Narrows by Night

Canyon Rainbow, Zion National Park

As evening came, the jokes that had been flowing with the river began to slow. At the same time, the current seemed to build its strength. Or were we weaker? My walking stick no longer held so firm to the river's bottom. Our soles began to slip as we zigzagged our way back and forth across the canyon to avoid the alternating swerves of the water’s pull. Luckily, twilight lingered and we plodded diligently along. Certain bends gained deep shadows while others still reverberated with the rays of late evening that wondrously found their way to the canyon floor.

Suddenly, Manali saw her feet get whisked away. Wendy and I grabbed under each arm, as our friend let out a laugh that released the feelings of the day. Our priority was to keep her from disappearing around the next bend, but her laughter was contagious, making it hard to lug a dry suit full of water to dry ground. Eventually, we got her up and on land. All were soaked. Thank God it was funny. Our rhythm, however, had been broken. We were deep in the Narrows and the end appeared nowhere near.

The Narrows… The minute the once-a-day shuttle disappears in a trail of dust at dawn, you're committed. The next bus to a warm campfire in Zion is 16 miles away and 2000 feet below – at the end of a hike through one of the deepest canyons on Earth. Made well worth it, of course, by the ancient geologic library composed of two towering stacks of red, beige, and white rock that face one another across the Virgin River – a body of water that has carved 150 million years into the planet’s past.

Twelve hours. That's what the outfitter said - on the long end, "I've done it in seven." If he'd done it in seven, we could do it in twelve, right? Or so we thought, and this in mind, we kept along at a healthy clip. Two twenty-minute food stops. Another twenty minutes for bathroom breaks. For most of the day we were in motion, scanning rocks in the rapids, plugging the river’s bottom with our walking sticks, using them to pendulum our way across the ever-shifting current. It was fun. It was breathtaking.

As daylight gave way to twilight, however, the passage of time ushered with it a nervous mood. The day lingered and kept its fading embers as long as it could. Yet, the end was nowhere in sight. At some point, time had to give in and turn itself over to night. I can't tell when exactly this happened. Each bend offered new shadows that alternated lighter and darker, but inevitably bent their way to near black. Movement slipped from bounding strides to fearful hesitancy. Fading humor took on a questioning face. The key to keeping a strong footing is the weight that forward momentum pushes through your sole onto the rock. When you hesitate, the weight is gone. Boots slip, feet fly forward in the air, while water follows a hundred gushing streams through the top of your dry suit.

Such situations can unwrap an individual’s inner-most workings like a holiday gift. One just hopes that what springs from the box isn’t something you’d want to return. Jason had the silent resolve of a Tibetan monk – one who might venture often across perilous terrain doing the business of the day. Wendy had in her eyes the pent-up desire to throw at someone the frustration we all wanted to share. I hoped it wasn’t me. Manali had a look of physical hesitancy in the scanning glance of her eyes. I was sincerely scared for her. I, the seasoned veteran, felt a strong pang of guilt for having indirectly allowed the rest to get into this mess. All of us had fear buzzing its wings just outside determination’s door. Looking back, what blows my mind is this: The personal descriptions of each person above – painted through my own scratched-up and adventure-jaded lens – remained contained within a group dynamic that the four of us kept cool and collected.

Jason stayed just a few steps behind the women, helping to stabilize their crossings. I wondered how weak we could truly be. Fifteen hours had passed. We'd eaten like horses though, and laughed a heck of a lot. But the river was relentless. I plowed ahead, testing various routes for the crew behind. Beaches 100 yards ahead looked just like still water. If a deeper route looked calmer, I said the heck with it, and plodded through, the others banding together with a new rhythm that spelled careful, diligent survival. Dry suits periodically needed draining. We did so, and carried on.

The major thought in my own mind was how far ahead I should plod as a leader. Would a speedier pace provide a coach-like role that would push the others to pick up the pace? An eager, "Freshwater, where the hell are you!?" from a mere fifty feet back answered that question. From then on, I bounded ahead to test currents then doubled back into the others’ view. I also made it my job to jam peanut butter sandwiches into people's hands whether they wanted them or not. I was an annoying big brother.

Our saving grace was the moon, which arrived as if on cue. Nearly full, its white rays bounced all over the canyon. Not to be outdone, the Big Dipper then appeared in the middle of the canyon roof. We would make it. No guarantees on arrival time, but a lighted end did exist. Occasional circle-ups yielded conversations strangely mixed with biting and calm. Humor was not dead—though none of us would admit that to the joke tellers. I don't know how far we plodded on in the dark—two miles maybe, with my mind inventing all kinds of scary animals out of the shadows that danced on the canyon walls with the moonlight. Yet, I knew we'd finish this one. And a Chicago crew of greenhorns knew it too.

The end came in a set of rock steps, carved out of a boulder in the bend of the river, illuminated white by the moon. They led through what looked like giant beach rubble to the handicapped accessible ramp fifty feet above, which itself was a good mile long. As luck would have it, a group of climbers had gotten a rope stuck at mile’s end, for the last Shuttle had departed an hour before. The party’s headlamps illuminating the effort to free the rope high above, a climber’s girlfriend offered four very happy hikers a ride in the group’s 4-Runner to our campsite six miles down the road.

The next morning I took the duty to drop off our rented gear to the outfitter – my top priority, of course, being to give him a bit of flack about his seven- to twelve-hour estimate. His good-natured greeting as I came through the door, however, disarmed me. “It took us fifteen hours man! We were navigating by the freaking moonlight!”

He shook his head in a mix of respect, concern, and a hell-yeah-that’s-adventure-for-ya kind of way. “You never know what that river will bring you. People come in here all the time. Tell me ‘that was way shorter than you said, or way longer,’ and I can’t size half these people up ahead of time if I try.” With that he moved over to his computer. “Let me check the cubic-feet-per-second on the Virgin today.” A few mouse clicks through the internet. “Wow, she’s up to 125 cubic feet per second. Yesterday, when you guys started, she was at ninety. 125… That’s when we close up shop. There’ll be no one goin’ up there today.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Yesterday was sunny and beautiful. How on Earth did that river flood?” He replied, “Oh, the rangers will make you believe it’s the rains that will get ya. Quite to the contrary, actually. The dry desert floor can absorb the rains just fine. It’s the warm sunny days that are the bad ones. That’s when you get snowmelt in the highlands. It’s then, when you’re on that river that you’re really in trouble.”

Yesterday was indeed a splendid spring day. And I suppose the icy temperature of that water should have alerted us to the significance of those white-capped peaks on the distant horizon. Regardless, when you’re intact, it’s a brilliant memory.

(4/23/03)