TL Report: Just got off the phone with River Permits. They called to let me know they had rec'd the permit and would post the check on the 31st. :-)
What the Grand Canyon forums are chatting about this week: There's been a thread on how often we will have wind (which is always a headwind, always). Consensus is, you never can predict when wind will hit, but it's always to be expected in the afternoon when the sun bakes the rock, and causes an updraft, which draws the wind through the canyon. With this in mind, we want to get an early start everyday and make camp by early afternoon. Rowing in a headwind absolutely sucks.
Scouting Upset
Mileage This Week: River Mile 149-151. At River Mile 150.2, we will run Upset Rapid, class 6 (out of 10) a 15 ft drop. Upset was named by Emery Kolb after a flip by the 1923 US Geological Survey mapping the GC.
This rapid, more than Crystal, Lava or Horn, is the one that gut checks me every time. We will scout on the river right side. Here's what Martin and Whitis have to say: This rapid has a large hole at the bottom of the rapid. There is a dry but tight right hand run, a wet left hand run, and a down the middle through the hole run that is not recommended. And there's my problem, on one trip, I just missed this hole and only because I saw Bill Baxter getting worked in it ahead of me. It's deep and you can't really see it well before you land in it.
This raft ran just to the left of the hole, and got through. But the another raft was a ittle too close to the edge....
Surf, surf, surf.... AND.....
.... over you go!
Flipping the raft over after the excitement.
GC History: Mapping the Grand Canyon, 1923 US Geological Survey
The Grand Canyon survey party at Lees Ferry.
In the summer of 1923, the USGS organized an expedition to make a new map of the Grand Canyon, which was the last stretch of the Colorado River that had not been accurately surveyed. Up until that time, only 27 men were known to have traversed the length of Marble and Grand canyons and of those, only two had any scientific knowledge (one of those two men was John Wesley Powell, the second director of the USGS, who led the first expedition down the river in 1869).
This 251-mile stretch of the river extended from Lees Ferry to Diamond Creek. Claude Birdseye, who was the Chief Topographic Engineer of the USGS, was the expedition leader. The trip included the survey team, a cook, four boatmen (whose skill and nerve were crucial to the success of the expedition), and four wooden boats.
Birdseye was charged with making an unbroken level survey line through Marble and Grand canyons and running the survey line up side canyons. In addition, the party was to survey possible dam sites. The expedition launched from Lees Ferry on August 1, 1923. They completed the survey at Diamond Creek on October 13 and landed the boats at Needles, California on October 19, 1923.
Repairing a boat after running Badger Creek Rapids.
The wooden boats were all 16-18 feet long and each weighed almost 900 pounds. In the course of the 251-mile trip, the expedition ran 84 rapids and many other stretches of rough water. All the men wore cork life jackets, and in rough water the passengers lay face down on the decks, clinging to life lines strung along the gunwales. They only portaged the boats around three rapids that were deemed too dangerous to run. Birdseye wrote "It was man-killing work to handle the 900 lb. boats over the rocks and almost as hard to portage the equipment".
Soap Creek Portage
Radio messages came in clear at all points in the Grand Canyon where the outfit was set up. At El Tovar, Birdseye sent a telegram to Washington D.C. announcing that the party was safe; two hours later, in the depths of the canyon, he heard by radio his own message as it was broadcast to the country.
On the evening of August 2, the men set up the radio and immediately learned that President Warren G. Harding had died just 45 minutes earlier. On a later broadcast that same evening, the announcer directly addressed "that heroic band of engineers braving death in the rapids of the Colorado. "
Packing up at Hance
On September 18, rainstorms upriver caused an unexpected flood that caught the expedition by surprise. The men spent a sleepless night repeatedly moving their camp and the boats to higher ground as the river rose 14 feet. The water rose an additional 7 feet the next day (water volume went from 10,000 ft3/s to 125,000 ft3/s in 24 hours). The party had to wait three days for the river to go down far enough to expose their survey point so they could continue their work. When they finally arrived at Diamond Creek many days later than expected, they were shown newspaper headlines reading, "HOPE NOT GIVEN UP FOR RIVER PARTY!"
Below view film footage from the 1923 Grand Canyon expedition. This is the earliest film made by the USGS and one of the first black and white films distributed nationally.
Equipment/Camp/Info Check:The Canyon Wren. This beautiful little bird has one of the loveliest birdcalls in the West. Take a listen.
On September 18, rainstorms upriver caused an unexpected flood that caught the expedition by surprise. The men spent a sleepless night repeatedly moving their camp and the boats to higher ground as the river rose 14 feet. The water rose an additional 7 feet the next day (water volume went from 10,000 ft3/s to 125,000 ft3/s in 24 hours). The party had to wait three days for the river to go down far enough to expose their survey point so they could continue their work. When they finally arrived at Diamond Creek many days later than expected, they were shown newspaper headlines reading, "HOPE NOT GIVEN UP FOR RIVER PARTY!" 
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