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Show Grand Canyon 1996 ; By midafternoon we were nearly through the Twenties. As I pried my way along the boiling current line at the foot of 27-Mile Rapid, the forward sweep caught a wayward current with its far tip and my stomach with the near. A moment laterI was ten feet from the boat and spiraling down into a whirlpool. I was not that worried initially. Although I am a poor swimmer, unlike Glen Hyde, I had always put ultimate trust in my life preserver, and had survived accidental swims in most of Grand Canyon’s major rapids without incident. Although the whirlpools are quite short lived, so are people under water. I came up sputtering only to see the boat at least fifty yards upstream, retreating up the eddy, as I was being swept downstream into the next rapid. Then another whirlpool pulled me down, this time with empty lungs. I came up choking and scared and saw the scow still receding. But by then Brian had his sportboat on plane, heading my way at a good thirty knots. The water in Grand Canyon comes out of Glen Canyon Dam at a steady forty-eight degrees year-round, about forty miles upstream from where I was floundering. In such frigid water, it is hard to maintain any energy for more than a minute or two. I was spent. As Brian and Cooper plucked me from the river, I thought of the Hydes. In November of 1928, the water was far colder. Within a few weeks of their disappearance, the shorelines were icing. I had gotten sucked under with my life jacket on. The Hydes had none. place, Glen wears a look of grim determination, Bessie a haunted, unsmiling stare. There is little doubt that they were spooked, tense, apprehensive. Even today, many experienced river runners wear that same gripped look at the head of the rapids of the Upper Granite Gorge. All sense of humor vaporizes. One can only imagine what it was like for the Hydes. Glen had tackled many things in his life, and tough as those tasks may have been, he had not yet been defeated. They were 375 miles into their journey, with 430 to go. It is possible that Glen’s eternal optimism was failing-that for once he felt they might not really be past the worst of it. But given what we know of his character, it is almost certain that, apprehensive as he may have been, Glen still wished to press on. It is certainly possible that, as many stories indicate, Bessie wanted out at that point; but there was no indication of such at the time. Bessie’s letters were consistently upbeat, and on November 24, 1928, Park Superintendent Minor Tillotson wrote, "Mrs. Hyde.admits to . being scared but did not seem reluctant to resume the voyage." Jeanne Hyde recalled, "She was keener on the trip than he was. She was plucky.” "Bessie," said her brother Bill, "should have been a man." Hermit Rapid, Grand Canyon, 1996 : : Hermit Rapid was astonishing. We had a flow of around 20,000 cfs, over twice what Glen and Bessie had. At that level the river forms over a dozen mountainous haystacking In the Hydes’ Footsteps: Brad Dimock and Jeri Ledbetter attempt to repeat history, while avoiding it at the same time. 1996. Photos by Dugald Bremner, copyright 1996. Grand Canyon 1928 The wind abated by morning and they pushed on. Glen’s optimism about smaller rapids ahead proved drastically wrong. Hance Rapid was long, rocky, and difficult, but they were able to snake Rain-in-the-Face through. At the foot of the rapid the river enters the most forbidding stretch of the river as a black schist gorge suddenly looms up over a thousand feet, so steep that the upper four thousand feet of cliffs are often lost from view. Within a mile is Sockdolager Rapid, named by Major Powell's men for the knockout punch it delivers. True to form, Sockdolager drenched them in the first wave. Glen struggled to regain control. "I don’t know just how it happened,” Glen wrote in his letter to his father, "The oar cracked me under the chin, and got away. I remember getting ahold of it againnext I was going into the river feet first. I don’t recall clearing the boat. The first time I came up | missed the edge, but the next time, after being down some time, made it, and after getting my strength, climbed in. Bessie took my oar as soon as I went out and was doing her best, but afterwards was pretty well shaken up." Bessie threw Glen a rope, helped him aboard and they continued on. "I was ready to climb the canyon wall right then and there,” wrote Bessie, "but Glen laughed at me.” They ran a few miles farther, but as the wind and rain picked up again, they camped and built a roaring fire. 5 First thing the next morning they hit Grapevine Rapid, the twin sister of Sockdolager. The waves were enormous but did not abuse the honeymooners as Sockdolager had. At noon they landed at Bright Angel Creek, at the foot of the newly completed Kaibab Trail, and heaved a sigh of relief. waves down the middle. We considered trying to miss them, realized we could not, shipped the sweeps and dove for the floor. We porpoised through, the scow alternately diving and standing on end. As we climbed the largest wave, the rear sweep slid back into the river, then slammed the deck so hard that it broke the oar grip off the end, sending splinters whizzing over Jeri’s head. i The ride was so amazing we allowed ourselves a few moments of exhilaration before the dread returned. We were drifting out of sight of Hermit, the last place the Hydes were ever seen. Just ahead lay the toughest rapid on the modern river, Crystal Creek, formed by a debris flow in 1966. It was not there when Glen and Bessie ran, but they had the dread of an unknown river instead. We had helmets and life jackets-I was now wearing two Grand Canyon 1996 Jeri’s eyes were wide, her countenance grim. She crouched catlike in the stern of the scow, calculating her pounce. I stood on the dance floor, fists gripping the sweeps, eyes jackets in the big stuff. We had full knowledge of the river ahead, and a red-hot rescue boat. The Hydes had none of that. They had wool clothes, leather jackets, and each other. fixed on the crisp line where the entire river dropped from sight. It is difficult enough to Hermit Rapid, Grand Canyon, 1928 Back at the scow, one way or another, the Hydes untied, cast off, and dropped into the enter a major rapid in a boat you feel comfortable with. But this horrid, uncontrollable contraption had filled’ us with a unique dread. I was cottonmouthed, tingling with adrenaline, soberly awaiting our fate. That peculiar calm had finally descended, when a boatman sets aside indecision and the urge to flee, casts off from shore, and commits to the haystacking waves of Hermit Rapidéa tall, angular man and a delicate, fine-featured woman aboard a coarse and savage scow. They blasted through the waves and slipped downstream will of the river. From that point-it becomes a matter of actions and reactions, of total into the black schist gorge. It was November 18, 1928. A wintry breeze shuddered upstream and darkness came earlier each evening. awareness and constant reassessment, of seamless transfer to plan B, plan C, plan D. Although it was a blistering August day in the desert, I wore heavy jeans and a long- Brad Dimock can be reached at: BradDimock@aol.com sleeve denim shirt to ward off the worst abrasions. My dual life jackets were cinched so tight I could scarcely inhale, and my helmet snug. The roar of unseen whitewater grew louder, and the occasional flash of an exploding wave leapt above the horizon. I glanced back at Jeri but her eyes were fixed downstream. Our two-ton, roughhewn anachronism of a boat drifted peacefully and inexorably into Crystal Creek Rapid, one of the nastiest on the modern Colorado. Hermit Rapid, Grand Canyon, 1928 What tells as much about the Hydes’ state of mind as the fragments of oral history are Sutro’s last two portraits. Gone are the smiles of two days before at Emery Kolb’s. In their SUNK WITHOUT A SOUND is available in Moab at Back of Beyond Books and is also available from Fretwater Press. www.fretwater.com |