Dear Eddy

In Reference to “Back of the Boat” by Mike Boyle in bqr 16:2

In 1987 Sobek ran the first descent of the Yarkand River in Chinese Turkestan. John Yost, Jim Slade and I ran self-bailers, and Mike Boyle got stuck with the bucket boat. The river dropped 7000 feet in 300 miles, and there were no maps, no aerial photos, no trails along the shore. We encountered several deep canyons that precluded scouting, due to the wall-to-wall river and vertical rock sides. This was psychologically challenging water, not for the Class IV water, but for the total unknown that greeted us around the each bend, and the lack of time to prepare for it. We had no choice but to run these canyons, make quick decisions, and hope for the best.
In one of these gorges, Boyle took a wave that filled his boat to the gunwales. He careened away, out of control, and disappeared downstream. Slade was in the lead but had pulled to shore down below and was unable to help. Yost and I were behind and gave fruitless chase. As I swept past Slade, he called out “Boyle was still upright, going around the bend!” It sounded like an epitaph.
We learn from Boyle’s article in “Back of the Boat” in the last bqr that for quite a while until rather recently, his life fit that description. He again floated around the bend, and not always under control. He left guiding and the life he knew and loved, and caromed towards some scary unknown future for which there was no map. In spite of the hazards and the set-backs, he managed to stay upright, if periodically awash.
As he disappeared downriver that day on the Yarkand, floating where no man had floated before, he stayed true to his own credo. He was certainly working hard and doing the best job he could. No one doubted that he was paying attention. Boyle’s fundamentals were always sound. Somehow he managed to remain upright. He bailed his boat and scrambled to shore before we caught up to him. He looked beaten up, but not beaten, his huge droopy mustache unable to hide the grin.
Now we’ve caught up to Boyle again, but this time we find him under control in midstream, his life moving forward, and that grin still hiding the recent turmoil. We’re all proud of Mike. He faced challenges greater than most of us will ever have to face. He managed to stay upright in spite of taking some big ones over the bow, and he came out on top. We’re also pleased with the inspirational example he’s set for others. Today, off the river, he continues to live by his own tenets, which we all would do well to emulate, and his example again gives hope to all of us that there is indeed life around the bend. Work hard, pay attention, and do the best job you can.
Just like Boyle
.
Skip Horner

In Reference to “The Changing Rapids of the Colorado River—Doris Rapid” by Chris Magirl and Bob Webb in bqr 16:2

I read with great interest in your most recent issue a scholarly study of the small but intriguing Grand Canyon rapid now known as “Doris”. The very first paragraph of the article by Chris Magirl and Bob Webb includes the sentence: “Though the boat stayed upright, Doris and the other passenger were thrown into the water.” I was that “other passenger”!!
From my limited experience, that little rapid is unique on the river—as was its namesake. It has nothing to do with debris flows—it has all to do with geology and flood stage. It is dangerous at low water and a roller coaster at flood stage. I saw it at low water and will never forget it. It ate the Wen—all sixteen feet of it. And we never touched bottom, or the sides, or anything else.
I suggest the following scenario. An excavated length of river bottom cut through an almost horizontal, erosion-resistant sedimentary bed into softer material, to form a long, straight, deep and narrow pool of water. High water rushes the length of the pool, making normal waves. Low water pours over the lip of the pool and quietly sets up a circulation of water, downstream at depth, upstream at the surface—a familiar condition in many places, but not at such a large scale and length of river (half a mile of straight level pool below Doris).
In 1940 Doris Nevills and I were lolling on the flat stern of the Wen enjoying the quiet scenery. Norm was rowing. The river stretched calm and peaceful ahead. “Strolling down the river on a quiet afternoon” stern first, watchful, drifting along. Peaceful. So what made that long, dim ripple ahead? We looked. We saw. Straight down. The whole river was going straight down. The Wen upended and went full length straight down, how far I wouldn’t know. I do know the Wen shuddered, stopped, turned sideways as its natural, built-in buoyancy returned it to the surface.

The agile and ever alert Norm scrambled out of the cockpit, up and over the gunwale so as to force the emerging Wen to fall back right side up. He was totally successful in that split second effort.
I found myself spread-eagled, face down on the rear deck, half over the edge, one hand with a firm grip on a safety rope, the other seemingly anchored in the water. So I pulled that arm in and up popped a sputtering, blowing Doris. I had a firm grip on the seat of her pants.
This all went on in deep, deep water. The sixteen-foot Wen went totally under, but did not touch bottom. None of the passengers was scraped or scratched. Not a bit of blood. It could not have happened in a shallow debris-flow rapid.
It was a no-line rapid in Grand.
They ran it just as was planned.
But the hole at the bottom
Reached out and got ’em
And pulled them in by the hand.
There were several verses of this brilliant doggerel. Milderd Backer Rosa McVey wrote it all down in her little black book. I wouldn’t blame you if you made no effort to resurrect it.

John Southworth

In reference to “The Madness of Jack Sumner” by Don Lago in bqr 16:2

Don Lago’s piece in the last bqr, pertaining to Jack Sumner’s self mutilation, was the most shocking piece of Powell lore I can imagine. It is remarkable that such a bizarre tale has been under wraps for a full century, given the keen interest in the Powell expedition. It is the tale of a deeply troubled man at the very least-a man who would be institutionalized in today’s world.
But aside from the tragedy it exposes in Sumner’s life, it has ramifications that ripple far wider. Robert Brewster Stanton and others who have searched long and hard for evidence to condemn Powell, have relied heavily on Sumner’s latter-day account of the 1869 expedition, wherein Sumner claims much greater leadership in the trip, and condemns Powell on a number of accounts. Yet is an account written some four-and-one-half years after Sumner castrated himself on the banks of the Green River—it is an account written by a man unhinged.
We know that now, and can begin to put Sumner’s account into a somewhat different perspective. And certainly we can forgive earlier researchers for leaning so heavily on Sumner’s seemingly coherent recollections. Or can we?
It was Stanton who requested Sumner’s 1907 account, which forms the backbone of Colorado River Controversies. Yet in appendix G of Stanton’s unpublished manuscript of The River and the Canyon, he quotes a letter from Sumner-with one large omission. The ageless question of “What did he know, and when did he know it?”comes to mind. Stanton’s footnote explaining his omission, in light of Don Lago’s discovery, now begins to speak volumes. (I am assuming the bracketed words were added by Stanton.):
March 28th., 1907
Dear Stanton:
Yours 21st. rec’d. and noted. In reply will say that you have got hold of a badly mutilated copy of my journal. I kept a journal from May 24th., 1869, when we left Green River, Wyoming, to Fort Mojave, Arizona. Made a complete copy of the original and sent [it] to Maj. J.W. Powell. He was very anxious to get it, and now I see why, I probably said some things in it that did not suit him and he has erased, or had erased, a lot of it.
As to the first part, form Green River to Uinta River, it appears it has been stolen bodily.
The journal was written up every evening with pencil, but all of it was perfectly legible when I copied it at Fort Mojave. Of course I can’t fill in the omissions that occur in your copy of the journal, but I think the account I sent you ten days since will make things plain to you.
…(1)
As to the journal in your possession, I care nothing for it. Keep it or send it back to Washington as you see proper. I would be very foolish to write a journal and leave it in the condition of the copy you send me. Perhaps J.W.P. erased the parts, perhaps some other person did. I deny its parentage [in the form it now is]
(Signed) Jack Sumner,
Vernal, Utah.
(1) The parts of this letter omitted refer to Sumner’s sickness, etc. , and in no way relate to the subject of the journal.

Brad Dimock