Susan Billingsley - Grand Canyon River Guides

Billingsley: I don’t think Ellen went on that one.Sally went, and her mom and her two sisters. JimmySears went, Jan Jensen went, George and I went. Andgosh, George would remember all the boatmen, but…Steiger: So those were those outside rigs? No sidetubes.Billingsley: No side tubes.Steiger: How did that strike you, your first day onthe river?Billingsley: Oh, you know, I knew nothing about it.The only boats we had seen—for some reason we raninto Georgie White every spring on our Easter hikes, shewould do a trip. It just seemed like every Easter wewould see her down there with her huge rigs. But Ididn’t know anything about being on the river, so… Youknow, it was like you’d sit there goin’, “Oh, my God,these people are in the Grand Canyon?!” We were alittle possessive of the canyon. We didn’t really like tosee anybody on our hikes; and then to see a huge groupof Georgie White people come through was like… wewere pretty above all that stuff… A couple times we’dtalk to ’em, but mostly it was like we’re down therehaving this wonderful time, and then all of a sudden,fifty people go by, screaming in a boat. It was just adisruption.Steiger: And so the Hatch trip—what was that like?Billingsley: I’m trying to remember all theboatmen. I should have written them down: PatrickConley, a guy named Rick Petrillo, a guy named Brick.Steiger: Yeah, Brick Wells? Or Breck O’Neillmaybe?Billingsley: I don’t remember which one it was.George would remember all the other ones. But therewere quite a few.Steiger: How many boats?Billingsley: Four maybe.Steiger: All of them pretty full?Billingsley: Yeah.Steiger: What else do you remember?Billingsley: Oh, I remember they had oars, in casethey lost an engine—like you could do anything with aset of oars with a boat that big! Everything was piled upon top. They were pretty uncomfortable, actually. I canremember being uncomfortable. I remember it was apretty cold trip for some reason—I don’t know why. But,you know, I don’t even think I thought of it mostly as,“Wow, this is a wonderful river trip.” What we thoughtwas, “What a wonderful way to get us to some places tohike, that we could never get to by hiking in.” That wasour focus.Steiger: And did they let you hike?Billingsley: They did pretty good. They started outsaying, “You have to have somebody with you.” Butpretty soon they just gave up and said, “Just go.” It wasfun. It was fun enough that George went and got a job,and then I followed him.Steiger: Do you remember where you hiked?Billingsley: We hiked up Bass Canyon.Steiger: So that would have been your first night,probably.Billingsley: Yeah. I remember we swam from thebeach, from the camp, down to Shinumo.Steiger: (laughs) With your life jackets on?Billingsley: I don’t remember. And then we hikedup there.Steiger: They just said you could swim down there?Billingsley: We convinced ’em we could do it.Steiger: You knew it was there?Billingsley: Yeah, we knew it was there. I don’tknow what they thought of us.Steiger: Well, they must have thought you wereokay if they let you even do that, I would think… Sodid you guys just go down there with your backpacks,and they just threw a tarp over ’em on the load?Billingsley: Yeah.Steiger: That was about the size of it, huh? It wasjust like a hikin’ trip, but you got on the boat instead.Billingsley: Yeah.Steiger: No waterproof bags, no nothin’ like that?Billingsley: No. And none of the clothing that…Steiger: Did you even have rain gear?Billingsley: We had ponchos. Yup, we had ponchos.Steiger: Like those little K-Mart ones?Billingsley: Yeah.Steiger: Which is probably all you ever hiked withanyway, huh?Billingsley: We never even carried… You know, it’sfunny, of all the hikes we took, there were so few of ’emthat we got rain on. We never carried tents. There wasjust not any rain. Isn’t that odd? And it was in thewintertime.Steiger: Just didn’t even think of it?Billingsley: I mean, do you know how much a tentweighs?! We were minimalists. For the first two years Icarried a light blanket and a piece of foam to sleep in,and those were winter hikes. Those were in the middleof the winter.Steiger: You carried like a wool blanket?Billingsley: Not even a wool blanket. It was one ofthose ones that have the little tiny holes, like thethermal things.Steiger: Cotton?Billingsley: Yeah, a cotton blanket—that’s like it.Steiger: In the winter?Billingsley: We built a lot of fires. I can rememberone hike where we were… Now, some people hadsleeping bags. George and I didn’t. He was on one sideof the fire, I was on the other. I can remember himputtin’ wood on the fire. We were so cold. We were socold, all the time down there. But I remember himpage 30grand canyon river guides