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Outside Magazine, June 2005

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Ain't it Just Grand (cont.)


	"MESSING ABOUT IN BOATS": the crew of Grand Canyon Dories (Kurt Markus)

ALL ALONG THE CANYON, news has spread that Litton is on the river. One morning, a party of boaters pulls over to listen while he tells off-color jokes. A few days later, a crew of archaeologists beach their powerboats, whip out a banjo and fiddle, and perform an impromptu riff called "The Martin Litton Breakdown." Another night, a fleet of rafts pull into an eddy just so the trip leader can toss Litton a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin. "Well, wasn't that nice?" says Litton, studying the label like it's a lost page from the Talmud. "Who in the world was that fellow?"

Toward the end of our first week, the canyon begins to change. First, the space between the cliffs opens up,

The boatmen's attachment to their craft is absolute. They fuss over them, paint them with scenery. On winter nights, one guide sometimes soaks in a scale replica of his dory as he dreams about the river.

letting us see all the way to the South Rim, more than 5,000 feet above. A day later, the walls narrow dramatically, and as the dories enter a ferocious rapid called Hance, the gates slam shut on the Inner Gorge.

This is the subbasement of the canyon. The walls are blacker than coal and the rapids feral. Every day they hit us with staccato bursts. Sockdolager, Grapevine, Horn Creek. Granite, Hermit, Crystal. Waltenburg, Bedrock, Upset. The huge boulders lining these cauldrons create deep, recirculating holes into which the entire river seems to disappear. The current seethes and churns, folding back on itself to form whirlpools, boils, and massive eddies. The rides are fierce, furious, and shockingly cold.

A half-century after Litton's first expedition, these waves are still enormous and their hydraulics explosive, but the challenge is not quite the same. The dories are now made from sturdy, closed-cell foam instead of wood, and oarsmen like Bronco have run the river so many times that it's rare to see them even flirt with a submerged rock. But while much of the carnage has faded, the dories' power over the guides endures.

A typical dory apprenticeship can last nearly a decade, longer than any other in the canyon. By the time a boatman has earned his place, his attachment to these custom-made craft—which cost up to $17,000, more than a season's salary for most guides—is absolute. You can see it in the way the boatmen fret over their dories: spit-polishing microscopic scratches on the hulls, glowering when passengers track dirt onto the decks. Perhaps the deepest evidence of their incorrigible love, however, comes out during the winter, when they're off the water.

Back home in Flagstaff, Duffy spends hours carving miniature replicas of his craft, the Paria, and his mom, 'Ote, touches up the stern of Dark Canyon, which she has decorated with a hand-painted scene of a butterfly landing on a wildflower. In Mesa, Colorado, Rondo tromps across the street to Bronco's driveway, where the men climb into Bronco's boat, the Yampa, wearing their down jackets while they drink Scotch and reminisce about rapids. As for Eric Sjoden, a few years ago he built a scale model one-third the size of his dory, the Virgin, and converted it into a bathtub at his cabin in Whitefish, Montana. He spends winter evenings soaking and dreaming about returning to the river.

"The dories have a grace in design that is astonishing—they're just so fucking gorgeous," says Brad Dimock, who is coming out of retirement this season because he can't bear to be away from the boats. "The first time I ever rowed one, I was just stunned. And that feeling never really left. They're that cool."

"What's so appealing about a dory?" says Bronco one afternoon, borrowing a line from Litton. "It's pretty simple. Rafts are ugly. Dories are beautiful."

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