OCR Text |
Show SUNK WITHOUT A SOUND An excerpt from a new book explores the mysterious Gand Canyon disappearance of Bessie 6 Glen Hyde in 1928 By Brad Dimock On November 18,1928, newlyweds Glen and Bessie Hyde er last seen floating into the cally depths of Grand Canyon on their crude Idaho sweep scow. did not appear at journey’s end, Glen's father launched an exhaustive search of Grand Een Although the boat was soon found upright and fully loaded, no trace of the ene ynoones was ever found. They had vanished from the face of the earth. Or had they? Flagstaff, Arizona, author Brad Dimock spent two years searching for the truth behind the Hyde mystery, digging through archives, traversing the continent, following each clue and lead to its endeven going to the extreme of replicating the Hydes’ archaic scow and taking his own bride on a harrowing trip through Grand Canyon. His profusely illustrated book, Sunk Without a Sound, The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde, details the search and the findings in a riveting, often humorous style and is excerpted here... although Bessie ran the rear sweep in many of the large rapids, and occasionally ran the scow herself. Z With Bessie back on board they ran another ten rapids and three riffles. The last rapid of the day slammed the scow into an eddy. They recirculated for some time before getting stuck on a midstream rock as they exited the eddy. Glen pried the scow loose and they made camp below. The next morning found them in the heart of Cataract Canyon. In her small pocket journal, eleven twenty are left and the Bessie made a note of one particularly steep rapid, but recorded no troubles. After rapids and one riffle they camped for the day. On October 30 they ran another rapids, among them some of the tougher drops in Cataract. Modern-day boatmen to puzzle how the Hydes found paths through the rocky mazes of Mile-Long Rapid Big Drops. The Hydes recorded no problems, but did spend the following morning — Bessie and Glen Hyde in the Grand Canyon, 1928. (L) Adolph Sutro photo, courtesy Fretwater Press G Huntington Library (R) Bessie G Glen Hyde photo. in camp doing repairs. After lunch they launched ina steady rain that increased throughout the afternoon. They ran the remaining eight rapids of Cataract Canyon without complications, although the last two were difficult and long. They had made it through the “graveyard of the Colorado" unscathed-quite a feat considering that nearly every trip before them had portaged a few if not all the major drops. One can either credit them with unprecedented pluck, or simply acknowledge that they had little choice, as the waterlogged scow weighed more than two tons. With Cataract under their belt, Grand caer began to sound less intimidating. Grand Canyon 1996 Later that morning we entered the Roaring Twenties-ten miles of intermittent rapids-all abrupt but relatively straightforward. The Hydes do not mention having much trouble Grand Canyon, 1996 I heaved on the twenty-foot sweep oar again and again and again. The boat was still hurtling to the left side of the rapid-the wrong side. Jeri was giving everything she had on the rear sweep but things just weren’t working. We were slipping broadside into the massive, crashing lateral wave in House Rock Rapid. The river had utterly overpowered us. As we slammed into the wave, Jeri and I both hurled ourselves instinctively onto the left gunwale of the boat-as if our combined 320 pounds could do anything to stop the ‘Colorado River from rolling our two-ton sweep scow like a giant log. The wave pitched the boat on edge and inundated us. Somehow we didn’t capsize. I fought to regain control of the forward sweep as it windmilled in the waves, and wrestled it into submission. The rear sweep swung wildly, slammed the deck hard, barely missing Jeri‘s helmeted head, and kept swinging. But the lateral wave had stopped our leftward momentum, and we coasted past the huge drop-off on the bottom left, missing it by a good five feet. We lunged through the ten-foot tailwaves at the foot of the rapid. The boat was half-full and out of control. We were sinking. We bailed madly for several minutes, the bilge pump kicked on, and we calmed down enough to talk. But we had little to say. Our usual jubilation below a rapid was strikingly absent. We were scared witless. This was only day two of a two-week trip through Grand Canyon, and House Rock is not one of the really big rapids. It was becoming hideously apparent that our river trip just might not work out. Cataract Canyon 1928 Bessie might have gotten a feel for the rear sweep 5 anne the smooth currents of Labyrinth and Stillwater Canyons, but she got an abrupt awakening in one of Cataract’s first rapids. A wooden sweep weighs more than one hundred pounds, with a good twenty to thirty pounds of counterweight affixed to the handle. With an eight-foot blade in the river, there is a tremendous amount of leverage available to the boatman-or against the boatman if things go wrong. Ninety-pound Bessie had no sooner sunk her sweep into the current than she found herself airborne, then waterborne. Glen caught her foot and pulled her back aboard. After that Glen sometimes took both sweeps in the roughest rapids » there. Nor did we. What we did find, however, was that although the dance floor was designed to accommodate two boatmen, inmajo rapids the larger person (me) usually knocked down the smaller (Jeri). Thereafter we took turns in the big rapids, dancing and cowering. In the biggest rapids I usually took the sweeps-being taller, heavier, stronger, dumber. One of us would wrestle with the sweeps while the other would cringe in the back corner of the boat. But in the extreme rapids, the sweeps would take control. They became hundred-pound bludgeons careening through the boat, slamming down on the dance floor deck. At such times the only safe place for a passenger was down on the bottom of the boat, below the level of the dance floor. And when things got completely out of hand, with both sweeps gyrating, the sweepman would have to dive to the floor as well. In the tailwaves we would scramble to regain control of the sweeps. This became our modus operandi in the very biggest waves. How Glen and Bessie dealt with the situation, we can only guess. Glen Canyon 1928 They found a beach and put into camp for two nights. It poured throughout the first night, with lightning and thunder crashing and echoing about them all night and most of the following day. The Moab newspapers called the storm one of the worst in memory. Their tarp leaked and the Hydes woke up soaked. By late afternoon the sun poked through and they began drying around a raging bonfire..A brief double rainbow graced the canyon sky, then the clouds returned with a finale of hail. Sometime during the storm they named their scow after one of the great Sioux warriors and prophets-said by some to be the man who killed Custer: Rain-in-the-Face. The river rose, and on November 1 they launched on twice the pre-storm flow. The runoff-high, muddy, and reeking of earth-boosted their speed. At the head of Narrow Canyon was a showy inscription with the names of the Eddy party of a year earlier. Glen and Bessie pulled ashore and chiseled "HYDE 11-1-28" along beside. Mount Ellsworth had a fresh dusting of snow as it soared majestically above the red rock vista to the west. They passed the Dirty Devil River, spewing a muddy, malodorous flood into the Colorado. The walls of Narrow Canyon parted and they slid into the calm _ waters of Glen Canyon. : |