he name Dr. Joseph G. Hall may not be that familiar to river runners, but it certainly should be to Grand Canyon naturalists. Joe Hall taught zoology at San Francisco State University from 1957 to 1982 but, more importantly, spent summers from 1960 to 1972 and 1974 on the North Rim studying Kaibab squirrels. He would take his wife Betty and four daughters camping for the summer and compiled field notes of squirrel activity each season. Besides scholarly articles, in 1998 he also wrote the popular Linea: Portrait of a Kaibab Squirrel, with Sketches of Other Wildlife on the North Rim of Grand Canyon.
In the early and mid-’90s, I worked on campsite studies with Joe’s daughter, Lisa Hall Kearsley. One day she casually mentioned that she had done a Grand Canyon Dory trip after she graduated from college. I asked how that came about and she told me that her dad had done some dory trips with Martin Litton and P. T. Reilly. When she told me that they were in the 1960s I about fell over. Joe was on the classic 1964 trip with Reilly, Litton, François Leydet, and Phillip Hyde, the trip that resulted in the very important Sierra Club book, Time and the River Flowing: Grand Canyon. I informally call this “The Flush On Down Trip,” as they found out below Lava Falls from Toroweap Ranger John Riffey that the flows from Glen Canyon Dam would drop to 1,000 cfs, so they adopted the war cry “Let’s flush on down” for the rest of their voyage, “what Martin aptly called ‘The Supreme Adventure.’” Joe’s wildlife photos can be found in Leydet’s book, as well as a prime example of his humor. Leydet wrote: “We had some big water ahead of us: Ruby, Serpentine, Bass. ‘We’ll run Bass ackwards,’ offered Joe Hall. Indeed the cheer was somber, and the jests were ghastly.”
Joe was also on the Martin Litton trip in 1965 that included David Brower. According to a 1992 interview with Litton: “One time (June 28, 1965), Johnny Litton had this boat we called the Submarine.

Horn Creek was real bad that day, and that old boat went over the edge and right to the bottom of the river, and hit. And when it came up, there was four feet of the nose missing. Well, Joe Hall was a scientist and he had all his fancy rat cages because he was catching rodents and killing some of them, keeping some alive, and some he pickled in bottles. So, he had all this stuff, and he had these beautiful half-inch plywood boxes. And so, when that happened, we said, ‘Well, Joe, you’d better pickle the ones that are alive, because we’re going to use your cages.’ And we made a new bow for the boat—the whole thing.”
A few years ago Joe donated his field guides of squirrel research and his river trip slides of Glen and Grand Canyons to nau Cline Library Special Collections and Archives. His 1964 trip log may also be found in the P.T. Reilly Collection. If you want to know what the vegetation was like then or the birds encountered, there is no better compilation than that found in Joe’s daily log. Karen Underhill, Head of Special Collections, and I were fortunate enough to visit with Joe and Betty at their house in Grand Junction. Joe was becoming increasingly debilitated from recurring polio, but nothing stopped his sense of humor, nor his positive outlook on life. Joe ran “Bass ackwards” for the last time on May 17, 2005. Grand Canyon River Guides extends its condolences to Betty and their daughters and families, particularly to Lisa and Mike Kearsley and their boys.

Richard Quartaroli