometimes you’d keep ’em all rigged together ’til Lava and then break ’em apart right after Lava.
It was fun and easier to just throw people in their own boat and let ’em go. It was great!
Steiger: Why was it that you had to be good to run ’em when it was a triple-rig? What was the deal on that?
Dierker: Good?! I don’t know if you had to be good. Well, you really, really had to get your timing down. Because you wouldn’t run straight down, you’d cheat the back boat. You really needed to kind of know your whole water dynamics of rapids, what those levels were, ’cause you’d need to cheat the back boat out because the front boat could always out-pull and you didn’t want to start cartwheeling down stuff. So, you wanted to give him an advantage. The front boat could go into shore—say like Crystal’s a classic one… Or House Rock or any of those, most of ’em down there you’re left-to-right gut pull, you know? You couldn’t yell at each other, and you didn’t need to. So you get your angles set, and you’d let him get out in the current a little bit, because you want the current to work for you. So you really learn angle anyway. It’s pushing that boat, so you want the current helping you push you off to the right into the shore. It was like a front and back sweep boat.
So, you’d set the back in and you want to pitch it into shore. Well, there are a couple times that that back boat would get drug out in the current (laughter) and you just say, “I don’t care, you take the shore.” Yeah, that happened.
Steiger: And Neff was always the boss and he was always in the front.
Dierker: The front oar calls the shots. And the back one just takes a beating. It’s like crack-the-whip.
But you could do funny things when you’re just going down, and not necessarily in rapids—you always want to stay in the current, you hate getting those damn things caught in an eddy. So, your buddy would be snoozin’ off and stuff, and you go ahead and swing it around so you line him up, because you could be out in the current and just take a couple strokes and he’s workin’ his ass off in the eddy, tryin’ to get around just so you aren’t havin’ to row like crazy, ’cause you’re basically floating, and you’d be there and you just be holding the current a little bit and lookin’ over and hearin’ him cussin’. (Steiger laughs) No, that was great fun, I learned a lot from Donny.
Steiger: Should we talk about Neff?
Dierker: He’s a wily snake. He’s a wily guy. Neff was wonderful with the people. He was wonderful on the river to learn river and fun. He taught me, “The river has big ears, don’t ever take anything for granted down here.” He’d been down there long enough to take his whoppin’s in good times and bad and still take a boat out. Basically, don’t think you can just smoke everything ’cause it’s your tenth trip of the year, and everything has gone great, you’ve got it wired and you know that water, because it will come up and slap your ass. Before a rapid he was great to watch. He would check everything and he’d make sure everybody…he’d get all the people involved. Not scared, there’s a difference between getting people involved and getting people scared.
I’ve run some dory trips, I’ve seen some damned dory dissertations by the leaders about boats flippin’. Dear God, the people are almost in tears and they didn’t want to get in the boats. They get on my boat, and I go, “Don’t worry about all that shit, you guys hang where you are, I’ll do the high-siding, I’m the big fat kid, and let’s go out and have fun.”
You know, you need to check out some stuff, make sure the damn jackets are tight, tell ’em to help you out, tell ’em to look around the boat. Neff was wonderful at that. He was great with people in general. He’d kid with them, but yet, he’d kind of talk. Looking at Neff and looking back on it, he taught you the fine line of guiding, and you learned how, as a younger person—I hope you learned it. (Well, I must say we’ve taken advantage of people in the seventies—like people were incidental sometimes. (laughs) We didn’t mean it that way, but sometimes it was like that.)
But Neff showed you that, “Yeah, you are there, under their employ. These people are paying me to take them down.” But Neff was great with the folks, loved the ladies. Loved the ladies, and they loved him.
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Dierker: McCallum believed in all freeze-dried food, and did for years, and years, and years. You’d get lean and mean at the end of the summer from eatin’ that stuff. Richmoor dehydrated food, and he had this one that he loved—he always packed a couple of the chili-macs. I think that was his signature meal. But, God, these dried banana chips! We wouldn’t take any booze. And he started sending a few soda pops, and he loved grape soda pop in steel cans.
We’d always jettison the damned grape soda the first night out, to lighten the boats, and everybody hated it Those cans sank like a rock. At night, one of the traditions was to go ahead and drop all that off in the river. There’s probably five or six tons of that stuff up at Boulder Narrows, a popular camp for our first night, on the left. Tons of ’em in there. McCallum would send two fresh onions on the trip. That was the fresh food. That was the exciting night, yeah. Powdered eggs, powdered cheese, you name it, it was all powdered food.
Steiger: And how did you handle the kitchen?
Dierker: A little water and throw the shit in. It was fast. (laughs) It was incredibly fast. It was, the pump-up little white stove and some wood. But in general, back then, we had a lot of family stuff, and Georgie kind of set a lot of things in McCallum’s mind and in just river running in general. You’re down there to see the Grand Canyon, you aren’t down here to eat. Yeah, McCallum was from the Georgie school. We had little rubber inflatable duckie ponds for tables, and stuff like that. You know, eating was just a necessity.
We never did get real tables, people would perch around and we’d cook on these rocket boxes. Lay it on these rocket boxes that we pack stuff in and made that the foot-high table, and that was it. It was brutal, but you didn’t know any better, it was fine, it was campin’.
But passengers’ expectations back then, you know…
Steiger: They just wanted to get through alive.
Dierker: No, they had a great time. We didn’t have a lot of people, even in the seventies, you didn’t have the sophistication that you do now and what you can take. Gave ’em basically tube tents, which was an oversized garbage bag to sleep in, for tents.
We went through the “blue goo” toilet stage for awhile, the chemical toilets and this and that, until they finally got the crap-in-a-box technique down.
But, it was reasonable. You know Mac’s trips didn’t cost a lot of dough, He was into giving these little scholarship deals to kids. It was much more “ma and pa,” but also just much more of kind of an adventure experience, than a catered outdoor trip, which I think most of ’em have become now anyway. I think that’s fine. I don’t think you need to go to the extremes of the Hollywood extravaganzas that happen down there now, where you wipe their butt and set up their cot and put their little Kleenex box there with them.

Steiger: Did you ever do any of those, those Hollywood trips?
Dierker: No, no. It would make me want to puke. But Fort Lee, you know, Tony Sparks said, “Look, there’s a certain amount of clientele out there that wants top dollar and wants to be catered to fully. And that’s great, but in general down there, you take good care of the people and you get ’em through. Now look, we take so much gear now, which is fine—I mean, we sleep on Paco pads. But back then too, we’d send people off on hikes you know? We’d be patching the boats or somethin’, and we’d tell ’em where they were, and tell them to use common sense. I also think clientele was probably more exposed to—the people going down there had more experience out-of-doors, a base experience out-of-doors, than they do now.
Steiger: By far. You know, I don’t remember, was the trail up to the Deer Creek Narrows, was it always as skinny as it is? I don’t ever remember, like, somebody being scared goin’ back in there. But now, for the last fifteen years, it’s always something that you’re aware of, that you need to be around.
Dierker: Those people aren’t going to fall—the people that are really afraid of heights. It’s the idiots that fall. It’s the, “Oh, you know, I’m a athlete, even though I’ve only walked on sidewalks for the last thirty years, I have no trouble.” Those are the people that go down. It’s not the wall huggers.
But I think there’s also in our litigious society, if anybody stubs their toe they want a full assessment. I mean even on this big wigs’ trip that I just went on, these guys that are supposed to be making all the decisions of the Grand Canyon, this one guy comes up to me and you see it all the time, it is so classic. He “boo-booed” himself. He just had a little ding somewhere. He brought it out and was concerned you know. I mean it was a very shallow abrasion. “Go wash it off, and we’ll keep an eye on it.” (Steiger laughs) That’s part of the trip, leavin’ some of your hide. You take the sand out of it, you leave some hide down there.
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Dierker: So, yeah, just goin’ through college and doin’ that in the summer, and then workin’ at the post office in the winters and going to college. Then in 1976, when I was through with school, that winter—I’d go down to Phoenix and live down there and be a carpenter in the winter, for Guzman Construction, framing and trim crews. I’d always done carpentry when I was in high school and stuff, got in the union down there, in the carpenter’s union, and that’s what I did in the winters until like 1980. I’d go down there in October at the end of the season, and live down there and then leave there in April.
Everywhere from big old custom stuff up in Cave Creek, to big old apartment complexes, to regular tract homes, canal homes. Mostly residential. Did some commercial stuff, smaller commercial stuff, and then learned some form setting and went out and did that for two weeks at Palo Verde, but that drove me nuts. You’d go there in the morning, and these other guys would strip down these forms, form-strippers, and then you’d make the new next set of forms, and that’d take you a couple three hours, and then you had to sit and stay in that location all day for eight hours until they were inspected. It was a slow painful death. Oh, it drove me crazy!
* * *
Dierker: Then in 1978 is when I first went up to Alaska with Sobek. I actually tried to get on to go to the Omo in 1977, but that didn’t happen. It might have been even 1976 that I tried.
Steiger: Sobek was an international river running company, started by these guys—Rich Bangs and some other guys—who were Grand Canyon boatmen.
Dierker: George Wendt, John Yost and a fourth party that died on the Blue Nile. [Lew Greenwald]. Oh, I loved Sobek. I wouldn’t have gotten to all the places—a lot of boatmen wouldn’t have gotten to all the places that they did.
I went over to Turkey with Dave Henshaw and ran over there. I was up in Alaska and there was some stuff gonna open up, you know, being part of the solid crew for Sobek was my potential.
So that was going along, and in the late seventies I made a couple of decisions, I was gonna get into a ceramics deal (I took a bunch of ceramics in college) with Mark Arnegard—he worked for Wilderness World. And you know, it seemed like I was just kind of just getting aimless. And I wanted to move back to Flagstaff in the winter, I was kind of tired. It was the winter of 1979–1980. So, that sounded good to me, so I threw in with that for a couple of three years, and kinda didn’t do boating all summer either. I’d get down on a trip or two. Went up to Alaska for a trip or so in those years—from 1980 to the winter of 1982. Right after I got back from Alaska that year a thing was gonna open up to go to Ethiopia. It was a real conflict in me, “Am I gonna move on with this?” Get serious with Sobek and do riverin’ all year round. Because I was doin’ it in the summers and then doin’ other stuff in the winters. So anyway, basically I just decided to go ahead and try this [ceramics] thing out, and got committed to that. And it was a full-time deal, which was fine. That’s all Arnie does, is ceramics.
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Dierker: I had done one Wilderness World trip in the late seventies, and then a couple with ’em in the early eighties, ’cause I kind of got tied in with that, but was still majorly a potter at that point.
Steiger: Pretty interesting jump from Expeditions to Wilderness World, huh? (Dierker laughs) I mean, there’s a different philosophy there, in terms of equipment, anyway.
Dierker: Oh yeah, troglodyte to sportscars. McCallum’s theory on boat frames were, if they broke make them thicker, if it was flat make it diamond plate. Vladimir [Kovalik]’s theory on boats was the lighter the better. Once you get on the boat, you’re just sitting there, you don’t need things, and the boatmen should be able to walk around on broken razorblades and be okay.
Very sophisticated thinking in the river industry, Vladimir Kovalik—incredibly lightweight equipment, fastest boats goin’—he designed boats. But anyway, I got into that. I was getting to know Kyle [Kovalik] and I’ve done a couple of trips with him with Gary Casey. Sue B[assett] and that ilk. It was kind of post-Tom-Olson thing. So, I kind of got in there, and I’d met Jimmy Hendrick in 1980. I kind of got in with that crew, and so went full time with them, 1983, 1984, and 1985.
Steiger: Those were three wild years.
Dierker: Three wild years. I ran some Expedition trips, and actually on the high water, on the flood of 1983, I was rowing for McCallum on that trip. I’d been rowing for WiWo while the water was coming up. And then when it boomed, it was Brad [Dimock] and [Carol] Fritz[inger] and Brian and myself, and Dennis Harris.
In June. McCallum had two trips going out. He (McCallum) and Yard were doing a youth trip. We
had two launches that day.
Steiger: The Western boat had flipped a week before that. And the dam was shaking—this was just before the spillways began to disintegrate and everybody was really nervous. It was after the Tour West flip and the Georgie flip and all that. It was at 72,000 [cfs].
Dierker: Right. But there were about four trips getting ready to leave, and this ranger John Dick comes down and goes, “The river’s closed, I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. You guys can’t go.” And McCallum just goes to the phone and calls up [Superintendent] Dick Marks and I was way impressed with McCallum. Looking back on it, it was a great moment for him. He calls up Dick Marks and says, “Well, you can’t stop me from going.” And Marks goes, “Sure I can, you won’t be insured.” And he goes, “You have it all wrong, pal. You’re a rider on my policy, we’re leaving.” He said, “Hey, I was down here before the dam. This river’s fine, you’ve just gotta go in the right place. You’ve gotta go in the right place when it’s low. Screw you. Bye.”
So off we go on our little high-water adventure, and you know, it was great.
But it was screamin’. One of my first memories of it is, “You better not dick around leaving.” You know how usually when a rowing trip takes off, there’s somebody brushin’ their teeth, and somebody dickin’ around coiling the rope. And somebody up there talking to a passenger, and you all kind of head off. We did that once—we pulled out of there, and we dicked around, and God, everybody was gone. There were no eddies either. We were way down there before we could stop over, and everybody goes, “Wahoo! Hoo-hah!” And then after that we realized that it was like, “Gentleman, start your engines!” You’ve got all the ropes tied, all the people in there, all the jackets on, and everybody with their boats on shore, whether you were holding them yourself or somebody holding them. And you’d look around and go, “Are you ready to go?! Are you ready to go?!” Because if you didn’t leave all at the same time, you wouldn’t see anybody, until they stopped.
Hell, it was new for us. I mean, it was wild. We camped down at North, somewhere in there, because we’d gotten a late start by all the hoobaba there. The next day, we pretty much cruised down to Buck Farm.
Steiger: So, you rowed to the back of Redwall Cavern?
Dierker: There was no sand in Redwall, we had lunch back there on the boats. We got into camping way up the side streams because you could float up there. And every night the helicopters would come in and give you nifty little notes like, “Be safe, camp high.” Well, that was a gimmee.
So, then we wound up going down Little Colorado and decided, because we were screamin’ downstream, to do a couple-day layover. Well we rowed up there a mile, up the Little Colorado River. And watched the water come up. We were at Little Colorado when it came up to its peak. We had to keep moving our kitchen and camp uphill.
The water was warm, it was coming off the top of the dam, so we went toodling on our ways. We went through the gorge and got to Crystal, and everybody was there at Crystal, and the choppers. Terry Brian was the river ranger there with his walkie-talkie, and showed somebody how to use it, and rode through with Dennis Harris. Of course we all walked our people over.
Steiger: So was this a scary run?
Dierker: Well, it was scary just because you could get sucked out there. It was open enough where, if you wanted to be right up on the right hand shore, that way was huge. Trees were out in the water. But when you walked up to that [overlook], you saw the top of that wave over the trees. That wave never washed out, it just got bigger, and bigger, and bigger.
Oars was there, Dr. Ghiglieri with Bruce [Helin] and all that. So, we all make it through okay, and rocked down the right. We all patted ourselves on the back and collected all the people who of course walked around on the Indian ruin where everybody was havin’ lunch. And we all take off, and Ghiglieri flips in the tailwaves. Brian hauls him out of the water and the first thing he says is, “My name is Michael Ghiglieri and your brother hates my guts.” That’s a different story. That goes back to running with Ghiglieri in Turkey. So we chase his boat down and we don’t get it until Agate.
But probably one of the more interesting things is going into Granite Narrows down there, because that current would just slam you into the right. And McCallum, when he left [Lees Ferry], he goes, “Be watching Granite Narrows.” And we were goin’, “What the hell you talkin’ about?!” So, we went in to do the little porthole there, the narrowest part, and all of a sudden this current was just smashing—and it was flat water, just totally flat. It was Brian first, then myself, then Brad, and then Fritz I think was kind of the order, and then Dennis. Brian went in there and I just see him get raked into the wall, Brad and I are on Chubascos [giant 22-foot Maravia rafts], Fritz and Dennis and Brian are in [18-foot] Rogue Rivers. So (chuckles) Brian just gets slammed into this wall, and then the current carries down along it, and so he’s just getting drug along the wall.
And I go, “Oh great, I’m gonna go in there and pancake on my brother and kill him. My mom will really hate me, because she likes him best.” So, I go in there, and I caught the rear end of his boat, just the back corner, I just mowed into it, and it shot him out of there like a rubber band, up against the wall.
But so, you’d slam in there, turn sideways and then get raked down the wall. Flat, you know, tearin’ off your whatever. Motor rigs were slammin’ into it. There was paint, for years, way up. Motor rigs would go in there, blowin’ out side tubes. So that was pretty interesting.
When we got off, it had dropped down to 80,000–85,000 [cfs]. But we got the full crest.
* * *
Steiger: How would you sum up those years? Pretty wild, huh?
Dierker: Yeah, those were my best running years. And that’s when we started cuttin’ the boats down a little bit, just rowin’ those Green Rivers or Rikens, just mixin’ up the gear a little bit. But Moody and I ran several trips, and Dugald [Bremner] kind of came on board, he had done some work for arta. He was the new guy, we didn’t really know him much. We get down to Lava, and we’re all lookin’ at Lava and it’s gonna be a right run, and we go, “Go ahead!” Now where in the hell is Bremner? “Where the hell is Dugald?!” Dugald comes over the hill dressed like arta, your classic, with the war paint on, and a war bonnet. We all look around and look at him. He sees us all looking at him and he looks at us, stops and pauses a minute, shakes his head (yes), and we all look at him and we all shake our heads (no), so he goes back over the ridge and takes all that happy shit off and comes over. (laughs) He’s the new kid on the block. But we were more into straight shootin’ it, I don’t know. I admire him for tryin’ it out though. (laughter)
Yeah, so we go through the eighties, and I really cut down on boating and get more into this contracting stuff. That’s what I had been doing in the winters. I kind of got out of the pottery deal in the winter of 1982–1983. I went back into full-time river running and was doing construction in the winters between seasons. And then I got married in 1986, and then, you know, I just kind of…I’d been doin’ it real heavy for three years. Then I got my general contractor’s license and had been doin’ that and still run a trip or two a year. Some years I’d run three or four or five. One year I did some nutty trips, did some Marlboro commercial trips. I went up to Alaska a couple times in there, and stuff. But basically toned that down. And then the last couple years I’ve been contracting and building my house and kind of gettin’ a little bit more ahead. But I’m doin’ all right. So the last couple of years I’ve been gettin’ back more into the science stuff.
Steiger: But back down the river more.
Dierker: Well yeah, yeah, which I enjoy.
* * *
Steiger: What do you think about these guys that want to take the dam down?
Dierker: Well, I think it’s good for two reasons. I think it’s highly impractical, but I even on this big wigs’ trip got the two wapa (Western Area Power Authority) guys to put “Restore Glen Canyon” stickers on their ammo cases. (laughs)
Steiger: You’re kidding! You made ’em do that? You’re kidding me!
Dierker: No, I explained it to them, I go, “You know, I know the benefits of the dam and it’s there and all that, but what this is, if you look at it, is saying, “Learn more about what you’re doing there, pay more attention,” and also it’s a shot across your bow to keep you guys on your toes. Because right now, I can see it happenin’ right now, you guys in your little flow regimes, you’re going to snooker it right back into where it was. You’re gonna just offset a little bit here, declare a little emergency there and that’s where it’s goin’. So, you know, you need to have some leashes, and this is a very good one. It’s making you go, “Oh, there’s those other issues there. We’re on board now, we’re in the public eye.”
Steiger: And all the way from standing there as a little kid on this little cable bridge, lookin’ down on this thing that hadn’t been—you don’t really believe personally that they should bypass the thing?
Dierker: I think there needs to be some work done to find out what, as far as its benefit—where it is, what it is right now outweighs what is involved with just draining it. But, on the other hand, what needs to go along with that goes, “Okay, if you don’t want to close that, or if you do want to close that, we gotta get more realistic about our water usage. We have to get more realistic about our energy usage in this country. Just ’cause we have those big ol’ things that we sacrificed hundreds of thousands of acres to, so we can live high off the hog, does not justify that.”
Just the way we use water and power. Power is another one. We use inefficient motors. They take the damn tax credits off for alternative power sources, like when you’re building a house, if there’s solar panels and all that stuff. Why in the hell did they do that? Just because the oil thing. Now we’re in an oil glut, that they just totally wiped out those programs that in a long haul are gonna save our bacon. It’s just still too cheap. But in any event, as far as taking that down, personally I think it’s a great idea. There needs to be a lot of work done on it. There’s never been a definitive done on the siltation up there. We weren’t allowed to go do that.
So, I don’t know how practical that is at this point. But I sure think it’s a great vehicle of keeping those guys on their toes, and I definitely think it’s a great vehicle for just keeping the public aware of the balance of sacrifices, you know, what are you giving and getting?
* * *
Steiger: You’re a very successful contractor. (Dierker laughs) No, you are. You’ve built all this stuff. You’ve built a bazillion buildings.
Dierker: I don’t know if I’m that successful, I never got that big. I’ve built a bunch of stuff.
Steiger: And now you’re talkin’ about you’re gettin’ tired of that and you want to go back to the river. Or back to that kind of life.
Dierker: Well… or I’ve gotta do somethin’ else—this hydrographic stuff, which is interesting. It’s water-oriented. I think basically I have a twelve-year attention span. I’ve been contracting for twelve years. There’s certain things that you acquire along, that you know, that I’ll always be boating. It’s like I’ll always ride horses. It’s like I’ll always, even if I get out of doing general contracting, I’ll always do woodwork. I’ll always have a woodshop. You know, I enjoy it. But a lot of stuff, we have to bastardize our true loves to make a living. I enjoyed general contracting, just doing the work, but between dealing with the inspectors, the financial institutions, the sub-contractors and your employees, there’s a lot of stress to it. I enjoyed getting it all running and this and that, but I’ve gotten enough out of it.
Steiger: But you’re not necessarily going to go back to being a guide per se?
Dierker: No, I’d never do that. I’ve got other things to do. I like living here and doing other stuff—and also financially. The only way you’re gonna make money on the boating industry is owning a company or owning a really good supply thing, like Bruce Helin’s done quite well. He’s done a very savvy thing. But you are not going to, unless you have absolutely nothing—or unless you are a wise investor and stuff, but there’s an awful lot of well-educated boatmen out there—but you’re not going to get very far ahead being a boatman. And especially if you look down the road, you’re not gonna have any type of a retirement after that. Although the longevity of boatmen has yet to play itself out.
* * *
Steiger: If we ever put something in the bqr for other guides comin’ up, is there anything you could give them?
Dierker: Once you start lookin’ at that sucker as a job, pure and simple as a job—get the hell off the river because you aren’t doing anybody any favors. The reason you’re down there is you like the place, you like the lifestyle. I’ve seen guys down there that it’s a job, and you don’t do a good job. Because there’s a little bit of “Fantasy Island,” it’s still a little bit of an adventure, you’ve gotta be in the place. If you’re looking at it as a job, go do somethin’ else. Do everybody a favor and go do somethin’ else. Sure, I’ve been down there and I go, “God, you know, I’m not gonna mind gettin’ home and stuff.” But, I have gone down there with good attitudes, and you have to do it, especially if you do it for long seasons.
Steiger: Just as far as being a river guide, if you had to pick out the best part of it all, could you do that? Could you say what was the best part of it for you?
Dierker: Probably tolerance. It’s just kind of learnin’ that a lot of damn things our society—we are such a judgmental society. It’s like when a space shuttle blows up the first thing we do instead of, “What happened?” we go, “Who’s fault is this?” And, I get like that. I mean, Jesus Christ, I can be really bad about that. “Who did this?! Who did that?!” Instead of accepting so many things you observe in life, should [not] be judged right or wrong. There’s some times you have to call shit, “shit,” and hold your ground. But so many things should be just observed and go, “Huh, that’s a different bent.” Or, “Huh,” you know? They’re not affecting you, and they aren’t going to destroy any values or any resources or whatever that you’re involved with. But yet, we tend to look at so many things as saying, “I like that, I don’t like that. I like that, that’s wrong, that’s right.” You know? And I think the river’s kind of throwing that out there, ’cause when you’re runnin’ a boat down there and you might not like to run Hance at 5,000 [cfs] but you don’t have much choice. So, why say, “Oh, this is right, this is wrong”—you go down there and you do it. Hey, the wind’s blowing. What do you do? You deal with the damn problem! You don’t go home and wait for better weather. You don’t call up the Bureau and tell ’em to shut off the wind. You deal with the damn problem and do the best you can. So I think that’s why you get a strong character of people down there. You have to have powerful personalities to stay down there a long time. I mean, powerful in yourself. I don’t think overriding powerful, but you know, if you needed to go somewhere and get a bunch of goddang guys together, ad hoc, to survive something, that would be a great well. That’s a great barrel of monkeys to take along with you.
Steiger: Guys you had to go to war with.
Dierker: Yeah, guys you had to go to war with. I don’t have that one all licked. I’ll cuss up and look for somebody to lash to the flogging post with the best of ’em. But I’ve worked on that down there, and just, I think having the opportunity to be down there to see that perspective, and in people, too. Being able to be color blind, being able to be across the board, being able to clean your slate when you’re looking at somebody to see them for what they are. Because you see everybody everywhere. You see ’em when they’re elated, you see them when they’re pissed off, you see ’em when they’re awestruck, you see ’em when they’re uncomfortable, you see how they’re dealing with other people.
It’s a great equalizer of mankind, everybody shits in the same box. It doesn’t matter what you have out there. The only criteria I have from passengers is that they’re safe, ’cause it’s a funky place to get hurt, and that passengers don’t bother or trample on the other passengers’ experience—but I think in general, that’s pretty damn rare. In general, you’re dealing with a pretty good, basic, crowd of folks. As I say, it’s the great leveler. They can own the office building, or they can be the janitor in the office building: It all boils down to how they take care, enjoy the place, and treat the other people.