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Stephen Hatchett

Jack, Phyllis got it:  Angela Davis

Jack Mallory

Books. Now you've got me started. I'll try and restrain myself. 

Just finished a re-read of The Emerald Mile: the Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon, by Kevin Fedarko.

I read this first a couple of years ago, after our rafting trip down the Canyon. We're scheduled to go again next year, but I wanted a foretaste of the experience to come. Not that our trip in what the old-time wooden boat rowers call a "baloney-boat" is much comparable to what's described in this book.

I read alot. Constantly could be a better way to put it. I am reminded that The Emerald Mile is one of the best books I've read in years. Maybe it's a pandemic-driven lust to be traveling again, a yearning for something different after a year of so much the same, an escape from the quotidian. But the book, nearly as much as the reality of the canyon, provides that diversion.

It's the story of the1983 record setting run, in a wooden dory, from the put-in at Lee's Ferry down the entire length of the canyon to Lake Mead, accompished during a massive release of water from the Glen Canyon Dam--in order to prevent its possible collapse after an a huge El Nino driven snowfall and melt in the Rockies. 

It is superb outdoor adventure fare, but also: a consideration of humans and nature, conservation vs. development, individual vs. public well-being, history, geology, hydrology, dam-building, dory-building . . . hard to describe. So well written, so wide-ranging, it's one of those books that I would find other things to read between chapters to avoid coming to the end. 

Stephen, many of you others, I think you might really like this. And none of you are too old to do it yourselves, but you've got to sign up a year or so ahead! We're due to depart August 31, 2022. Traveling with Western Rivers, if anyone wants to join us!

Pandemic-related as well, perhaps: still checking my window at sunrise, still getting some pretty good pix before breakfast!

Jack Mallory

Bingo, Phyllis! Good eyes, great memory. My cousin Diana, maybe two years older than I and for whom I lusted in a very un-cousinly way, was made even more glamorous than her tanned, California, UC Berkeley self by rooming with Angela Davis that summer. 

Glen Hirose

  Jack,

  That actually was the norm for all the European Royals. Any nobles in the Mallory clan on your side?

Stephen Hatchett

Glen, re European Royalty:  I don't know about the "lust" part, but royals were supposed to marry royals with the result of a very limited gene pool.  Every genetics class shows how hemophilia (a genetic disease) spread through that crowd from Victoria on. Yay, Harry and Meghan.

Glen Hirose

   Sense of royal obligation and not much lust,

                                                                               but that was then, and this is now.

Jack Mallory

PROUD OF YOU, CALI!

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/us/coronavirus-vaccine-farmworkers-california.html?referringSource=articleShare

*******

Ok, there's a plan afoot. The other day I mentioned my Grand Canyon rafting plans for 2022 and tossed out casual encouragement for others to join. 'Lo and behold, the phone rang yesterday and it was Stephen, expressing great interest. After a brief conversation, he was in, and has gone to the Western Rivers web site and laid his deposit down.

I've talked briefly with Helen and Jennifer Harting about this, and they are at least considering it. 

So, a BCC mini-reunion on a 6 day, 5 night glafting ("glamour rafting") trip down the Colorado? Glamour overstates it, but it's VERY comfy. Requires one be in decent shape, able to scramble on and off a big (humongously big) rubber raft, do day hikes of a couple of slow miles up the side canyons to pools and waterfalls, sleep out on cots or in two-person tents. It ain't Everest. I was the oldest guy a couple of years ago at 71 or 72, likely to be again at 76, and I'm not George Mallory. The trips are really designed to accommodate a wide range of ages and abilities.

If interested, go to the Western Rivers web site, check out the 6 day Grand Canyon trips. Watch the videos, look at the variety of people participating. We're signed up for the 6 day trip staring on August 31, 2022.

Something to look forward to, get/stay in shape for, a fantastic late in life experience!

Stephen Hatchett

Want to keep eating??  Keep your farmworkers healthy!   Most (all?) of us can isolate, they cannot.    

Jay Shackford

Riding the Rapids

Jack is dead right about rafting down the Grand Canyon. It’s a great adventure riding the rapids, hiking up the canyon on a few side trips after lunch,  tubing down the Little Colorado and experiencing some of the most beautiful sites in the world.  The canyon and river is very diverse – expansive in some areas where it stretches for miles in both directions and narrow and steep with the cliffs rising almost straight up from the riverbank in other areas. The narrow part of the canyon usually had the best rapids.  

We (my wife, Nina, and youngest son, Nick,  who had just turned 21 in 2006 and was probably more excited about playing blackjack with me in Las Vegas) went on the 187-mile trip starting from Marble Canyon (think they called it Lee’s Ferry back then) to the Bar 10 Ranch. It was a six-day, five-night rafting trip.    

We had two motorized rafts with our outfitter, Arizona River Runners, on the trip -- 12 to a raft, and two guides for each raft.  Food was great. Waking up to the smell of coffee brewed in a huge pot was something to remember.  Our trip was in the middle of May before the heat really hit the canyon.  I slept on a mat on the beach 20 yards from the bank of the river in my shorts and tee shirt.  Nina used a tent for couple of the nights. The stars were amazing.  The water – except for the Little Colorado that flowed into the Colorado River from the Arizona deserts – was very cold.  Remember, no showers on this trip until you reached the Bar 10 Ranch on the way back to Vegas.  We took a helicopter ride from the bank of the river to Bar 10 Ranch before flying back to Vegas. 

On our trip, we had four construction workers from the Big Apple (great guys with some funny New York stories) a brother and sister from Israel, a guy from Australia, a French couple and couples and singles from around the country.  It was a very  interesting mix of people.  Nick was the youngest on our trip – most of the rafters were over 50.  

Mark, our lead guide out of Flagstaff, was amazing – he could read and navigate the river like the back of his hand and was a great storyteller for those many peaceful moments on the river when you weren’t riding the rapids. Originally from Colorado and about 34 at the time of our trip, Mark started rafting the canyon during his college years in Arizona and he never left.  During the winters, he worked as a ski instructor and in a ski shop owned by one of his college buddies.  Now that’s the life….

Go to the Arizona River Runners web site or any of the other outfitter sites to view a couple of the videos.  It will give you a good feel for the trip.  

Your outfitter will tell you exactly what you can bring. Suggest you follow those instructions carefully.  For the three of us, we spent about $1,000 at REI for the gear recommended, and we were glad we did.    

In mid-May, temperatures ran from a low of about 80 at mid-day to a high of 95.  At night, I don’t think it got cooler than 75.  Sunny and beautiful blue skies the entire trip – not a drop of rain.  

Don’t worry about staying safe.  By 2022, the virus will be long gone and the trip is not that tough on the old body.  The guides are experienced and take good care of you.  Plus, the canyon is patrolled and closely monitored by the National Park Service.  

Sign up and have a great time.  

Jack Mallory

Thanks, Jay, for your endorsement of Grand Canyon rafting--and especially your reassurances about comfort and safety! The guides really are incredibly competent, knowledgeable, and interesting.

As Jay suggests, go to the web sites for the rafting companies, Western Rivers is who I've used. But a warning: watching their videos is like getting a little bit of heroin from a dealer. First little bit is free, next thing you know you're hooked!

That's what happened to us the first time. Deb had said that some kind of rafting trip was on her bucket list.  I just googled river rafting . . . saw something about the Grand Canyon . . . glanced at a Western Rivers six-day promo . . . and down the rabbit hole I went. But worth every penny.  We knew when we were done that trip we'd have to do it again someday. 
 

Joanie Bender (Grosfeld)

Wow, Jack, those photos are beautiful....I can see why you and Deb would want to do a repeat trip. Love, Joanie

Joan Ruggles (Young)

A rafting reunion is a tempting idea.........but I don't do tents and cots. Have never been a camper, especially with no showers. But the rest of it - the rafting, the hiking sounds fabulous!

Jack Mallory

It's a trade off, Joan . . . 
 

And not completely without showers!

Jack Mallory

One of our classmates was concerned about facilities:

Stephen Hatchett

Rafting trip "facility" nitty gritty.   I am assumig that other rafting companies do the same as OARS.  Phyllis and I loved a 2014 raft trip down the Middle Fork of the Salmon in Idaho ("The River of No Return").  The campsites are relatively few and are re-used often.

SO... All the poop gets carried out -- on a support raft.  One uses the "groover", see Jack's photo.  Usually a "room with a view" off of oe end of the campig area.  A roll of TP is stationed at a site near the groover but out of sight of it, and this serves as the "key".  If the roll is there, pick it up and go on to the toilet. If it is not there, wait until the earlier user comes out.   The guides make sure the thing is comfortable for good or older knees.  The name "groover"  goes back to earlier days of rafting when surplus WWII ammo cans were used for poopinng in and carryig out.  You can imagine the result of sitting on an ammo can.

Pee, on the other hand,  is sterile, but would be smelly left on the ground.  So all pee goes in the river.  Into a small bucket then into the river or more directly.   For us older guys with BPH who don't want to be clambering down to the river in the night, OARS provided small blue buckets to be used in the tent and set outside or used outside and then emptied into the river in the morning.   

Bottom line -- decades of experiene have meant that all this kind of stuff is well taken care of and causes no unpleasantness. 

There are enough guides that hikes often have two groups -- easy and moderate, and nothing if one wants to simply veg out with a book or bask in the sun.

Jay's description brought back one of my favorite memories of the Salmon river trip -- waking up to one iof the guides calling "COOOOFFFFEEEE"--- and then plopping iinto a sling chair to enjjoy it.  

Glen Hirose

Going to side with Joan,

Nope, rafting, wilderness, snakes, scorpions (not a bug by definition), and the thrill of raging water all sounds very romantic. But I got the outdoor adventurer out of my system years ago. I would like to live vicariously through the iPhone videos of others so long as at 5:00 there's is Scotch, and  petite hors d'oeuvres. 

In my defense however I did raft the Youghiogheny River at stage 4-5. The 1st raft left a bit early and flipped; the rescue kayakers were great, and recovered 7 out of 8. Nixed the tent for the back of my 75' Blazer; I did enjoy the PBJs on raisin bread, but certainly would have liked a glass of red. Lastly to this day I can't identify poison oak in the field.

Jack Mallory

Everthing Stephen said; except I didn't learn the "groover" term. And for us on our daily breaks going down river the rule was ladies upstream, gents down.  All the necessities smoothly dealt with. Plenty of opportunities for river bathing--take some personal cleaning wipes if you want more than the sometimes gritty Colorado to bathe with. Stayed much cleaner than in Vietnam; had much more fun; nobody shot at me. And ate MUCH better.

I don't remember the alcohol logistics, but some folks had beaucoup beer. 
 

*******

2.5 miles of wheelchair pushing this morning. Keeping in shape. 

Joan Ruggles (Young)

Pee is sterile? Well I learned something new today!

Jack Mallory

But like so many things we "learn" on-line . . . 

https://www.livescience.com/45800-confirmed-urine-not-sterile.html

Stephen Hatchett

Well drat, Jack, I'm glad you checked.  Of course we knew it wasn't sterile if one had a UTI.  I better not use "sterile" again, just something like "reasonably germ free".   

Jack Mallory

But single malt was reliably antiseptic. Not that I would have used it externally!

******

Talk to you all tomorrow, March 4th, after Trump is sworn in as the 19th President of the United States. I bet we'll hear from some of our estranged classmates with an I Told You So! before they hang us or ship us to Guantanamo. 
 

Joan Ruggles (Young)

What! Fake news on this forum?? I'm shocked I tell you! Shocked!

Stephen Hatchett

See now, at least for me,  that's the thing about a raft trip in a place like the Grand Canyon -- it is pretty much immediate reality based. Nothing fake can even get to you from outside, only the cool of the water, the heat of the sun, the noise of the water or songs of birds or whoops of rafters (your own included), the taste of the food or salt of sweat, the smells of coffee, food, wood smoke, spray, sweat, ...,  and mesmerizing sights and sights that make you tuck your feet into tight spots and grip the ropes with all you got. 

Jack Mallory

As Stephen says. And NO phonecallsemailtextmessagesTVinternetnewspaperstweetsInfluencerspoliticiansetc.

Jerry Morgan

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