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My introduction to the Grand Canyon camewhen I was twelve, I think. My mom anddad and I took the mules down to PhantomRanch for Thanksgiving, and I just completelyfell in love with it. We were down at the bottom of theCanyon, and I remember picking up a piece of theschist—or it probably was a piece of the granite—andthe ranger telling me how old it was. Of course I pocketedit. I took it away…I stole a rock from the GrandCanyon! I was twelve! What did Iknow? I was just so blown away bythe whole place, and we kind of hikedaround a little bit, and then took themules out the next day. I still remembermy mule’s name. “Lafe.” I stillhave my muleskinner’s certificate.I’m an official muleskinner from theGrand Canyon! But that was kind of my big introduction.When we got to the bottom, it’s not like I lookedat the river and said, “Wow, I have to come back!” Theriver was just something we crossed to get to PhantomRanch. I was more interested in the mules and theranch and the cowboy lifestyle than I was in the river…* * *I didn’t actually think about river running until 1985.(reflecting) Was it 1985? Okay, I graduated high schoolin ’80, I went to college, I went to u.c. Berkeley and IChrista Sadlerstudied physical anthropology…all the east African…you know, Lucy, and Neanderthals and all that reallycool stuff. So physical anthropology and archaeology.Just as I graduated, I started to date a guy who his parentsand grandparents and the whole family decidedto take a Colorado River trip through Grand Canyon.And I was like the big expert on Grand Canyon—right?—because I’m the only one that had actually everbeen there. But all I could tell them was, “Wow, it’s areally cool place. What an amazing trip, I’d love to dosomething like that.” So they invited me along. It wasseventeen members of their family, and it was a hugeHatch three-boat motor trip. We took up one boat,and then there were two other boats filled with otherfamilies and other people. And that was it! That wasit. I’d just started to study geology at u.c. Santa Cruz,for graduate school. And Ted was a geologist—theguy that I was seeing—so we were kind of the tripgeologists, and we’d sit there and pour over theHamblin books, the mile-by-mile guide, and we’dtell everyone, “This is whatyou’re seeing.” Ijust remembersitting on the frontof that boat, thisbig motor-rig. I wassitting on the frontthe whole time just,“Okay, this is it, thisis where I’m supposedto be.” It wasreally cool.I remember Iwrote about this, oneof the most vivid experiences—otherthanfalling out at Unkar,which was really fun…Steiger: You fell offthe motorboat in Unkar?Sadler: Well, I was sitting on the front; which is, Iknow, where you’re not supposed to be. And we hit abig wave. It was high water. It was ’85, so it was 45,000or 50,000 [cfs]. It was still the high water after the bigyear.Steiger: Yeah. There’s a wave there, in particular,that comes to mind. That one that feeds you left at thetop.Sadler: Yeah, that’s probably the one we hit. I rememberfalling off the front, and just as I went over, Ipage 28grand canyon river guides
grabbed…they had a chain around the front that youcould barely get your fingers on…Ted grabbed mywrist, and I remember looking up at him and saying,“Don’t let go of me!” And he pulled me back in. Sothat’s a vivid memory—But the one that really hit mewas we got to the Little Colorado, and when the water’sthat high, it pushed all the Little Colorado up intothis unbelievable, blue…It was June, right? So beforethe rains. It was just this incredible blue color. And itwas like this huge Olympic pool. There wasn’t a rockshowing, and we motored a ways up and parked. Wewere standing there with these little orange boats, littleorange Rogue Rivers—didn’t know it at the time—butthey came puttin’ on through, comin’ on down theriver. And there’s just this bronzed, blond goddess inone of these boats, and she’s got these four guys in herboat, and they kind of waved at us, and she went onout. I just remember looking at her and saying, “Wow, Iwanna do that!” And that was Fritz.* * *Yeah. I loved the trip. It was a six-day trip. I rememberseeing those little rowing boats and thinking, “I wannado that!” I did ask Ted Hatch for a job. I was, what,twenty-three? He did the sort of metaphorical equivalentof patting me on the head and saying, “Thankyou. Now run along and be a good girl.” I wrote to himand asked for a job, and luckily he didn’t give me one,because he might have, and then who knows, I mightnot have ever discovered rowing.Steiger: Do you remember who the crew was onthat trip?Sadler: Jim and Jane Blackburn were the two thatreally come to mind. I think they were from Alabama.They were the ones who were running the boat I wason most of the time. And there was a woman namedBarbara. A guy named Dennis—he just had this wildred hair. I remember him because he had a t-shirt thatI think it was one of those geology pun t-shirts thatsaid something like “subduction leads to orogeny.” Andthen I don’t remember the other two, but there were sixcrew. I still have a picture of all thirty-some odd of ussitting for our group photo on the boats. Oh my God,that was a lot of people! I mean, I didn’t think anythingof it at the time. It was kind of like, “Oh, isn’t this howall the trips are?” I remember we got to the end, and weflew out at Whitmore. I’m in my town jeans and mytown shirt, and we’re waiting for the helicopter, andI…God, it makes me sad even now to think about it. Ijust could not stop crying. I went down by the water,and I was kind of pretending to wash my hands. I wasstanding on a rock and kneeling by the water, and Iremember I was just crying, like, “I do not want toleave. I have to come back here.” So that was my firstexperience with the river. I mean, I know a lot of boatmenhave had the same experience, either started out aspassengers, or brought along by an older brother, sister,friend, whatever. I know it hits everybody—or a lotof us—just the same way, just right between the eyes,like, “This is what you’re supposed to be doing.” In allhonesty, I don’t think anything ever in my life has beenas clear as that, before or since.Steiger: Yeah, me too: three-boat motor trip, criedand cried and cried at the end. I didn’t think I wasgonna be doing it for the rest of my life. I did think, “I’dsure like to do that again.”Sadler: Yeah, I didn’t think of it as a career, I justfigured it’d be something I’d really like to do. Andthen you start and you can’t imagine doing anythingelse. But when you start, you’re in your early twenties—who’sthinking about the rest of your life in yourearly twenties?! Two years from now was the rest ofyour life. I mean, all you know is that you’re loving thismore than anything. You’re truly, incredibly, amazinglyhappy, and so just keep going. Then all of a suddenyou’ve been doing it twenty years, or thirty years…orforty years!Steiger: Yeah. And then one day they don’t let youdo it anymore. Then you’re really fucked!Sadler: So you’ve got to find something else to dowhile you’re doing it. Yeah. So that’s my not-so-thumbnailsketch.* * *Luckily for the entire Grand Canyon boating community,Christa Sadler has managed to find plenty of other stuffto do throughout her boating career. In addition to workingfor CanX, azra, Expeditions, oars/Dories, Tour Westand others, Christa did a stint as president of gcrg in themid-’90s, and published a collection of stories written byGrand Canyon boatmen: “There’s This River…” thatnow gets read aloud from or handed out on the river on adaily basis. Another book: “Life in Stone,” is a classic texton the fossil history of the entire Colorado Plateau.This Adopt-a-Boatman interview was recorded in twosessions—September 24, 2007 and February 8, 2011.* * *Well, I was born in California and grew up kind of allover northern and southern California. My mom wasa librarian, which now seems remarkably appropriate.My dad was a businessman, he did lots of differentthings. For a lot of my life he would be a general man-boatman’s quarterly review page 29
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