summer 03 / 16:2 - Grand Canyon River Guides

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discovered some more things that they gave to themuseum. They brought ’em home to my home and had’em stored. I got in there to play with ’em in later years,and I wasn’t popular. They made me leave ’em alone.Then he decided that he’d better get ’em to themuseum, because he didn’t want ’em damaged. So wedon’t have any artifacts from the cave or Indian ruin. Ido know where some Indian ruins are that haven’t beendiscovered, but I’ve left ’em alone, I’ve never gone inthere.* * *Steiger: It didn’t sound like [your dad] was on thatfirst [Grand Canyon] trip that you were on.Hatch: No, my brother Don and I ran that, andSmuss Allen.Steiger: So about the time you really startedrunnin’, your dad was kinda phasin’ out of the…Hatch: I ran that trip in ’54, and we took threeboats through. Don was to take the next trip in the little22-footer, all alone. Don didn’t want to go, he was tired,Dirty Dozen at Stanton’s Cave, 1934Left to Right: Bus Hatch, Bill Fahrini, Clyde Jayne(?), Clyde Eddy(?)Legs in foreground: Dr. Russell G. Frazierand his wife wanted him, and he had a number ofexcuses, and I was just rarin’ to go. So with luck I gotback and got the second trip with the little seaplanetender. I’d just run it, and I went back and ran it solo,alone, again.Steiger: So your first trip ever through there, youwere twenty years old, and you were carrying people?Hatch: Yeah.Steiger: And your second trip is a one-boat trip.Hatch: Alone, with people…Yeah, I took theseaplane tender…22-feet, flat nose, and it took waterover the front all the time. We had to bail. But it was allguys.Steiger: Did that have an inflatable floor?Hatch: I think so. But I had a floor in it, over thebottom.Steiger: A wood floor?Hatch: Suspended, where I stood, and run a motoron the outside.Steiger: It was probably pretty quick.Hatch: It was fast, yeah. It was a lot faster than theboats we’ve got now. It was kinda like skiin’. You’d godown the river likethis. And when youpicked a slot, it wasthere, and it rodesome big water. It waspretty durable…Steiger: Now a22-foot boat…howmany guys on the trip?Hatch: I think wehad six or seven inthat 22-footer. It wasway overloaded. I gotdownriver, and weonly had one motor. Inthose days, if youknocked a motor, youhad to row. That wasjust automatic, weknew that. We werevery careful with themotor.Steiger: So youhad one motor andlike three oars orsomethin’?Hatch: Two oars.Steiger: That wasit. So if you knockedthe motor, you’d betternot lose an oar.Hatch: And soone rapid, we gotpage 34grand canyon river guides
down to Bedrock, which is the wrong one to use. Thatcomes from my inexperience, from just being the secondtrip. I had an old notebook that my dad had written onwhere to run each rapid, as I went downriver. It waskind of like this river guide you’ve got now. I thought,“Well, this Bedrock, I’ll run it with the oars.” Theywanted to see if I could handle a boat with the oars, incase I knocked the motor. So I started on Bedrock, and Icould see I wasn’t gonna make it. I fired that baby up!(laughter) and drug the oars, and made the cut. Then Ipicked the oars up and I said, “We’re not gonna do anymore of those!” I about got postage stamped…wethought it was low water if it was below 40,000 [cfs].“There’s a problem here, boys, it’s gettin’ low.”Steiger: Below 40,000? (whistles)Hatch: We always went in the spring when it washigh. See, it’s farther from the rocks. But really, now, youdon’t get 40,000. That’s before the dam.Steiger: Forty is huge, isn’t it?Hatch: Yeah.Steiger: So those early trips, you were seein’ waterlike that: it was 40,000-50,000. (whistles)Hatch: That was my training years.Steiger: Boy, there’s some big ol’—that’s a pretty bigstage.Hatch: Beautiful.Steiger: There’s some big ol’ whirlpools, big oldeddies, big waves.Hatch: The first trip I was on, Smuss and Don keptrunnin’ ahead of me. I didn’t know the river, I’d run therapids by sight. And after a couple of days, I got mad. Isaid, “You guys keep runnin’ off and leavin’ me. I’venever been down here. Gimmee a break. If you’re gonnalead me through, lead me through.” They’d get theirmotor goin’, they’d run off and leave me. So the nextday I got up early and I took the lead. Don said, “Whatthe hell’s goin’ on?! How come you’re runnin’ the boatin lead? You’ve never been down here, you don’t knowwhere you’re goin’!” I said, “Well, I was doin’ thatbefore, only you guys were out of sight.” And he said,“Well, you’ll tip over!” And I said, “If I do, you’ll bebehind me. You can pick me up.” And I did, I ranHance, first time I ever saw it, without any help. I justlooked at it and ran it. And Grapevine down toPhantom.Steiger: Now, was that around 50,000 or somethinglike that?Hatch: Yeah, 44,000–45,000, ’cause I run it, andthen it came right back. In those days, without a dam tomake it fluctuate, you probably were within six inchesdepth the next week, unless it was really dry or reallyflooding. Then, of course, it could go up six feet. Butwe’d go up and we’d put a stick in the sand and seewhere it was, and come back the next week and lookand see if it was gone, or how much it had dropped.Steiger: When it comes to bein’ scared, whenShorty Burton got in his jackpot, did that affect you?[When Shorty Burton got tangled in a flipped boat inUpset Rapid and drowned.]Hatch: That was terrible. Shorty was one of my bestfriends, if not my very best friend. Short and I ran a lottogether, and his skill as a boatman was very good. Hewasn’t afraid. He was probably more stable and cool thanany man on the crew. One time he stopped andapproached a Big Drop in Cat and lit a cigarette,watchin’ the river. We said, “What the hell were youdoin’, lightin’ a cigarette on the approach to Big Drop?!”And he said, “I figured I was right where I was supposedto be. I wanted a cigarette.” So he stopped, lit thesmoke, and then kept his engine goin’, and made a beautifulrun. So he was a cool hand. When he got killed, weall had bad feelings, because I gave him that brand newjacket that got tangled and we believe it killed him. Youknow, he couldn’t get loose. Brand new nylon jacket.That same week my dad died. And Shorty died and wewere still running busy in Grand—we needed Shorty.My dad died, and he kind of helped in the office—eventhough he was old, he gave me a lot of good advice. Wehad two deaths in ten days there, and the funerals werejust three, four days apart. But that was a real tragedy forour whole family. We kept on running our trips, eventhough a lot of folks would have said, “Hey, don’t dothat.” But my dad had an old theory that when somebodydied, don’t sit around and cry, have a party, have awake. He didn’t believe in sadness, he said, “You’regonna die anyway. Might as well enjoy it.” When he wason his deathbed, I went in and I was cryin’. He said,“What’s the matter with you?” I said, “Doesn’t look likeyou’re gonna make it.” And he said, “Son, I know that.If you do half the things that I did in my life, and havehalf the fun, it’ll be a success. I’ve been watchin’ ya’, youhaven’t done that yet. Get out there and have some fun!Don’t try to change things you can’t change.” I thoughtthat was great, ’cause he died the next day. I thought,“What a deal.” But I was pall bearer at Shorty’s, put mydad in the grave the same day. He said, “Go on withyour life.” The same day that my dad died, I packed atrip that afternoon, and I went out on the river and ranit. We’ve always said we’ll just keep on runnin’ if somethin’happens, so be it. I like that.Steiger: …With Shorty, did that make it seem moredangerous to you guys? Like that was the first time somebodyreally got hurt?Hatch: We were probably more careful, because itwas in our minds. Upset wasn’t that hard to run. We’dlaugh, we’d drink a beer and run Upset.Steiger: Did you guys just go left, or down the rightside?Hatch: Down the right side, always. Shorty alwaysran the left. And Dennis and I kept tellin’ him, “Shorty,boatman’s quarterly review page 35
Page 3 and 4: David LavenderWestern historian Dav
Page 5 and 6: soul and your heart rather than you
Page 7 and 8: The WEN, 1938Cam Staveley overlooks
Page 9 and 10: Four months after graduation the ne
Page 11 and 12: Instinct alone can be credited with
Page 13 and 14: GTS 2003!This spring’s gts was a
Page 15 and 16: eporting of any incidents that migh
Page 17: we are, or by recognizing the inter
Page 21 and 22: 96.1L Schist Camp Dave Stratton96.7
Page 23 and 24: present daily maximums of 13,000 cf
Page 25 and 26: dad to go run the Yampa River. Well
Page 27 and 28: Left to Right: Wes Eddington, Sally
Page 29 and 30: that as best we could, with the Sie
Page 31 and 32: discouraged now, because of regulat
Page 33: fun. They’d put me to bed, and I
Page 37 and 38: we’re all out or safe, so that th
Page 39 and 40: about all of ’em. We got tremendo
Page 41 and 42: “Lucy Runs the Rapids” #188When
Page 43 and 44: Sumner must have carried this frust
Page 45 and 46: Back in PrintAnnouncementsLook what
Page 47 and 48: Where Are the Amphibians?The USGS S

summer 03 / 16:2 - Grand Canyon River Guides

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