fall 11 / 24:3 - Grand Canyon River Guides

started studying it sort of on my own beforehand. Ijust said to myself, “Okay, I have to learn how to row.”So I started lookin’ around, and I checked into all thesedifferent schools: Friends of the River had a school…arta, yeah. And the one that…. I don’t know why Iended up with this school—maybe because it soundedlike I would get more hands on than anywhere else,but I don’t know if that’s actually true. It was a littleschool run by a company called Sierra WhitewaterExpeditions. They’re now out of business, but it wasjust a mom and pop organization out of Springfield,Oregon. They offered a school that was basically a weeklong, or five days, something like that. You spend aday on land learning how to tie knots and load a boatand read water, doing all the ferry angles, the little“football” diagrams…Yeah, they drew it out. And howto read rapids. Then we went and did a four-day tripon the Rogue. So I drove up there with my little blue1972 Datsun pickup, and did it! And it was fantastic! Iwas not a star student, by any means. I’ve never beena water baby. I’ve never been one of those people thatjust—you know, you hand them oars when they’refifteen, like Katherine MacDonald [Spillman]. Bradsaid she was just a natural. Well, that’s not me. But Iloved it, and I made some good friends there. And theyhired eight people out of that class, to work for themthat summer, and I was one of those people. So Iwent up in the summer of ’86 and ran the Rogue,the Deschutes, the McKenzie River. I ran a bunch ofrivers, which is actually really good, because I didn’tget stuck on one river, only learning one style ofwater. Because they ran so many different rivers, whileI never got really good at one river, I learned—like theRogue is pool and drop, so I learned about pool anddrop. And then the Deschutes is kind of pool and dropas well. But some of the other rivers were more—likethe McKenzie was a lot more continuous whitewater.I got to do the Upper and Lower Klamath, and thosewere really fun. That’s some good whitewater. I’d liketo go back and do it now and see how well I do! Thewhole time, everybody’s talking about all the placesthey want to run, and they’re talking about the Selway,and they’re talking about the Illinois, and they’re talkingabout all these gnarly whitewater rivers. I’m like,“I want to go back to the Grand Canyon.” And it’s sofunny, because everybody’s going, “Grand Canyon?!That’s not very hard!” “I don’t care about hard, I justwant to go back to the Grand Canyon.” So I spent thatseason, and the next year, in ’87, I went back to school,but then I decided, “Okay, I gotta get to Arizona,” andI quit. I came out here with the…Oh, what was it? Theexcuse I gave my parents is that I wanted to continuemy master’s here in Flagstaff. (laughs) So I got a job atthe museum [mna], and I went back to school, but basicallyI just started knocking on doors all around thedifferent companies. I had one season’s experience onthese rivers in Oregon. It was the right time, and I must1986 training trips onthe Rogue.boatman’s quarterly review page 31