oy Ungricht Carber died in her home at Arnold, California, on September 29, 1992, after a courageous battle with cancer. She died held in the embrace of the wide circle of family and friends who loved and honored her.

   She was born March 10, 1952 in Salt Lake City. For most of the seventies, Joy was a resident of Horsethief Ranch and Moab, where she took up outdooring, dancing and laughing in the canyons of the Colorado Plateau. “Peepers” was into everything, and was a preeminent female in the evolution of guiding and adventure travel worldwide. She was the first female river guide on the Bio Bio in Chile, Turkey’s Çoruh, the Watut River in Papua New Guinea, and the Tatshenshini and Copper Rivers of Alaska. Joy was a member of the first exploratory expeditions on the Zambezi River in Africa, the Indus River in Pakistan, and organized and led the first descent of the Luangua River in Zambia, an all women’s expedition. She married boatman Butch Carber in 1989 on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in East Africa.

   She was a boatwoman and guide of mythic proportions, a caring friend and playmate, a scrappy opponent who could challenge the toughest. Let’s all not forget the impact on our own lives of Joy’s courage, spunkiness and enthusiasm for life. She reminded us to go a little further, point our toes a little more. In the wisdom of American Indians, wholeness is not seen as the duration one has lived but rather the fullness with which one enters each moment. We’ll miss our friend Peepers, but there is a greater tragedy than death, and that is having a life not lived. This is why most of us admired and loved Joy: she consciously and intentionally sought the fullness of her life.

   Donations may be made in Joy’s honor to the Joy Ungricht Carber Scholarship Fund, c/o Canyonlands Field Institute. PO Box 68, Moab, Utah 84532. The “JOY” scholarship will pay for female guides to participate in CFI’s River Rescue program, a program Joy taught for many years.