Susan Billingsley - Grand Canyon River Guides

At the Little Colorado River – July 5, 1976.right up onto that red rock, just right between the twoframes. And there I sat. It was like (whispers), “I can’tbelieve I did this again!” Mary Beth is goin’, “Susan, arewe stuck again?” “Yes, Mary Beth.”Steiger: Well, that’s easy to do.Billingsley: But I’ll tell you, I said, “There’s no wayin the world I’m gonna spend another night in a rapid.”So I took off—we had a center tube across there—climbed down in there, and thought, “I need somethingto pry this boat off this rock.” So I got table legs, andstarted jackin’ that thing up, and workin’ it, and workin’it. It started giving a little bit. But the water was dropping.I thought, “Oh, my God, I can’t…” So I got MaryBeth on the engine, and she would run the engine, andfinally I got it up, and it came off.Steiger: Did you have to jump out of the middle atjust the right time on that?Billingsley: Well, as soon as it went, I was out ofthere, and then went back to the engine, and the lowerunit was burned up by that time, just trying to get off. Sowe got through the rapid, but without an engine—andthen changed the engine.I was probably, to be perfectly honest, not the bestboatman on the river. I made it through, I made itthrough in really low water. I did okay, but I was lucky alot. Went through a lot of engines down there.Steiger: So you ran a boat for a couple years? Wasthere a high point, do you remember? When you lookback on it.Billingsley: You know, the high point for me wastaking people down the river that had never doneanything like that, and showing them a really good time.That was really important to George and me. That’swhat we were there for. He wanted to teach peoplegeology. And the nice thing—you know, I’ve done someoar trips—but the nice thing about motor trips is thatyou can do a continuous education with the people allthe way down the river. On oar trips, they change boats.Each boatman gives them a little something, but on amotor trip, with just two boatmen and all the people,you can make a continuous story as you go down theriver, and have it all hooked together. Much better thanyou can on an oar trip, I think.Steiger: I think you’re right. Now, did you guys usedto have people change boats? Or did people usually geton one boat and stay there?Billingsley: Yeah, but we always came together andtied up for a lot of the talks. And we floated a lottogether. We did a lot of floating on the river… And Ithink we did really good trips. Of course I think thepeople were a little different back then too. They didn’texpect as much on a trip. They hadn’t heard all of theirneighbors say what they had done on a trip and what toexpect. So it was a real adventure for ’em. They wereboatman’s quarterly review page 33