Susan Billingsley - Grand Canyon River Guides

saying, “Sue, are you warm enough?” I’m going, “Oh,that feels so… I’m warming up.” And he goes, “Good,because you just broke out in flames.” (laughter) Ijumped up, my blanket’s burning.Steiger: Oh, my gosh!Billingsley: We had some really cold hikes. Weburned a lot of wood. We were probably responsible for alot of the wood disappearing in the Grand Canyon.When we got down to the river, we had some pretty bigfires.Steiger: And you’d sleep a little ways away and keep’em goin’?Billingsley: Yeah.Steiger: But I bet you didn’t even think about thedriftwood runnin’ out, then?Billingsley: No, there was so much. Oh, there wasso much. You just put big huge logs on. We cooked outof a coffee can… That’s right, we’d just cook on thewood. So all you really had was a can and spoon and apackage of dried spaghetti that you could buy at FoodTown. But then we went fancy! One of the guys—Bruce—always liked to come up with new ideas. He gotparachute material and covered the shape of a mummybag with foam, and he covered to make two separatecovered foams, and then he sewed ’em together. Boy, weall did that. They were light, they were warm.Steiger: Just not the kind of foam that would suckup water.Billingsley: Oh, yeah, that’s all there was at thatpoint.Steiger: But light enough, and covered with thatparachute silk, or whatever the heck.Billingsley: Yeah. That was our fancy sleeping bags.So we had that.Steiger: Wow. And probably had external framepacks and all that?Billingsley: That’s right. I never even had a pack. Ihad an external frame, and a bag, and we roped it on. Acanvas bag. We would roll up the sleeping bag, tie it onthe bottom, and then put a bag on top and tie that on.It was kind of sittin’ on the sleeping bag. I carried, for awhile, a lariat, because I wanted to be a roper. So Icarried a lariat all around the Grand Canyon so I couldpractice roping! (laughter)Steiger: Not to use for climbing, just to…Billingsley: Yeah. We decided a long time—after,like, doing Royal Arch—that if we couldn’t scramble upsomething, we wouldn’t do it. We weren’t going to carryall those heavy ropes to do any climbing—we wouldonly do things that we could scramble, or use a thirtyfootrope. We did that a lot. Or pull our packs up with arope. We did that a lot. George and Jan, for a while,carried pistols, just in case they needed ’em. It was astage they went through—a gun, a pistol.Steiger: What would you need one of those for?Billingsley: Oh, you never know, maybe arattlesnake or something, you know, back then. Theynever used ’em. The only time I can remember it goingoff, was Jan Jensen—you would have had to haveknown—very dry, very funny, but very dry, and didn’ttalk much. We got into Tuckup one day, and it was sohot, we were so tired, and we set down, and this fly wasbuzzing around. He finally pulled out his gun… He wasshooting at the fly. (laughs)Steiger: Okay. I’ll bet that made a little noise.Billingsley: He missed the fly… Anyway, we had alot of fun. And then George started on the river.Steiger: Now, did he start for Hatch?Billingsley: Uh-huh.Steiger: Or was it gce?Billingsley: No. You know, you’ll have to ask him,but I think he did some trips for Hatch, and then startedwith gce.Steiger: And then you started.Billingsley: And then I went down with him acouple times in…let me see, ’74.Steiger: Swampin’?Billingsley: Just a couple times, and then Iswamped… No, I swamped all 1974 with him. And then’75, I think I got a boat. Yeah, I got my own boat in1975, and ran in ’75 and ’76.Steiger: So how did that transpire? How did youmanage to get a boat along about then?Billingsley: You know, the whole reason I got a boatwas because I married a guy that would rather have runwith me than with the other boatmen. There’s not verymany guys down there who would have rather run withtheir wife than another boatman. They liked to havetheir wives or good friends as swampers, they liked tohave ’em on a trip, but to be… Because they were motorrigs, so you took two boats.Steiger: So George really pushed for you?Billingsley: Uh-huh. And bless his heart, RonSmith was willing to give it a try. I can remember, wehad a—well, you’ve been up there, you know thebunkhouse… I’ll tell you, Ron Smith was the nicest manin the world. He just… I mean, that was a time whenowners really cared about the boatmen, and it was kindof a family, and they took care of the boatmen. Theytook care of a lot of them a lot longer than they shouldhave. They really went out on a limb for some of them.But Ron gave me a boat. I knocked him into—we wereplaying basketball in the hallway one night. Do youknow Lats, [Bill] Lattimer? We had stolen his leg, so hewould have a handicap, and we were playing basketball…Steiger: He was playing one-legged? Basketball?Billingsley: Yeah. Oh, he was great. He could doanything. He could outrun me with one leg. But theywere always stealing his leg and beating him up with it.boatman’s quarterly review page 31