Grand Canyon River Guides Oral History Collection
O'Connor Dale Interview
Interview number: 53.14
[BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is the River Runners Oral History Project. This is Lew Steiger, and I'm talkin' to O'Connor Dale. We're in Kanab, Utah, it's October 12, 1998.
Steiger: What I usually like to do for starters is just hear about a little bit of your family background, where you were born, and kind of what your family situation was, and like that, before you ever got to the river, 'cause that kind of helps put your impressions and experiences in perspective.
Dale: All right.
Steiger: So your family, brothers and sisters, when you were born, what did your folks do?
Dale: I was born in Riverside, California, April of 1948. My father was a printer, along with Regan's dad. My father's name is Eben [phonetic spelling] Dale, my mother is Dorothy. Dorothy taught school and was a librarian for the Riverside City Schools. I have an older brother, Eben III -he's a lawyer in Hawaii now.
Steiger: Eben the third. So your granddad was Eben number one?
Dale: Right. And I have a younger sister, Debra -she goes by "Naho" [both names phonetic spellings] -she's livin' in Vail now. She has two sons. Anyway, I just went through the school system in Riverside. I went to junior college in Riverside, and actually after one year of junior college, I was drafted into the Army.
Steiger: That would have been like 1968 or somethin'?
Dale: April of 1948. I was drafted into the Army, but the day I was being inducted, I asked somebody where would we be goin', and he told me North Carolina. Then a Marine recruiter came in needed some volunteers. I asked him where we'd be goin', and he said San Diego. I said, "Oh, I'm still home!" so I volunteered for the Marine Corps. Little did I know I wouldn't see much of San Diego.
Steiger: You just went and trained there?
Dale: Boot camp. I had two months of boot camp, three months of infantry training, and off to Vietnam.
Steiger: So you knew about Vietnam, everybody was thinkin' about that then.
Dale: Oh, yeah. But I was goin' to school and I thought, "There's no way that I'll get drafted or end up over there." But I was actually goin' to a junior college in San Diego, and I had one real good fun semester. My GPA dropped below 2.0 that you had to maintain to maintain a student deferment.
Steiger: And that was it, huh?
Dale: And it was two weeks later. Once my GPA dropped I got my induction notice.
Steiger: "Greetings!"
Dale: "Greetings." (both chuckle) Anyway, I was in Southeast Asia from October of 1968 through October of 1969, and got home, got a six-month early out, went back to school.
Steiger: So you got shot, huh?
Dale: I got hit in February of 1969. It was actually the Tet Offensive of 1969. The Tet Offensive of 1969 wasn't nearly the Tet Offensive of 1968, but it was their Tet. That's their holiday.
Steiger: But you were out there runnin' around, gettin' shot at for a year before you _______.
Dale: Well, five months. I was there for five months. After I got hit, I went to a naval hospital in Guam for three months. After that, they sent me back to finish my thirteen-month overseas tour. So I had five more months of goin' back to Vietnam. And late October, I got discharged, went back to school.
Actually, to back up a little, in 1967, my folks -this is my first connection to river people and the river -in 1967, my mother and father did a trip around the western United States, and on the way home they stopped off in Park City and made reservations for a family vacation at Christmastime.
Steiger: Just to stay in Park City?
Dale: To stay in Park City and go skiin' for a couple [days]. They figured my brother was goin' to law school, and I was a senior in high school then, and they figured this might be the last chance to get the whole family together for a vacation. This was before Park City boomed -it was still a sleepy little mining town with a fairly new ski resort, and it was quiet. There was only a couple of places to stay in town, and they were booked for Christmas. This one guy said, "Well, why don't you go see Dr. Oars [phonetic spelling, maybe Oris?], and Dr. Oars ran Miners Hospital, which was a three-story building right on the corner of the parking lot at the resort. So my dad talked to Dr. Oars, and Doc said, "Sure, I got room for you, come on up." That was it, nothing formal or anything. When we went up there to ski, it was December of 1967 -I believe it was 1967. The ski patrol would all drop by at the end of the day at Doc Oars'. One of the ski patrolmen was Ron Smith. So that was our first -you know, they talked about the river.
Steiger: He was already doin' that and everything?
Dale: He had started. Hadn't really picked up to the extent they are now.
Steiger: Obviously, if he was a ski patrolman in the winter. That's what he was doing in the off season. But you talked to him then?
Dale: A little bit.
Steiger: Didn't really sink in?
Dale: No. And so anyway, that vacation ended, and everybody went back to school, and my folks went back to Riverside. Then it was the next year that I went into the service. While I was in Vietnam, my father would send me stuff he was doing, and through our relationship with meeting Dr. Oars in Park City, Bill Belknap was doin' the original guidebook.
Steiger: So he was doin' this guidebook and you got the business, huh?
Dale: And he met my father through Dr. Oars and a few contacts we had made that winter in Park City. Bill came down to Riverside, checked out my dad's operation. If you know Bill, he's very, very thorough -no stone goes unturned.
Steiger: I know, just from lookin' at his work.
Dale: Right, very thorough.
Steiger: So was he doin' the guidebook then? Or he was just gettin' ready to do it?
Dale: He was starting the guidebook.
Steiger: Just then.
Dale: Yeah. He wanted it out for the Powell Centennial.
Steiger: For 1969.
Dale: For 1969. So this was the latter stages of 1968. Anyway, my father, after they had run the first copies off the press, my father sent me one.
Steiger: You're in Vietnam and you get this guidebook?
Dale: I get a guidebook, Grand Canyon River guidebook. And I looked through it, and of course, just jokingly, I'd say, you could have sent me a garbager out of L.A., and it would have looked interesting, as opposed to where I was and what I was doin'.
Steiger: So Vietnam was pretty hateful, huh? What was your....
Dale: My MOS was O-311, which was a rifleman in the Marine Corps.
Steiger: What's MOS mean?
Dale: I think it's Military Operational Standing, or something.
Steiger: A rifleman.
Dale: I was a rifleman, commonly known as a "grunt." They called us grunts. So anyway, I looked through that guidebook, and it looked appealing, but I still was so far removed from the river and stuff at the time. I still didn't give it much thought. I just thought it was kind of interesting, looking through the pictures and the little bit of history that was in it. Rapids didn't mean much to me then, of course. Anyway, when I got home in October of 1969, my father and mother had been invited to Buzzy Belknap's wedding, which was in November of 1969, and my dad said, "You oughta come with us." It was up in Boulder City. He said, "You oughta come with us and meet some river people." So I went to Buzzy's wedding, and formally met Ron, and of course a lot of other characters on the river. That's where I first met Dock Marston and all the Belknaps.
Steiger: Buzz was marryin' Lowey? [phonetic spelling]
Dale: Lowey's his sister. Lowey is Buzzy's younger sister. Buzzy was marryin' Jody Perry [phonetic spelling]. Anyway, [I] met all those people. My mother always pulled a trailer, and my mother would always cook Mexican food -tacos and stuff -for whoever was around. Ron Smith came over and was eating tacos at my folks' trailer there, and I asked Ron for a job. He said, "Well, why don't you do a trip with us this next spring, and see how you like the river, and we'll see how we like you." Bill set it up for me to do an April trip in 1970.
Steiger: And Bill was partners with Ron then?
Dale: Yes.
Steiger: Interesting. I thought Ron started out with Dick McCallum (Dale: Yes.), then that didn't work out. I remember when I talked to Dick, I never heard about Bill being involved.
Dale: When they first started out, Ron and Dick started Grand Canyon Expeditions, and then I assume Bill got kind of hooked up with Ron about the time he was doin' this river guide -probably 1968 or 1969. Ron wanted to expand the company, and Dick didn't. Dick moved to Flagstaff and started Grand Canyon Youth Expeditions.
Steiger: And stayed small.
Dale: And stayed small. So anyway, I was actually in school when Bill told me this trip was goin'. I was takin' finals right about the time the trip started, but it worked out where I could hike in at Phantom. And actually, Regan drove me over to the South Rim.
Steiger: This is your cousin?
Dale: Right.
Steiger: Are you guys close to the same age?
Dale: Yes, I'm eight months older than Regan.
Steiger: So you guys are as much brothers as you are cousins.
Dale: True.
Steiger: Growin' up.
Dale: Growin' up, all the way back -our fathers in the printing business, and family get togethers. We went to different schools in Riverside. I went to public school, Regan went to parochial school. So Regan drove me over and we slept out in the car at Yaqui Point, early April, froze our butts off.
Steiger: Had you looked at the Grand Canyon before?
Dale: Unt-uh.
Steiger: You'd never even seen it before?
Dale: That was the first time I was ever at Grand Canyon.
Steiger: Ever?
Dale: Ever -that I recall. My folks might have driven over there when I was little or somethin'.
We went to Yaqui Point, camped, slept in the car. And like I said, it was cold. I got up early the next morning and hit the trail, South Kaibab. When I got down to the river, the boats were parked there on the boat beach. Ron Smith was runnin' one boat, Dean Waterman was runnin' the other boat. They were takin' a break at Phantom, we went up and swam in the pool -there was a pool there. They waited for some people to come in, and [we] packed up, and downriver we went. Camped at Bass Camp that night, my first camp in the canyon.
Steiger: Me too.
Dale: I remember old Bass Camp. Anyway, you know, the boats were a little different design then. There wasn't a front frame, it was just a tube.
Steiger: Oh, yeah, so water went ahead and built -there was no Dean Waterman frame then.
Dale: Well, Dean had built the frames that were bein' used. It wasn't too long after that, that they dropped in the front frame too.
Steiger: Was the back frame aluminum already?
Dale: Yeah. If I recall, it might have been a fiberglass-type frame, too. I'm tryin' to recall, 'cause I don't.... I got off that first trip, and what I remembered was walls and whitewater. And I mean, that was my impression.
Steiger: Regan told me a story yesterday morning. He said that he, after takin' you there, he had it in his mind to go, and so he was gonna just go do it himself. He said he'd gone to this army surplus store and bought him a little yellow raft. (laughter) Do you remember that?
Dale: I don't recall that.
Steiger: 'Cause he was gonna come out there, and he said you called him up and said, "Regan, take the raft back!" (laughter)
Dale: "Take it back!" (laughter)
Steiger: "It's not what you need."
Dale: I don't know if I really recall that, but I'm sure.... Regan and Dale Delamas [phonetic spelling] kind of started the next year. Anyway, after that first trip, like I said, I just had this impression of walls and whitewater. But I pitched in and I was kind of an extra swamper that first trip, and worked hard, scrubbed dishes. I didn't know what to do, but I scrubbed dishes a lot, and they liked that. And then I went back to school, finished out that school year in another month or so. And then in June I drove up to Salt Lake and swamped that season. I kind of trained under Dean, did all my trips with Dean Waterman.
Steiger: What was he like to work with?
Dale: Dean? He was kind of quiet. He wouldn't say much, you kinda had to pick things up on your own -especially runnin' the boat. A lot of times I'd be....
Steiger: He'd let you run it, though?
Dale: He let me run, just a little the first trip. By the end of the season, the end of that first year, I ran everything. I didn't have my own boat that first year. I did five trips, swampin'. Then I went back to school again.
Steiger: What were you studyin' in school?
Dale: I was majoring in physical education, I was thinking about going into coaching. And actually the next year I enrolled at University of Utah.
Steiger: Still on the same kinda track?
Dale: Yeah.
Steiger: I guess Vietnam must have messed with your head, huh? goin' over there and all that?
Dale: You know, I think once I got home from Vietnam, six months later I was on the river -actually five months, I did my first river trip. I really don't.... You know, I look back and I can see where I was a little aggressive in maybe the first year or so back from Vietnam, but at the time I didn't -you know, I just went right back into civilian life and was fine, I thought.
Steiger: That was AOK?
Dale: I really didn't have any real hang-ups or anything from it. But looking back, I can see where I might have been a little aggressive or blunt or something, just from the nature of what I did for a year, you know.
Steiger: I don't mean to keep comin' back to that, but it's.... I graduated in 1974, and when I was in high school, we had already figured out that -I mean, it impacted us that it was something that you should avoid. (Dale chuckles) We thought the government was fucked.
Dale: Yeah. Well, by that time we knew they were.
Steiger: But we didn't have to go over there.
Dale: Yeah. Well, that's good. I'm glad for people that didn't have to go.
Steiger: The sense that I get from talkin' to Whale and some of those guys was that even what you were doin' over there didn't -I mean, it wasn't like there was any clear-cut....
Dale: Goal.
Steiger: Yeah, and it sounds like you'd be out there wanderin' around, and you'd run into these guys, or they'd run into you.
Dale: Right. There were no front lines or anything. It just surrounded you.
Steiger: You never knew....
Dale: ... when or where. Actually the daytime in Vietnam, it's a beautiful country, and it was peaceful during the day. It was nighttime -as evenings came on when I was over in Southeast Asia, I just got nervous.
Steiger: 'Cause that's when all the bad shit would happen.
Dale: That's when it happened. We controlled the day, they controlled the night. But, you know, still, in the sixties, you know.... Like, I didn't get the feeling that we were gettin' our ass kicked.
Steiger: Over there?
Dale: Over there. Eventually we would have to get out and lose that war, but later on, as it kept going on and on into the seventies, I was back here, of course, and pretty far removed from it. Of course, bein' on the river all summer....
Steiger: That's about as far away as you could get.
Dale: Yeah, you don't read about it or hear about it. But as it kept goin' on and on, you knew somethin' was wrong. I remember readin' Kim Crumbo's interview, how he said that he was on the Mekong River, and a few months later, he was on the Colorado River. So it sounds like he had a quick transition, too.
Steiger: Yeah, similar kind of thing.
Dale: He was in the thick of it, too, with the Seals.
Steiger: Yeah, he said what he would have to do is basically go assassinate people they'd pick out. They'd pick out somebody and they'd sneak in there, and they'd have to go to the village. I guess they would identify the Viet Cong honchos or important people, and then they would just send the old squads in to get 'em.
Dale: That'd be pretty scary, too.
Steiger: It's interesting. My first encounter was with Whale. I guess Skip Jones.... I guess he was in the Army. Did you ever know him?
Dale: Skip, who worked for OARS?
Steiger: No, that was Skip Horner. Skip Jones was down from Idaho, and he worked for Fort Lee for a couple of years. He was a little red-headed guy, really feisty.
Dale: I don't know if I really knew Skip.
Steiger: I don't know what I'm drivin' at here. Some of those guys, what I remember kinda pickin' up from Whale and them was just kind of a big disillusionment with the country and the system and all that, and the river really seemed like the place to be. It was like "get [as far] away from all that as you possibly could."
Dale: Right. We all definitely had his problems after coming back from Vietnam, and it sounds like Vietnam was responsible for a lot of his deals. Don't know for sure, 'cause he didn't talk about it very much.
Steiger: He talked to me about it once. And I mean, I ran the whole season with him. One time me and him and Connie were a crew. I never saw Whale do anything that he didn't want to do. (laughs)
Dale: Right. Me neither.
Steiger: And he wasn't worried what you thought about that, or anything. (Dale: Right.) He just did just what he wanted to do, and that was it.
Dale: I know that.
Steiger: And I wondered.... I don't know if that came from something that went on over there, or what.
Well, so you swamped five trips. Dean Waterman trained you, let you run the boat. (Dale: Right.) Did you guys have nylon boats already?
Dale: Yes.
Steiger: Wow, so that was pretty good.
Dale: Ron invested in probably the early seventies in.... We still had a lot of, I think there still was some stuff that was cotton, but the transition was goin' on to nylon, and replacin' all the old equipment. And of course in those early years with Ron and Dean, they were pretty innovative at times. (Steiger: Oh, man!) Dean is an engineer, you know. Ron's a manager.
That first year in 1970, at the end of the week, we took out at Temple Bar. That's archaic. You know, took out at Temple Bar.
Steiger: How long were the trips, do you remember?
Dale: Ten days.
Steiger: Pretty good schedule.
Dale: We do an eight-day trip now, which is pretty much the same schedule, with our jet boat take-out and all that. It's pretty similar to our old ten-day schedule.
Steiger: As far as ________, the only difference is you don't spend a day-and-a-half goin' across the lake.
Dale: Right. We'd get to Temple Bar and we'd have three trips maybe comin' in. Six boats sittin' there on this hot asphalt ramp.
Steiger: Even in 1969, things were already gettin' big. I mean, there was that many boats on the water.
Dale: Right. Like in 1970, the numbers were there. Although, you know, I don't really recall it bein' quite as crowded. But the numbers were there in the 1970s. But after our de-rig, which would be all afternoon at Temple Bar, then we'd head for Salt Lake, get in the next morning sometime.
Steiger: Clean up there?
Dale: Unload the trucks, clean up. And the next trip out would be the following week, so you had a couple of days off. Then you'd take a few days to pack up. Our trips left on Mondays. They went from Mondays to Fridays. I think like on Thursday we'd head for Lee's Ferry. The ramps were always wide open, though. Of course, it was a big ramp then.
Steiger: So you'd go to Lee's Ferry. You'd leave Salt Lake on Thursday and get there that night?
Dale: Usually that evening. Go to bed, get up the next morning, start rigging, take our time. Usually we had three trips going out or something. Rig all six boats, get most of it done that Friday, finish up on Saturday. Then in the afternoon we'd drive up to the North Rim and hang out or somethin' like that. Then Sunday all the guys, Dean or the trip leaders, would all jump in the trucks and drive 'em around, and then meet you.
Steiger: To the take-out?
Dale: To the take-out. Go back to Vegas, meet the groups, come up on the bus with them on Monday morning.
Steiger: And the crew would be there with the boats.
Dale: Yeah, just hang out. It was actually kinda pleasant in those days. It was nice. It just wasn't crowded at the ramp, I don't know why.
Steiger: So you didn't have truck drivers?
Dale: No, we did all the drivin'.
Steiger: It was like you left with the boats and the trucks, and then put the trucks on the other [end], did your own shuttle. (Dale: Yes.) And then went back to Salt Lake.
Dale: Right. Then that first winter that I started workin', the winter of 1970-71, Ron found these buildings we're in now.
Steiger: Here in Kanab?
Dale: Here in Kanab. Bought them. And then in February of 1971, about five of us -I think Regan and Kenton -Regan started then.
Steiger: And Kenton just jumped ship that year from....
Dale: Hatch. He was let go by Hatch, but Ron hired him. Regan and Kenton and Rick Petrillo, and Holly Lowry [phonetic spelling] and myself and Dean -we built the bunkhouse, closed in the warehouse, the boathouse buildings. Worked right up until April, started runnin' trips.
Steiger: Wow. So you worked all winter.
Dale: Or the latter part of winter. It was real nice, just workin' out of Kanab.
Steiger: Yeah, simplified matters a lot, huh?
Dale: Saved that long drive to Salt Lake. We made several trips up to Salt Lake to bring equipment down.
Steiger: Well, I never really knew Ron Smith at all. (aside about changing batteries) That's funny, when you think about where Ron started. I guess he started with Georgie? (Dale: Yes.) And McCallum. I have this friend, Dana Burden [phonetic spelling] who lives in Wickenburg.
Dale: I know Dana.
Steiger: Do ya'?!
Dale: Yeah.
Steiger: Did you ever do trips with him?
Dale: No, but I've seen him on the river, when he rowed that canoe-type....
Steiger: Some kind of weird.... That was a long time ago, wasn't it?
Dale: Yeah.
Steiger: He brought me all these pictures that he donated to....
Dale: The archives?
Steiger: Yeah. And there's all these pictures of these boats that aren't anywhere near that good. I mean, I guess early sixties. He had a picture, he went on those guys' first trip, I think -Ron and Dick McCallum, when they had broken away from Georgie. And the equipment wasn't anywhere near -I mean, it was kinda more in line with everybody else's. (Dale: Right.) So I guess Dean was a big part of that picture.
Dale: Yes, I'm sure.
Steiger: I guess Ron wasn't any slouch, though, (Dale: No.) as far as havin' it upstairs.
Dale: Oh, yeah, Ron has some good ideas, for sure. But yeah, you know, when we started out, there was a lot of things I look back on, in thirty years, how much everything's changed. It's just incredible.
Steiger: Yeah. You guys weren't worryin' about makin' it down the river, were you? It wasn't like you didn't think you were gonna get there, ever. Or was it? (laughter)
Dale: It was an adventure a lot of times. It wasn't like we had it in the bag. But anyway, that first season out of Kanab, that's when I started runnin' my own boat.
Steiger: Your second year?
Dale: My second year, spring of 1971, and actually ran a lot of trips (Steiger: That year?) that year. I think I probably ran twelve trips that year. College was cutting into my season, so I kind of pushed it not aside, but I let it go for two semesters. I'd pick a winter quarter and go to school, but up to the University of Utah.
Steiger: So at that time, were you still thinking you were going to be a coach, and this was just a hobby?
Dale: Right. Summer job while I was going to school. I think a lot of people thought that way. (Steiger: Yeah.) You know, I mean, that first year, I think our ten-day trip was like $299, that was the cost of it, and I got paid $200 to run a boat for a trip, and I was thinkin', ______. We all thought that at the beginning, I think. "God, they're payin' us to do this?!" You remember that, when you first started.
Steiger: Ten bucks!
Dale: Yeah, ten bucks per day.
Steiger: And it was, it was more than my first swampin'. Well, I got ten. First trip was for free, and then I got ten bucks a day for like that year, and the next year it was like $20 or $30, and I was makin' more than all my high school buddies.
Dale: Yeah, I didn't know what to do with all that money. I was makin' $200 a trip. I loaned money to my brother, who was going to law school. I only needed a couple thousand to get through the winter. And that included a season pass at Alta, which is $125.
Steiger: Wow. I'd go back and we lived in old Miners Hospital. Actually, one winter or two winters, Regan and I rented Dean Waterman's basement, lived right at the base of Little Cottonwood Canyon, just outside of Salt Lake. Paid Dean twenty bucks a month or somethin', to live in his basement. Wasn't very much.
Steiger: And went skiin'.
Dale: We skied all winter. I went to school part-time. But what ended my college career is one day it had snowed all night, it was gonna be a good ski day for sure -powder at Alta. And I said, "Aw, I'd better go to class," and drove into school. It was a physical education related class. In my classes for PE were a lot of med students, pre-med and stuff like that. Anyway, this was just a PE-related class, and the instructor came in and started the class off. It was my first class of the day. He asked, "How many people in here are PE majors?" And a lot of jocks, a lot of basketball, football players in the room, and quite a few of us raised our hand. And the instructor said, "For those of you that don't have anything promised after college," like a lot of the jocks did -schools would hire them to coach and stuff -he said, "For any of you people that don't have anything really lined out for you, [I] suggest that you change your major to a related field. There's just not that many opportunities in physical education." And I was sittin' there kinda stunned, and picked up my books and went skiin'. Left class right then.
Steiger: That was it!
Dale: Just walked out and headed home, got my equipment and went up on the mountain.
Steiger: I'll be damned.
Dale: And that was my last day of school. (laughter) So school didn't interfere with the river anymore. And actually, you know, that's when I probably started thinkin' about, "Well, I can do this every summer and just do odd jobs in the winter, and get by."
Steiger: And that wouldn't be such a bad way to go.
Dale: And that wasn't a bad way to go. Of course every year, things just got better on the river. And guys were stickin' around, like Kenton and Regan. A number of guys were doin' it every year. It didn't become [just a] part-time summer job while you were going to school.
Steiger: Yeah. It accidentally became what we did, huh?
Dale: And of course eventually that's when Grand Canyon River Guides sprung up, because it turned into a career for people, and then people started thinkin' about professionalism. We actually liked it. It got to the point where we didn't like to see these two-year guys, like for Western.
Steiger: A couple of years and then you're off -a couple of years while you're in college, and then that's it.
Dale: Right. And we started resenting people who weren't real professionals down there, and just came in for a couple of years, and it was a big game to 'em. We were gettin' serious about this, and makin' it professional, and making it safer.
Steiger: Yeah, I guess that's what you run into with those new guys.
Dale: Uh-huh.
Steiger: When you first started, what was it like with the passengers? How did you view your responsibilities? What are your memories of those early trips? What were the people like, and what was the routine like?
Dale: I have noticed a difference in the clientele over the years. In those first few years, it was an expedition, you know. I remember you'd pull into a camp, unload a few things off the boat, it didn't take very long to unload the people's gear and stuff. And we'd send them off to gather wood for cooking on, you know, and they would do it. We'd say, "We need enough wood for breakfast and dinner. If you want a campfire, get a little extra."
Steiger: Were you guys buildin' fires right in the sand?
Dale: Yeah, there was no such thing as a fire pan.
Steiger: What was your toilet set-up?
Dale: Upstream, downstream, burn your paper.
Steiger: That was it.
Dale: And in 1970, 1971, 1972, the canyon was dirty, and gettin' dirtier. It wasn't because of poop -it was toilet paper. And of course the popular camps like Nankoweap.... There was a nice camp up above Unkar on the right side, right on the corner, just above the ruins.
Steiger: Yeah, I remember that one.
Dale: Some of those camps were getting bad with paper and charcoal. And what I started doin' was I told people, "Bring your toilet paper back." After dinner every night, we'd burn our trash. And I'd tell people, bring your paper back. We started tryin' to regulate.
Steiger: Did you have 'em put it in a paper bag or somethin'?
Dale: Or just wrap it up in a little extra paper, throw it in a burn sack we had.
Steiger: And that was it.
Dale: 'Cause that was the problem, toilet paper.
Steiger: Interesting. Did you give 'em a shovel or anything? Or they could just dig a hole?
Dale: We had one of those little entrenchment tools, army type. People would go out. And actually, that wasn't a problem. The fecal matter was not a problem, it was toilet paper. People would try to burn it, it might be wet. They'd burn it halfway, say "oops," and then bury it. Then the wind would uncover it. But the canyon was pretty dirty. And we always tried to use an existing fire pit, too. But pretty soon you would see one end of the beach, two or three different pits -at the other end of the beach, a couple of pits. The beaches were bigger then, a lot of sand, still. The dam had only been in place five or six years, and the beaches were pretty nice.
Steiger: They were great.
Dale: Yeah. But it got pretty bad. And actually, it was outfitters who started haulin' the fire pans. We'd still cook over a fire, but we started carryin' fire pans.
Steiger: And puttin' the ashes in the river, yeah.
Dale: Dumped the ashes in the river.
Steiger: Yeah, I remember that.
Dale: And then it was outfitters who first started carryin' toilets. It was outfitters who first started bringing stoves. And actually, I thought it was kind of amusing, but after we started with fire pans and toilets, the Park Service then told us we will carry fire pans and stoves and toilets. It was kind of like already bein' done when we were told to do it. (chuckles)
I remember when stoves first came out, and we started carryin' stoves. At first we didn't like it, because we thought it ruined the esthetics of the trip. And then after one season of cookin' on a stove....
Steiger: Yeah, I remember taking about five minutes to get used to that! But another thing was, like early-on, you could just send people out for wood.
Dale: Still a lot of wood.
Steiger: Yeah, even then, but not so much now.
Dale: Oh, no. Now.... Actually, the science trips during the winter, I don't begrudge 'em for havin' a fire -I like a fire down there in the wintertime -but some of these trips, I mean, you don't need a bonfire every night that nobody can get near. Some beaches, you can't burn it all. But in some places, it's real scarce.
Steiger: I know, those guys would go down there on those eagles trips and they'd camp at Nankoweap for two months, and they'd have their wood stove, the big one. (laughs)
Dale: The big one. I did eagle resupply trips, I remember that.
Steiger: Yeah, that was a pretty good deal.
Dale: But anymore, like on this [story?] trip, it wasn't the burn season. The first night we camped at Badger Creek, and it'd been raining all day, and people were cold. And of course there was a new influx of wood there. Allen showed you that picture.
Steiger: Yeah, there was a huge pile of wood.
Dale: Yes. And I broke out the fire pan and started a fire. Nobody said nothin', everybody was cold and damp. I wasn't tryin' to be blatant of the rules.
Steiger: Well, I guess it's October, huh? You guys must have launched mid-September (Dale: Yes.) just right before....
Dale: September 11, we launched. But I looked at it as kind of an emergency situation. And the little wood we burned, it's nothing compared to what's going to be burned this winter.
Steiger: Or compared to what was just sittin' right there on the beach.
Dale: Right. Well, there was a whole bunch. Paria brought in a lot of wood, and that's neat. And I've never seen the river so muddy as up above. Browncaps. Everything was brown. I've never seen the river that muddy above.
Steiger: I think that's where you see beaches built that last. Well, don't get me started on that.
So the people, you'd just send 'em out for wood?
Dale: Our kitchen situation, we'd bring up twenty meals, sat down and sat a deck board on top for a table. And we had the people participate in all of it. Nowadays, we've gotten so refined. Actually, it's easier to do things alone, exactly what you want to do. You've got all your equipment. We have the people still help unload and load, but if they want to help out, do things, we let 'em, but they don't get as much participation anymore.
Steiger: Huh, that's interesting. I used to, when I was working for Fred, I would just -yeah, we would really say that if they wanted to visit with us, the best time to do it was come in the kitchen and help cook. Then you just stumble around and drink beer and kept all these women [busy] that knew what they were doin', makin' the dinner.
Dale: That's a good ploy!
Steiger: It worked.
Dale: And now the health services tell us people can't participate in the kitchen.
Steiger: Are they actually sayin' that?!
Dale: Yes.
Steiger: No kiddin'?!
Dale: Yes.
Steiger: 'Cause they don't have their food cards.
Dale: Right, and we don't know where they've been.
Steiger: I hadn't heard that.
Dale: I heard it, that's the way it is now. I know Michael called the park on it, and called Coconino County Health on it, double-checking, because a lot of people like to come in and participate. We like 'em to.
Steiger: And the Health Department is sayin'....
Dale: I guess the Health Department said no, and the park is backing them, of course. But I hear it's law now.
Steiger: That's pretty stupid.
Dale: But anyway, over the years, slowly as the price of the trips has gone up, and actually the level of professionalism has risen, I have noticed a difference in the clientele. [END TAPE 1, SIDE A, BEGIN SIDE B] Now we take a lot of professional people who have the time and the money to go. Actually, I think in our company, we take a lot of older folks down the river, which is neat.
Steiger: I always had the sense that different companies sort of attract different types of clientele, kind of reflective of the owners' personality or whatever. I know the Sandersons [are] always a pretty hard-partyin' bunch. Fred and Carol, too. I mean, we had people from all over, but a lot of people, maybe a third of 'em, are from Arizona.
Dale: Right.
Steiger: But GCE, it always seemed like it was kinda always sort of "upper crusty." Is that true or not?
Dale: Yeah. Not always. I've noticed the changes as the price went up. Now, we're comparable with most of the other outfitters, but for some reason, in those early days, we took a writer from the Chicago Tribune down the river. And I think we've taken more people from Illinois than any other state. I noticed that.
Steiger: Wow, just based on word of mouth that sprang from this news spread?
Dale: You bet. He did a big Sunday feature on the Grand Canyon, on our company. I think still today I've taken more people from the state of Illinois. Probably California ranks second or something like that. Pretty incredible.
Steiger: That's probably not all bad. Probably pretty good people.
Dale: Yeah, they are. Oh yeah, they're always pretty good people. We've always had an older clientele, too, which is perfect for me. The old folks might have waited their whole life to see Grand Canyon and run the river, and they're real appreciative of bein' there. And old folks are the easiest people to have on the river. You know, if you tell 'em to sit down and buckle their jackets, they do -as opposed to a young partyin' crowd. You know, they always have their jackets open. But I do appreciate the older people. And they appreciate the Grand Canyon.
Steiger: I've noticed, too, the older ones that are still out there doin' it, they're usually pretty interesting, too.
Dale: Yeah.
Steiger: I mean, there's a lot of old people that are just kinda sittin' at home, watchin' TV.
Dale: Right.
Steiger: When you think back -I don't know how often you do -but thinkin' back to your first couple of years, are there incidents or adventures that kind of stand out in your mind? What are the most memorable things that happened that first year?
Dale: Well, that very first year, when I was swampin' that year, they never let me handle too much too soon, so I couldn't get in too much trouble. So I can't really think of anything that was outstanding. The first time I ran Upset, I was gonna do a turnaround run, swing over and back down. It was low water, Dean was sittin' next to me, and I went right through the hole sideways. (Steiger: Yikes!) (laughter) When we finally popped up, everybody was over on the upstream side of the boat. I was worried somebody was in the river. I looked around and Dean just was grinning and said, "All's well that ends well!" So I always remembered that.
But Crystal, there really wasn't a right run in Crystal. The way I was taught to run Crystal, you went down the left side, and there was a big pillow of water coming off the left wall, just above the old hole, the big, huge hole. And there was a rooster-tail -we called it the Rooster Tail. It was kind of gnarly all over, but right up the middle, maybe it was this wide, was a smooth slick, and it was a wave, it wasn't a hole.
Steiger: So you guys would go down there and go left of the old hole?
Dale: No, we went down the left, and what worked out, is I put my nose on this water coming off the wall. I just cocked to the left a little, let my nose go up on this water on the wall, just idling, you know -this is a motor rig -and it'd feed you right down into that rooster tail. And it was huge. And as you came out of the old hole....
Steiger: So it would feed you right down into the old hole?
Dale: Right into the middle of the hole in this slick, and that's where you wanted to be. When you came out of the old hole, if you were cocked to the left, you went over to the left. If you were cocked to the right, you drove a little right, because just below the old hole, down a ways -you had plenty of time -was a ledge, and it was sharp.
Steiger: Yeah, the island was like higher up then. Or was it?
Dale: Yeah, it probably was up a little higher. But the right side was choked off. There wasn't much goin' on.
Steiger: I kinda remember two holes in Crystal. I don't know if that's just me. Or is the ledge that you're talkin' about, is that hole number....
Dale: That ledge is gone.
Steiger: Yeah. I remember there were two big things over there. (Dale: Uh-huh.) Maybe the ledge was one of 'em.
Dale: Well, the ledge moved out, I believe it was in 1972. In the fall of 1972, Little Colorado flooded 25,000. Crystal's a fairly new rapid at this point, still.
Steiger: Yeah.
Dale: Remember, it was formed in 1966-67. But right after that old hole, this ledge, it was deep and it was steep, and you didn't want to be there, it was really nasty. But you had enough time. And even if you came out of the old hole straight, the preferred run was then to go over to the left.
Steiger: So when in 1972 was that?
Dale: October.
Steiger: Of 1972, that that washed out of there?
Dale: That ledge washed out. And then it made a couple more holes. After you went through the old hole, there was another big hole behind it, but it opened up the right run, right of the island. So I think we started goin' right. The island was nice.
Steiger: Man, that hole was big.
Dale: Yeah, it was big, and you warned your people, and you had 'em prepared. That didn't scare us as much as that ledge below. It was just like a ledge. I mean, there wasn't a wave or anything, you just went down and dropped off, if you went straight. Plenty of room to miss it left or right, and even if you went right of it, then you would still come back to the left.
Steiger: But you weren't goin' around the far right.
Dale: No. Didn't learn that run. Actually, I think we might have started doin' that in -I believe it was 1971. So there must have been some high water or something at one point that started opening up the right run. But 1972 really cleaned it out, and it was October.
Steiger: So now, just to go back, you got out of Vietnam in 1969 (Dale: Yes.) and you enrolled in school, but then you actually started workin' that same....
Dale: In 1970, actually. I got home in November of 1969.
Steiger: So 1970 was your first year that you swamped.
Dale: April of 1970, five months later.
Steiger: And then 1971 you ran the boat all summer.
Dale: Right. Ran a full season.
Steiger: And 1972 was when Crystal....
Dale: ... really changed dramatically. Actually, we were on a private trip. Maybe I should wait 'til I finish 1971 up. One thing I should mention is that we were doing a rowing trip in the fall of 1971 that -maybe you heard the story of the lady who came up to George Billingsly and myself and said she was Bessie Hyde?
Steiger: Yeah, I have heard a little bit about that. And that's definitely on the list.
Dale: Okay. That was in the fall of 1971. We were doing a rowing trip. Rick Petrillo was leading the trip. George was on the trip, Regan and myself were both on the trip.
Steiger: Were you guys running triple-rigs?
Dale: We had a triple-rig, we had a big rig, and there was also a Yampa on the trip. But it was a twenty-day trip, and we were just cappin' the season with this trip. So that 1971 season, to me the river is harder to run now than it was then. I mean, Bedrock wasn't as tight as it is now, for instance -just for an example. And I think that's just because of Glen Canyon Dam, it's just gonna get tighter and tighter as we go on.
Steiger: Do you think Crystal's harder now than it was then?
Dale: Um, probably in the degree of difficulty. You know, Crystal's changed so much recently, too. After it changes, I hear about a change, and I think, "Okay, it's gonna look better," but actually, for right now, Crystal looks better to me right now. (Steiger: Than it used to.) Those laterals and stuff. (phone rings, tape paused)
But anyway, you know, that 1971 season, Lew, I think that was a learning experience for me -especially that first trip with your own boat, and there's nobody there to ask a question to. Dean wasn't next to me now. That first trip is when you really learn.
Steiger: Yeah, I think it frees you up, too, in a way. I mean, it makes you suck it up more.
Dale: Right, I agree. But those first few trips, I really learned. We had a big, fluctuating river. We had really good water, for the most part, but it would fluctuate between 25,000 and 5,000, so you'd run low water. I was experimenting with backing down. I really like backing rapids. I don't mind low water, 'cause I feel comfortable backing down. And you do have such great control.
Steiger: Yeah.
Dale: I just remember a science trip a few years ago. They were putting a gauging station in at Havasu. It was a USGS trip, and we were there for four days. We camped at the mouth. And then another science trip came in, and we were slated to move downriver to National to work on the gauge there. But Whale came in. He didn't have a kitchen. And there was another group that was going to National, so I stayed up at Havasu for another three days, so his group would have a kitchen, and another group had a kitchen that would take care of the USGS crew, my group. And I remember one night we were sitting around the fire there at the mouth of Havasu (chuckles) and I'd been camped there a week. It was late January, it was cold. (Steiger: Oh, really cold.) One of the scientists that was with Whale, he asked us, "I noticed some guys run straight ahead, and some guys back down some things." And Whale's sittin' there and says, "I never back anything." And I said, "Well, I back a lot of stuff. When I'm backwards -speaking for myself -I have more control."
Steiger: _____ more lateral movement.
Dale: Yeah. And for a good example, I used Hance. I said, "Hance Rapid has a lot of rocks, and I like to back down that and take my time, and go down there." This was after Whale had had his two hang-ups in Hance. "I just back it 'cause I have more control." Whale goes, "I never back anything!" And then I said, "Well, tell 'em about your run in Hance earlier this year" -it was last year, you know. (laughter) And he goes, "Oh yeah!" He didn't even catch the gist of what I was talking about. But Whale told 'em about gettin' hung up in Hance and needed the helicopter to get him off. I was just sayin', if you're runnin' straight, if you're off your line a little bit, you don't have much recourse.
Steiger: Well, you're gonna get parked on that rock. Right after you come by the Duck Pond, if you don't get your angle back, your nose is just gonna keep -'cause if that slow water catches it, it's just gonna keep goin'.
Dale: Right, and take you further left. So anyway, I was just.... But I am a proponent for backing down. Anyway, I was learning, but still, I think things are tougher now, just 'cause of the dam, and you get that debris comin' in side canyons. You don't have that (Steiger: That flush.) to clean it out.
Steiger: Bedrock is definitely....
Dale: Bedrock in low water, you gotta hang out there for a long time, you know. (Steiger: Long time.) Those rocks go all the way to the far left, right out to the main channel. That's just one example. Crystal's changed so much. The stage I like best at Crystal was probably in the late seventies. There was what we called Route 66. There was this highway run. You could go right down (Steiger: Just right of the hole.) right of the hole. And then also, if you had 20,000 or better, there was a little run -we did it in the dories a lot -come in, three good strokes would get you over to the right, and then there was a series of pour-overs and rocks just off the right shore, and you could just.... It was like bein' on a small river. It was kind of a technical little run, and right at the bottom of this little chute was a lateral wave. And all you had to do was cock your boat to the right a little bit, punch through the lateral, and go right of the island, you were done. You wanted to cock your boat for that lateral, it was big enough. I know it rolled Milty once, rolled his boat. In fact, it flipped him, washed everybody out, the boat stayed in there and righted itself in the hole and floated out. Everybody climbed back in and continued their run.
Steiger: I remember there was a flat rock that used to stick out there (Dale: Yeah.) kinda right opposite the old hole.
Dale: Yeah, down low, right.
Steiger: You guys were goin' just left of that, maybe.
Dale: I think it might have had something to do with that lateral that was formed off it, I'm thinkin'. I remember the flat rock down there, too.
Steiger: Yeah. I thought the old Crystal, what I remember about it was, God, you just had to -every level was hard. Like now, I think sometimes, if you're rowin' rubber, low isn't so bad.
Dale: Right. Yeah, you gotta be a little more careful in those wooden boats.
Steiger: Oh, man, you gotta be so much more careful.
Dale: I basically do the same run in a dory that I do in a motor rig. You probably noticed that, too. (Steiger: Yeah.) 'Cause you need the deeper water, and it draws a little more than a raft. Of course you can't slide over a rock like you can in a raft.
Steiger: So on this Bessie Hyde deal, so you guys are down there in 1971 on this rowin' trip.
Dale: Right. It had rained, it was kind of a cool night, it was late October, probably pretty similar to the time when Glen and Bessie disappeared. That was November of [1928?]. But it was kind of a cool night, and Rick Petrillo, we were camped -I believe we were below Lava -and Rick Petrillo told the story of Glen and Bessie to the group, and then everybody kind of wandered off to bed. And George Billingsly and I were sittin' around the fire just talkin', and this little old lady on the trip, her name was Elizabeth, which is similar, came up.
Steiger: How old was she?
Dale: She was in her sixties then. She was probably about her early to mid-sixties.
Steiger: That's a little too young, isn't it? Or is it?
Dale: Pretty close. Probably just a little young. But she came up and she said, "Boys, I have a confession to make." And we said, "What's that?" And she said, "I'm Bessie Hyde." She had a twinkle in her eye, she was kiddin'. Just playin' around a little bit. And I remember asking her, "How you'd do old Glen in?" She had this real little pen knife in her pocket, and she pulled it out and opened the blade. The blade was about an inch-and-a-half long. She said, "I did him in with this." And I said, "Well, God, you must have had to stab him about a thousand times!" (laughter) And she just laughed. Anyway, she wandered off to bed, and George and I just chuckled and kinda forgot about it. And this lady was an elder member of the group, and actually my father and brother were on that trip, and they hiked out at Havasu. My brother worked for the Judge Advocate General in the Marine Corps as a lawyer, and he had to go back to school, and we had just planned for them to hike out at Havasu. In fact, Rick and Regan and myself hiked with them all the way to the village, and then turned around and headed back to the boats. And really, my father kind of took care of this little old lady. He helped her pack her sleeping bag and had a lot of conversations with her. After he left, she kind of felt more alone, 'cause the group was younger then. So I believe she did this just to get a little attention. And anyway, for the rest of the trip, we called her Bessie. Not everybody heard the story. And actually, after the trip, I think I might have told some boatmen, but I let it drop.
Steiger: At the time you didn't think that it really was Bessie?
Dale: No, I figured no way it could be Bessie. But some of the boatmen in our company, when they told the Glen and Bessie Hyde story to their groups, there was this extra little bit they'd throw in, that Bessie went down the river with George and O. C. I never told that story, you know, but some of our boatmen did perpetuate the story. And in the mid-eighties I get a call from Scott Thybony [phonetic spelling].
Steiger: Wantin' to follow up on this mystery?
Dale: Wants to follow up on this Bessie Hyde story. And he asked me, "Do you think there's any chance that she could be Bessie?" and I said, "No." And he said, "Well, George thinks she might be." And I found that hard to believe, because is very conservative. You know George.
Steiger: I don't know him, but there again.... Actually, I don't know if I've ever even met him. Maybe like once or something. But I used to see Sue all the time at Mack's store.
Dale: Right. Well, anyway, George is pretty conservative, and I was flabbergasted that Scott said that George believed it possibly could be. But anyway, Scott asked me if I had her name and address. I said, "Well, I've got every passenger list from every trip. Let me dig it up." Actually, looking back, I wish I hadn't given -I know he's doing research, but she's in her eighties now. And he called her up, and actually, it kind of tormented her. I mean, she's basically being accused of murder, you know, if it is Bessie, and she did do Glen in. She remembered her river trip, she didn't remember Glen and Bessie at all.
Steiger: She remembered goin' down the river, but she didn't remember bein' Bessie Hyde or any of this?
Dale: No, she didn't remember any of that.
Steiger: So Scott was all over her?
Dale: And Scott was all over it. And Scott told me later that he did think he upset her. Anyway, then after that, "Unsolved Mysteries," NBC, did their little blurb on it, too.
Steiger: And tellin' this story about she went down with you guys?
Dale: Yes. And once again, I said, "no way," and George said, "possibly." George was a consultant on that trip with "Unsolved Mysteries." (laughter) They didn't ask me along! I blew it there.
Steiger: So he really thought possibly. So he really does think maybe so.
Dale: Yes.
Steiger: Interesting.
Dale: And then, this guy who worked with Dock Marston a little bit -actually, the trip I did with Dock in 1971 I think was like the company's first history workshop, they hired Dock to go on the trip. This one guy on the trip, his name was Marty Anderson. He was a passenger from the Midwest somewhere. He took a liking to Dock, eventually quit his job, moved out to San Francisco, and was kind of Dock's "protégé," so to speak.
Steiger: Oh, and so did he end up helpin' him organize his stuff?
Dale: He did a lot of stuff. And he did some on the book, Colorado Controversies. Have you seen that, by Stanton?
Steiger: Yeah.
Dale: There's a blurb by Dock Marston. Dock writes a little bit about the James White mystery, and Marty writes his little blurb on the three men who left Powell's trip. And that's in the reprinting of the Colorado Controversies.
Steiger: I don't know if I saw the reprint, or.... Well, is that the only one, it's a paperback, I think?
Dale: Yeah, I've got a copy here somewhere.
Steiger: Yeah, me too.
Dale: But anyway, I stayed close with Marty all those years. He'd call me up all the time, and he just died a few years ago. He wasn't that old. I hear he passed away in his sleep. But Marty calls me up and he read Scott's deal on Bessie, he saw the "Unsolved Mysteries" -in fact, he sent me a copy of the "Unsolved Mysteries."
Steiger: Was it pretty hokey?
Dale: Yeah, it was. I got a copy if you want to see it. Yeah, it was pretty hokey. In fact, our company got the contract to take NBC down.
Steiger: Well, that's only right.
Dale: Even they didn't invite me on the trip! (laughter)
Steiger: They didn't want to hear it, they thought it was total bullshit.
Dale: But anyway, I gave Marty Elizabeth's address, too. Her name is Elizabeth Cutler. I couldn't have told you that until after talking with Scott and giving it to him. Elizabeth Cutler was her name. And so Marty decided he was gonna really find out. What he was gonna do was prove that she wasn't Bessie, and he did.
Steiger: He did?
Dale: He did. But what he found out was Bessie and Elizabeth were born forty miles apart, two different states. I think it was West Virginia and Ohio, just across the border, forty miles apart. There was about two or three years difference. He got a birth certificate for both Bessie and Elizabeth. But during the course of his research, he had a phone interview with Bessie's first husband. She was married before Glen.
Steiger: Right, and that didn't work out, somehow.
Dale: Right. Well, she just pretty much split.
Steiger: And Lavender must have put that in there with Dock Marston's stuff, and that must have come.... I bet David Lavender got information from that.
Dale: Right, in his book River Runners, yeah.
Steiger: Yeah, 'cause I know he mentions that, too. My brother and I did a kiosk, interactive deal in the Kolb Brothers Studio. If you ever go in there, you should check it out.
Dale: Okay, I'd like to see it.
Steiger: Well, I looked all through the Kolb brothers stuff, and they have movies of when they went down there and found the scow. I found this interview where Emory talks about it. And just from lookin' at the pictures, later on there were people that said, "Well, Bessie and Emory Kolb teamed up" and all this stuff. I don't think so, just from the way those guys looked.
Dale: Especially when they found the skeleton in Emory's garage. Remember all the bullshit that came from that?!
Steiger: Yeah, but you listen to the way Emory talked about that deal, and you look at the pictures of the Kolbs settin' off, down there, from Diamond Creek to go get 'em.
Dale: Right, you knew.
Steiger: That was on the level.
Dale: I agree.
Steiger: They weren't puttin' that on or anything.
Dale: And I've met Emory. He was ninety-three at the time, but he's kind of a solid individual. He's not a murderer or anything.
Steiger: No. Did you meet him when those guys went down the river the last time?
Dale: I did. I was runnin' parallel with Scott and John. I had taken Dock down the year before.
Steiger: Okay, Dock Marston is a famous river historian.
Dale: Yes, probably the first self-appointed river historian.
Steiger: He did a good job, ____ a bunch of stuff up.
Dale: He was excellent. I'll tell you a little bit about his trip, too.
Was it 1972 or 1973 when Emory choppered in?
Steiger: It must have been, 'cause I just accidentally was there.
Dale: Right. That was your first year, you said?
Steiger: I started swampin' in 1972. I came down as a passenger in 1971, and 1972 I was like a swamper.
Dale: On the river?
Steiger: Yeah, and I remember I did a couple of trips for Fred, and then they farmed me out, and I did a trip with Don Harris, and then a couple more trips for Fred. But I remember, for some reason, with Fred they were runnin' right in Crystal -like we weren't hitting the holes.
Dale: Right, okay.
Steiger: But I remember when I did this trip with Don Harris, it was right down the gut. And I remember there were these two big shots. I mean, huge. Actually, I was ridin' with this other guy, Dave Kent, who it was his first trip through the Grand Canyon. He had worked for Don up north.
Dale: I kinda remember Dave Kent.
Steiger: Yeah. And so I was assigned to his boat, and I remember we got to Crystal, and Don just told him, "Don't try anything fancy here. Just go down there and hit those things straight." (laughs) I remember goin', "Holy moly!"
Dale: Don was a classic.
Steiger: Oh, he was great!
Dale: Yeah.
Steiger: Is great. But I mean, that really affected me, just runnin' alongside of him. I mean, here he was, he was like mid-sixties then, and he was the happiest guy I'd ever seen. And he was tough, too. I mean, I had never been up above at Deer Creek, and he took us up there. I can't remember what the deal was, if we had stayed down and we were throwin' trash in the river or what, but I remember just goin' with him, not with a bunch of passengers. Maybe they were already up there. I'm sixteen years old, and I could just barely keep up with him. I mean, not really, he kicked my ass goin' up there.
But anyway, you were talkin' about Dock Marston and Emory Kolb.
Dale: Yeah. Well, it was a history workshop. Dock was already on the trip from Lee's to Pearce's, and then Emory, of course, choppered in at the Little Colorado. His one wish was to see Crystal. Since Crystal had formed in 1966, he had never been down there to see it. Was Emory ninety-six when he died in 1976?
Steiger: I think he was.... I should know. I think he was ninety-five.
Dale: And that was 1976 he died, right?
Steiger: Uh-huh, early 1976.
Dale: So he was either ninety-one or ninety-two when he came in on this trip. From my understanding, of course they helped Emory down and got him on the boat. He stayed one night with them on the river. I think they went down and camped somewhere above the gorge, and then the next day, after they went through Lava, the helicopter picked him up a beach below Lava somewhere. It was all planned to do that. So I only spent one night. But of course everybody's crowded around. I guess they had Dock and Emory in the back, sittin' on the cooler -what we call "first class" on our boats, the driest spot. They were sittin' there. Scott or John, one of 'em told me that Dock was a little jealous of Emory.
Steiger: 'Cause Dock had been gettin' all the attention.
Dale: Dock was gettin' all the attention. So anytime Emory would say somethin', Dock would kind of rebut it. There was just a little bit of stuff goin' on for the short period that Emory was on there. It sounded pretty funny to me. Yeah, I met Emory briefly then.
I guess it was maybe 1973 or so that we had a company party out at John and Mary Beth Riffy's [phonetic spelling] at Tuweap, and they flew Emory out for the party. You know, when he talked you could barely hear him. He didn't have any volume at all. It was a just a bunch of boatmen, and we sat around and asked him some questions, and he told the story of Glen and Bessie that night. I just had my ear right up to his face almost, 'cause he was so low volume, you know. So it was fun listenin' to his story, 'cause he had seen 'em at South Rim. He hiked down to the river with him, tellin' his story.
Steiger: What do you remember about that story, about the way he told it?
Dale: One thing that really I recall was that when they did get back to the river, it was a cold drizzly day. The river was low, of course, it's late October, early November. The river was low, and Emory had invited them to spend the winter and resume their trip in the spring.
Steiger: Oh, he said, "Don't even go now."
Dale: Yeah.
Steiger: "Let it warm up a little bit."
Dale: And Bessie said, "Thank you very much," and Glen said, "No, we're gonna continue it on and finish it now." Emory said they didn't have life jackets, so he offered them -what did they have, those old cork life jackets in those days? (Steiger: Yeah.) And Emory offered 'em a couple of jackets, and Bessie said, "Thank you very much," and Glen said, "We've come this far without 'em, we don't need 'em." So Bessie wanted to do both the things that Emory suggested, and Glen said no to both. But down at the river, when it was drizzly and cold and low water, one thing I recall, Bessie was kind of pleading with Glen to resume the trip in the spring, and he literally picked her up and put her in the boat and off they went. I guess they had to resupply downstream a little ways at Hermit or something. I'm not real sure on those details. But Emory saw them off, and there was one other person with them.
Steiger: He saw them off at Phantom?
Dale: He saw them off at Phantom, is what I got. But for some reason, some mules or burros were takin' stuff in around Hermit. Do you know anything about that?
Steiger: I don't, but there's pictures of 'em at Hermit.
Dale: Okay.
Steiger: That he took, I guess, or that are in the Kolb collection. I don't know if he took 'em or not. There's a picture, she's sittin' there, she's got a hat on. Actually, the only pictures he had of them, he has pictures of them up there at the South Rim. There's a famous picture of those two guys, and then there's a picture of them on the boat, leather coats.
Dale: Right. I have a picture of the sweep scow -Dock Marston made a copy. Now the sweep scow, there at Nice Canyon, Eddie was taken by Emory. And Glen must have taken the last picture on that roll. It was Bessie at a camp....
Steiger: Sittin' there, way far away, in front of all this driftwood.
Dale: And Dock was tryin' to find that camp. He gave the picture out to a lot of boatmen, "See if you can find this." And we looked.
Steiger: She didn't look very happy there.
Dale: Yeah, she wasn't lookin' happy. I'll show you in a minute.
Steiger: No, I've seen 'em, I know.
Dale: She wasn't a happy camper.
Steiger: I know, 'cause we put 'em in this display. I scanned 'em and then blew 'em up on the screen.
Dale: Cool.
Steiger: But Emory told that story, they hiked in and built a boat -or refined a boat that was already there at Diamond Creek. Used the floor of a mining tent to patch it up, and then Elsworth came in and James Brooks who was the ranger. The three of those guys, they figured that was all they had room for on this boat, even though Hyde Sr. came. But he said Elsworth must have only had two life jackets, 'cause him and Brooks had one, and Elsworth just had a five-gallon can that he put on his back for a life jacket, and he turned over in Separation.
Dale: Oh, they did, huh?
Steiger: And [had hell?]. And the ranger got pinned under the boat, and everything froze. But we put the movies in, too. They took a movie of them finding the Hyde boat, and it was out in the middle of the current, and the line was stuck on somethin'. He said they pulled and pulled and pulled and couldn't get it to come up. Finally they just cut it.
Dale: That's one thing that I recall Emory said he regretted cutting the boat loose. But that's what they used to do anytime they abandoned a boat in those days, they set it adrift, for whatever reason. They always set 'em adrift. But Dock said that he really regretted -not cutting it loose, they had to do that -but maybe after they cut it, got it to shore and tied it up.
Steiger: Yeah. You know what was weird was, when he was eighty years old, he was building one for himself, a sweep scow. He was gonna go downriver.
Dale: Emory was?!
Steiger: Yeah. He tried to enlist Harry Aleson to go with him. He was gonna do one last trip, and he was gonna use a sweep scow. Now why in the hell he would want to do that.... And there's a picture of this boat that he was buildin' too. Why would he want to do that if he didn't get on there and try it out a little bit? And why would he, with his experience, suddenly decide a sweep scow was the way to go? I mean, after he'd done all that shit in Galway boats?
Dale: Right.
Steiger: That was kind of intriguing.
Dale: Maybe he was just like Brad and Jerry -just wanted to give it a go, huh?
Steiger: I don't know, but I don't think that he had anything to do with murdering Glen or anything.
Dale: Oh no, I agree. But yeah, Emory said he found Bessie's notebook, and the last description was the description of 232 Mile Rapids.
Steiger: Oh, it was!
Dale: It wasn't named that, then, of course.
Steiger: But here was this description.
Dale: A description of 232 in low water. Today it's still a treacherous rapid, you know.
Steiger: Oh, yeah, if they were tryin' to line it over there on the left.
Dale: Well, I think they were runnin' everything -I guess, I don't know. I mean, just from what I understand about Glen.
Steiger: Well, also, I mean the two of 'em, she was really little.
Dale: Right. And I really think that what happened was, they went up against those rocks and one of 'em went out of the boat, or both of 'em, and the other one tryin' to rescue the other one went out, 'cause there wasn't much.... Remember, Emory said there wasn't a lot of trauma with that boat. There was a little water in it, not a lot.
Steiger: Yeah, and everything was just sittin' there.
Dale: Everything was just sittin' there.
Steiger: Yeah, they have this movie of 'em -Elsworth jumpin' in and goin' through their stuff.
Dale: But Emory said the last entry in Bessie's notebook was a description of 232. So they stopped and looked at it. They pulled over and scouted. And then there's also the thought that maybe the boat got loose on 'em.
Steiger: That's what the dad thought, was the boat got loose, and they were just stranded.
Dale: Stranded. And that's one reason why Emory said he really regretted setting the boat adrift. In retrospect, he wished he had pulled it to shore and tied it up, and left it, just in case they were around.
Steiger: Hm.
Dale: Anyhow, that was kind of fun, havin' Emory out at Tuweap at the Riffys.
Steiger: Yeah. You've been up there to the visitors center and looked at his boat, haven't you?
Dale: Yes.
Steiger: Pretty wild, huh?
Dale: Yes.
Steiger: Long way.
Dale: Not quite like a dory nowadays.
Steiger: Okay, so you're dug in at GCE, pretty well established, but you also did a lot of trips for Grand Canyon Dories, huh?
Dale: Yes.
Steiger: How did that work out? That was okay with Ron, and you just would do....
Dale: Well, actually, what happened there, in 1976, that winter, Bagel and Oat and myself and Roberta, and Nels Niemi, rendezvoused here in early January and packed out for a 100-day trip.
Steiger: So that's probably the longest river trip that was ever done?
Dale: In Grand, yeah. Now, Powell was on a long time, too, close to a hundred days, but he launched at Green River, Wyoming. He went through Grand in a month. We had gotten this permit. Roy Johnson, who was the park naturalist for the park at the South Rim, (Steiger: Yeah, I remember him.) he was instrumental in getting us this permit for a hundred days, because there was very little activity in the wintertime.
Steiger: It wasn't even hard to get a permit, was it? (Dale: Oh, no.) You just had to say, "We want to go."
Dale: Yeah. The park had a trip here and there in the winter, and the Museum of Northern Arizona, we saw them a couple of times doing bird studies and stuff. Nobody else was at all on the river. But we launched in early January, and just before we went out on the trip, we went down to the Buckskin Tavern with Ron. He was just asking us what kind of a season do we want to run next year, and Bagel said, "Give me as many trips as you can." And I told Ron myself, "Well, I've talked to Martin a little bit, and I'd like to do a few motor trips, I'm gonna do a few dory trips also." I did one dory trip for Martin in 1975. It was Flaming Gorge's first trip. I took Flaming Gorge on it's maiden voyage, brand new dory, for my first trip in a dory. But it was a golden trip, I got it through okay. So anyway, I just told Ron, "I'd like to do a few trips, not a full season." And when we got off that trip, late March or early April, whenever we came off, I got back to Kanab and went in and looked at the schedule for the 1976 season, and I wasn't on the board.
Steiger: At all?!
Dale: At all.
Steiger: Oh, no!
Dale: So I thought, "God, are they sendin' me to Cataract?" They said, "Nope, you're not goin' there either." So I just wasn't hired back.
Steiger: Was that just 'cause Ron was like, "Well, if he's gonna work for Martin, to hell with it"?
Dale: Might be. Ron told me he thought I needed a break or somethin'. Didn't consult with me on it. So I said, "Okay." I packed up my gear.
Steiger: You'd been workin' for him six, seven years then?
Dale: Yeah, since 1970. And Bagel wasn't hired back either.
Steiger: Even though....
Dale: ... he wanted a full season.
Steiger: Huh, I wonder what was on Ron's mind on that?
Dale: I don't know. I'm not real sure.
Steiger: Is he kind of inscrutable in that regard?
Dale: What do you mean?
Steiger: Well, you don't know what he's thinkin'.
Dale: Well, yeah. I mean, I have my feeling on it. I'll throw it in on the record, but I wouldn't want to see it necessarily printed.
Steiger: Well, it's up to you. I can stop this tape, or we can just let it pass, too.
Dale: Well, I'd like to tell you. It'd be okay.
Steiger: But not in the BQR or nothin'.
Dale: I gotta read it before it goes in the BQR.
Steiger: Okay, you're on!
Dale: Anyway, Bagel was a real good employee. I mean, on his days off, he'd be out sweepin' the warehouse, and I'd never do that. But we were pretty close, Bagel and Oat and I. In fact, the 1974 season, we ran all our trips together, and Oat went on every trip. I think they were threatened by Oat. I mean, she was the first and only swamper, still today, the company has ever paid. But you know how Oat is, she's up front, and she'll call a shovel a shovel and a spade a spade. And I think Mark and Ron were kind of threatened by her.
Steiger: Because she was critical of them or something?
Dale: No. Well, I mean, if something didn't look right, she'd tell 'em, "Let's do it this way." She's always been vocal -you know Oat.
Steiger: Yeah.
Dale: She's up front.
Steiger: Real up front. Whatever's on her mind, you're gonna hear about it.
Dale: You bet!
Steiger: Which I appreciate. It makes things a lot simpler.
Dale: I thought it was an asset. But I think Ron and Mark were threatened by Oat. Here's a woman. Of course, you know, women were just startin' to come in on the scene.
Steiger: But they'd already had a woman boatman by then, too.
Dale: Susan.
Steiger: Yeah.
Dale: But Susan's quiet.
Steiger: Real quiet.
Dale: They liked that. But anyway, I think, my personal feeling is that they decided that to get rid of Oat, they had to get rid of Bagel, and I think we were all pretty close, and I think Ron thought, "Well, I have to get rid of O. C. too."
Steiger: "If we're gonna get rid of Oat." Wow.
Dale: I think. That's for the archives.
Steiger: Right, not for [publication].
Dale: But anyway, that's my personal feeling. But anyway, after the 100-day trip, none of us planned it, we didn't worry about a shuttle. We decided we'd put on, [END TAPE 1, SIDE B; BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE A] and as we came off the river, we'd worry about that.
Steiger: 'Cause you weren't even gonna lock yourselves into a specific day necessarily.
Dale: Right. And actually, Roberta and I came out ahead of Nels and Bagel and Oat. Nels came out after we did. And actually, Bagel and Oat violated the terms of the permit. It was a 100-day trip, and I think they came off at 102, 103 days. They went over.
Steiger: How was that trip? Did you guys just hike everywhere?
Dale: We hiked everywhere. And anytime we camped, we made a rule early on that any time we camped, it's for a minimum of two nights. But we ended up spending like five days at Nankoweap. We had several five-day camps.
Steiger: Makes perfect sense. So you guys got all over that area.
Dale: Right.
Steiger: Oh, man.
Dale: Five days at Nankoweap. We had five days at Hance. We spent nine nights at Bass Camp. There's some hikin' in that area. (Steiger: Yeah.) Nine nights at Bass. We didn't have any fresh meat. We had a lot of produce, cheeses, stuff that lasts -cabbage and carrots. I need another trip like that to lose a little weight, 'cause we came off lean 'n mean after that. (Steiger: I bet!) At Shinumo, you know, the river's low in the morning. I mean, when we were camped at Bass. Every morning Bagel found a little line. You know, we didn't even know about fishing in the river then. We didn't know it was a great trout stream. But Bagel had a little line and a hook he found in his tool kit. So I put it on a stick and I remember we were camped at what we always called Shady Grove at 102 Mile. (Steiger: Yeah.) I put a line in the water there, and we went off hiking. We went up on what's called Scorpion Mesa.
Steiger: Right from Shady Grove?
Dale: Right from Shady Grove. We went up on top of the Tonto there. We had to hike downriver a ways to get up. But we were up there, went up to Scorpion Mesa, I think. We came back that night, and I picked up the line, and there was a carp on the line. We hadn't had any fresh meat for how long. So we tried cookin' it up. (laughter) We mixed it in with some spaghetti sauce and noodles and ruined the dinner. It was just so oily and stuff.
So anyway, we went on down to Bass, camped there for nine nights. Every morning I'd get up, go down to the upper parking lot at Shinumo, and I could hike all the way to the falls without gettin' my feet wet. Can't do that now. But goin' along the right bank....
Steiger: Which was important, because it was cold?
Dale: It was cold. Actually, in the morning it was cold. We were there in February, and we were getting temperatures in the high eighties during the day.
Steiger: Oh, man!
Dale: It was beautiful weather. But I could go all the way up to the lower falls there, and I'd catch five trout. I'd just fling 'em on the shore and grab 'em, you know.
Steiger: You were catchin' 'em with your hook?
Dale: Just a hook and a stick and a line. And I couldn't play 'em or nothin'. I'd just pull 'em in. And every morning, as soon as I'd get five, I'd go back out, row across the river, row upstream, ferry across to camp. And we ate fresh trout every morning while we were camped there.
Steiger: Probably perked you up pretty good, huh?
Dale: It was great. And I had fun going down there every morning. I could walk all the way up without gettin' my feet wet, cause it was cold in the morning, it was pretty cool.
Steiger: What a great group -God! It must have been a terrific trip.
Dale: It was a great trip, but even after two or three months, there was a little friction building. It was just us, and we had our moments. But for the most part, it was great, just a wonderful experience. We just basically lived in the canyon for the winter, and just did a lot of hiking. Everybody pretty much had good runs. I remember we decided to rendezvous at Bedrock for lunch there the day we were moving to....
Steiger: So you wouldn't necessarily run together?
Dale: No, not all the time, 'cause Roberta and I were out first.
Steiger: Were you guys in one boat, or did you each have your own?
Dale: Roberta rode in my Yampa. Bagel had his Yampa. Oat had her Yampa. And Nels had a Green River raft.
Steiger: Oh, man, what a great little fleet.
Dale: So I was the only one really with a passenger. Actually Roberta would ride with other people. I remember we moved from.... I guess we were heading to Stone Creek, but we decided to rendezvous for lunch on the Bedrock. Roberta and I got there and ran it, pulled around the backside and tied up. We're sittin' up on the Bedrock, and here comes Nels floatin' down. He's doin' a million and one things -you know how Nels is, always busy. (Steiger: Yeah.) And it's like he's not payin' any attention as he's entering Bedrock, and all of a sudden you see him get serious, but he's down the left. (Steiger chuckles) You know Nels' boating, too.
Steiger: Well, not really. I don't know him that good. I really like him and I really admire him. I used to always see him working for GCE, and I thought he was about half crazy, just 'cause of the way that he talks, but then when you talk to him, you realize no, he's really brilliant. Genius kind of guy.
Dale: Genius type guy that might have trouble tying his shoes, but his knowledge is incredible.
Steiger: So there he is, he's goin' down the left.
Dale: So he goes down the left, and Roberta and I walk over, and he doesn't come out the left side. There's a little cave thing in there, you know -a room over there. We can't see him. We think, "Well, he's gotta be in there." So we go back, get in our boat, go downstream, pull over on the left, and hike back up. And I hike up on this rock and look right down in that room, and there's Nels. He's sittin' there coilin' a rope up, calm as could be, but he's pinned in there. He's floatin' free, it's just an eddy.
Steiger: But there's a huge current.
Dale: A lot of current.
Steiger: Oh, yeah!
Dale: And I look down and say, "Hey, Nels!" (laughter) It's sort of like, "Who's up there?!" So anyway, he threw us a rope and we force him back out and he whishes around the left side. We just wait for Bagel and Oat, they come down a little later. Changed our lunch plans a little. And then we stayed a couple of nights at Stone Creek, did a lot of hiking there. Went down to Tapeats Creek and stayed there for six days. And the very last full day we were stayin' there.... I had beer stashes there. I put beer stashes. Every thirty miles I put in a pretty good-sized beer stash. And that's the only stashes we really had. We carried everything with us, except when we got to Phantom, we hiked out to the South Rim and resupplied. We took empty packs and went to Basha's and resupplied. During the last full day we were at Tapeats Creek, I grabbed the pole and hiked over to the creek and I decided just to fish the lower part. Everybody was staying in camp or hiked over -they'd done most of their hiking already. And I hadn't really gone too far from Tapeats Creek. Anyway, I hiked up a little ways and I decided, well, I think I'm gonna go just go above, just take the trail up. I hiked up there, and then I decided to go on up. I was just changin' my plan. As I'd go a little further, I'd say, "I'll go up a little further," and eventually got to Thunder. "I'll just go to Surprise Valley." Went up to Surprise, and decided to go on to Deer Creek and worked my way down to the river at Deer Creek. I decided I would try to go back along the river. So I hiked back to Upper Deer and got that trail that drops right into the beginning of (Steiger: The Narrows.) the Narrows. Well, I had a beer stash there, once you go in the Narrows, tucked back in there.
Steiger: "Maybe I'll stop and have a beer." (laughs)
Dale: Well, I decided to check my stash, and I went in there, and I pulled the gunny sack out and dumped it all out. And in every stash there was a few cans that went bad, so I emptied those out and smashed 'em, put 'em in my pocket. And I counted the beers in the stash, and there was fifty-two beers. I drank two beers, and put the other fifty cans back in, put it back in the stash place, and then went on along the river. Got back to camp, it was probably about 3:30, or four o'clock and Robert and Oat were cookin' dinner, and Bagel was reading. We always sat up a pretty nice kitchen area.
Steiger: Yeah, why not?
Dale: We were there for days. And we always played Hearts every night. We played at least a round or two of Hearts. So that night at dinner, Roberta decided to do the "up and over."
Steiger: That's what she was gonna do, and you were gonna move down to Deer or something?
Dale: Yeah, we were moving to Deer. So Bagel and I decided we'd put Oat's boat between us and we'd row a triple-rig down to Deer Creek, and Nels was just gonna float. And anyway, I told Bagel, "You know, as soon as we get into the Narrows, I've got a beer stash to pick up there." He said, "Okay." And I said, "I'll bet you there's fifty cans of beer, and they're all good." He goes, "Oh, no way." "I'll bet you...."
Steiger: (laughs) Did those guys know that you'd been around there?
Dale: No. Oh, no.
Steiger: Oh, you just kind of wandered in?
Dale: I wandered into camp, and everybody said, "What'd you do?" "Oh, I just hung out at the mouth of the canyon and fished." I didn't tell 'em I went.... But anyway, I made this bet with Bagel that there's fifty good cans, and just exactly fifty, and they're all good. And I bet him his share of the stash. (Steiger laughs) And he said, "Aw, no way!" And I said, "I'm willing to take a chance." So anyway, the next day, Roberta and Oat take off, we row down, pull into the beer stash, get the cans out, Bagel's flabbergasted. There's fifty good cans, no bad ones! (laughter) And he's just shakin' his head. I didn't hold him to it. I divided up the beer amongst everybody. Anyway, we get down to Deer Creek, we're hangin' out there, and pretty soon here comes Oat and Roberta, and Oat's goin', "There were footprints across Surprise Valley!" (Steiger laughs) And the North Rim is socked in with snow.
Steiger: Nobody else is down there.
Dale: No, nobody's down there. And I didn't say nothin', but Oat said, "I couldn't believe that there were footprints across Surprise Valley!" I'm not sayin' nothin'. Everybody's acting perplexed. They never figured it out. I told 'em, I think, after the trip. That was kind of one of the funny stories.
Steiger: That is pretty funny. I can just see Bagel [scratchin' his head], "And not one bad one!"
Dale: Not one bad -fifty good cans. But I didn't even think about footprints anywhere. I guess they didn't really notice any signs until they got to Surprise, 'cause it's probably soft up there, and I probably left a nice trail across there.
Steiger: Oh, yeah.
Dale: But they never put it together, that anybody from our group did that.
Steiger: It's funny that they didn't, that they wouldn't have seen the tracks all the way up.
Dale: Yeah.
Steiger: There wouldn't have been anybody even hiking down then, with that much snow.
Dale: Unless they had cross-country [skied] out to the rim, or snowmobiled or somethin'. That's one story off that trip. But it was a very interesting trip, and it was just great to hike. Actually, I kind of departed from the group at Olo. I think it was like Day 70, somewhere around there. Roberta and I took off there.
Steiger: And ran out all by yourself.
Dale: We went out by ourselves from Olo.
Steiger: Upset and Lava notwithstanding.
Dale: Yeah.
Steiger: That must have been pretty exciting. How was Lava?
Dale: Went down the right for safety.
Steiger: Wow.
Dale: But picked a nice stage, it wasn't too bad. Actually, all of us had planned to go out at Riffy's to pick up mail. If anybody went out to Riffy's they were gonna bring our mail and stuff. Actually, we ran Lava and camped at Lower Lava, and then early the next morning, Roberta and I got up and hiked out. We got up on top and we were walkin' to the ranger station where John lived, of course, and they were doin' some kind of counts, and John was up in Pogo, his little airplane, and they buzzed us and waved. By the time we got to the station, they had come back. Lauri Beth made us lunch, and John went into the office. He could only radio the South Rim -didn't have a phone or anything, but could radio the South Rim. I'd seen him do it a million times, but he went in and closed the door. I thought that was pretty funny. I guess what he did was, he wanted to get a message to Ron that I was out there. What had happened was, Ron decided to come out. He thought we'd all hike up together, and [he] was gonna come out and tell us we weren't hired back for the season. But I showed up alone. So John sent a message to Ron that just I was there, and I was only stayin' for a couple of hours 'cause we were gonna hike back down that day. And so Ron I guess said, "Well, tell me when the rest of the group gets there -Bagel and Oat and Nels." Nevills wasn't working commercially yet then, so he was gonna tell Bagel and Oat, but since I was goin' back down and was gonna be home in another week or so, he decided to wait until I got home and tell me.
Steiger: Well, that's nice of him to at least make the effort.
Dale: Yeah. But anyway, when Oat and Bagel showed up, he did come out.
Steiger: And told 'em?
Dale: And told 'em. And then that's when Nels left them at Lower Lava, because I heard Bagel just camped out there for three weeks, he and Oat, just bummed and upset.
Steiger: Well, understandably so.
Dale: Yeah.
Steiger: I mean, especially like you say, if he was always bustin' his ass doin' extra stuff.
Dale: He was a good employee, he went the extra mile all the time.
Steiger: That's weird.
Dale: So anyway, Roberta and I went back down, still didn't have any knowledge of that. Because we hadn't planned a shuttle or anything, as soon as we got into Pearce's, we pulled the boat up, and Roberta and I went up, caught a ride up to Meadview and I called Earl Leisberg, asked him if he had any scenic flights goin' upriver -at least get me to Tuweap, 'cause I figured I could catch a ride from Tuweap into Kanab. He said, "Actually, I'm takin' some folks upriver. Maybe they won't mind swingin' by Kanab. I'll drop you right in Kanab." I said, "That'd be great." So Roberta caught a ride back down to Pearce's, and was gonna stay with the boat, and I flew home. That's when I found out. So I just loaded up all my stuff in the van and headed back to Pearce's, picked up Roberta and the boat.
I went home to my dad's mom's place, and called up Martin Litton. I'd done the one trip for him. I asked Martin for a job. I told him I wasn't hired back for GCE. All he asked me was, "Well, will you commit for a full season?" I said, "You bet." He says, "You're on." Then while I was still down there, Ron Smith called me in Riverside and asked me if I'd take out the first trip of the year for them.
Steiger: Do the take-out.
Dale: No, to run the trip.
Steiger: He changed his mind?
Dale: It was April, and I said, "Yeah, I can do that trip," 'cause I wasn't startin' with the Dories for a week after that trip. So I said, "Yeah, I can do that trip." So I drove up back to Kanab, and as I was loadin' up the trip, Ron came out and told me I could have my job back for the full season, and I just said, "Well, I've committed to Martin and the Dories for this next year." I stayed on with him 'til 1981. That's when Emily was born.
Steiger: Stayed on with Martin 'til 1981.
Dale: Yeah. So I ran the first full season with Dories was 1976.
Steiger: So you had the five years with Dories. Did you and Roberta get married like right after that?
Dale: In 1981.
Steiger: And had Emily and then it was like, "Okay, now I gotta get serious about makin' some money."
Dale: Yeah, exactly. And bein' home more. We got married in 1981, up Kanab Canyon here. No, we got married in 1980.
Steiger: I can't believe it! And those girls are grown up now.
Dale: I know. We got married in 1980, and Emily was born.... [end of the first master tape]
Steiger: Okay, this is the River Runner's oral history project, this is Lew Steiger. This is Part 2 of an interview with O'Connor Dale. It's still October 12, 1998. (tape check) So you had just gotten off your trip.
Dale: I talked to Martin.
Steiger: And committed to Martin for a full season, and then Ron offered you your job back, but you did the one trip.
Dale: Did the one trip.
Steiger: And then worked for Martin for five years in a row.
Dale: Right.
Steiger: And how was that? How was makin' the switch?
Dale: Great!
Steiger: Was it?
Dale: It was great. It was the best thing that happened to me, was goin' over there.
Steiger: Really?
Dale: Oh, yeah, you know that.
Steiger: Just to be with Regan? Or do you mean in the boatin' sense?
Dale: Well, to join up with Regan and all those guys. But you know what it's like, rowin' a little wooden boat.
Steiger: Yeah.
Dale: Nothing quite like it.
Steiger: So you kind of wanted to, before.
Dale: Right. And I figured that I'd only be doing maybe two or three trips with 'em, fillin' in if they needed boatmen or whatever, but Martin was gettin' bigger, too. Well, he had his quota, but you know how he got around that.
Steiger: I actually don't.
Dale: We'd leave Lee's Ferry with one person in our boat.
Steiger: Are you kidding?! And then people would hike in or something?
Dale: Martin would have this band of guests following him down Jackass Canyon.
Steiger: (laughs) Are you kidding me?! I never heard that, but I believe it. He wasn't one to worry about those trifling little details, was he? Pretty big difference in personalities between him and Ron Smith.
Dale: Oh, yeah.
Steiger: But you know, Kenton said -not to digress, 'cause we gotta get back to those early Dory days. Kenton told me he thought Ron Smith was the guy that was responsible for -he was the first one that started sayin', "Let's get motors off the river." Do you remember it that way? He said that was all Ron's idea, and he said that he thought it was because Ron wanted to sell everybody rowboats. (laughter)
Dale: It might be true. I think Ron was originally behind the push to get rid of motors.
Steiger: That's pretty interesting.
Dale: You know, another idea Ron had I thought was real good, you know, because everybody had a quota, how many people they could take down the river. And let's say Martin filled his quota pretty quickly -although that wasn't the case for the longer trips -but GCE was fillin' their trips, and a number of companies would fill up, but a lot of companies would come in not filling their quota....
Steiger: For quite a while.
Dale: And I think Ron had the idea that okay, the Park Service had set a quota, why not, to improve competition and the quality of the equipment, quality of the trips, why not, if you wanted to do a river trip, you would call the National Park Service, South Rim, and tell 'em you would like to do the river and who you wanted to do it with. And if Grand Canyon Expeditions....
Steiger: Was it....
Dale: Booked everybody, and took everybody. That's the way it would be, it would be people's choice.
Steiger: Not that each outfitter has "X" amount of quota.
Dale: Right. I think it was Ron that had that idea.
Steiger: That's that common pool idea. There's "X" amount of commercial user days, and nobody is guaranteed a fixed amount of business.
Dale: Right.
Steiger: Whoever those people want to go with....
Dale: They go.
Steiger: It's not a bad idea.
Dale: And it would definitely improve the competitiveness of it. You would have to offer a quality deal.
Steiger: At a competitive rate.
Dale: At a competitive rate, too. Exactly. I don't know if he presented that idea to the park or not, but I kinda remember Ron sayin' somethin' about that.
Steiger: Well, was there talkin' -I mean, within GCE, I mean, here if it was Ron that floated this idea of "let's make it a no-motor river," how did everybody feel about that back then?
Dale: Probably about the same as they do now. (laughter) And probably more bewildered. Why is Ron sayin' this? 'cause at that time we only ran a couple of row trips a year, and in those god-awful triple-rigs. I did four triple-rig trips for the company. I did not like that boat.
Steiger: Yeah, that was pretty exciting, huh? Pretty hard to move.
Dale: It was exciting. It was very important for the front oarer to be real patient, and let that back oarer get the angle and maintain it.
Steiger: The front could easily outpull the back.
Dale: Easily. And the back oar -I actually enjoyed doin' back oar, 'cause you were busy back there, and I prefer that.
Steiger: I guess the guy in the front could help by even pushin' sometimes.
Dale: Yup, exactly. But what would happen is that front oarer, you know, you're comin' up on Bedrock (laughter) and the front oarsman would say, "I don't want to be near that thing!"
Steiger: (laughing) __________.
Dale: So the back oarer always, a lot of times would lose the angle.
Steiger: And then you're out there.
Dale: And then once that happened, you've lost your run. I liked the idea of one boatman, one boat -whether it's a rowing boat, whether it's a motor boat -one boatman, one boat. I didn't like the triple-rig.
Steiger: Well, so, movin' over to Martin, what was happenin' with the Dories along about then? That was kind of the golden time of the dories, wasn't it?
Dale: It was really nice. Martin still had like twenty-day spring and fall trips.
Steiger: No exchanges.
Dale: No, we had exchanges, but only at Phantom. And a lot of times, during the bulk of the summer, we were running sixteen- and eighteen-day trips. If you're on the eighteen-day trip, you'd leave on a Thursday; and if you're on a sixteen-day trip, you'd leave on a Saturday, and we'd always come off together. And Martin was always there, puttin' us on every launch, and was meetin' us at Pearce's. Very seldom did you not have Martin at both the put-in and the take-out.
Steiger: That was Fred, too. He made it a point. He wanted to meet every trip and take every trip off.
Dale: Great. It was kinda a neat feeling, and the people got to talk to Martin and meet him.
Steiger: So would Martin find out what went on, on those trips then?
Dale: Yeah. I think actually Martin was amazed how good the quality of the trip was run, you know.
Steiger: Well, he never was that good of a boatman, huh?
Dale: Well, I'm not gonna say this on tape!
Steiger: I mean, I've ridden with him. I love the guy.
Dale: He had a reputation of having some wild runs. But just like they say now of Martin -he's got that angel on his shoulder, and he goes where the river takes him, and most of the time pulls it off. But it's true, I've seen him floatin' down the tongue of major rapids, talking to his guests, not paying any attention to what he's doin'.
Steiger: Tellin' stories!
Dale: I'm going, "Jesus!" I did that trip in 1976, a National Geographic trip that Martin was on. Very interesting.
Steiger: What was that all about?
Dale: Bill Garrett at the time was the senior assistant editor of the magazine. Gail Grovenor [phonetic spelling] was the editor of the magazine.
Steiger: Those guys went on that trip?
Dale: They went on. Gail and his wife, and Bill and his wife. And then Carolyn Patterson, who was with Geographic. And then a younger lady who was kind of a swamper for Bill, so to speak. She did everything. Everybody else was kind of on vacation. Bill Garrett did the article. And the article that came out two years later was entitled, "Grand Canyon: Are We Loving it to Death?" They were talking about all these visitations.
Steiger: Motors? Or did they even get into that?
Dale: Actually, the trip was done right before the big motor versus oars controversy. But it was the river trip usage in the canyon, just visitation. He did all aspects of the canyon.
Steiger: And that was in 1976 they were worried about (Dale: Yes.) it bein' too crowded. (laughs)
Dale: Yes. That was 1976. But Bill did -part of it was lookin' at the river aspect of it, too. And he went down with us in, I guess it was June of 1976. I just remember like we were camped at Monument Creek, and the next morning we all loaded up our people, and everybody went over to park above the rapid on the right side and hiked up to that little pinnacle. Have you ever scouted from there?
Steiger: Yeah, it's a great....
Dale: Yeah, a great scout -you're lookin' right down on Granite Falls. And I remember Martin goin', "What's everybody goin' over there for?" "A good view of the rapid." "Oh, you don't need to look at it there!" We were all over there, up above. We watched Martin throw the last bit of stuff in his boat and just pulls out into the current.
Steiger: And runs the rapid!
Dale: Drifts down all alone, nobody runnin' with him. Drifts down the right side of the tongue, just goes down the right side, _______, perfect. And that kind of made me think, "You know, Martin's right. What are we scoutin' this for? It's gonna do...."
Steiger: Whatever it wants to do.
Dale: It's gonna do what it wants to us. Granite and Lava are similar that way. It's gonna take you and do what it wants to you. You come in where you want, and after that, you're on your own. But I thought it pretty neat, just watch him bop through there and had a slick run.
Steiger: He's totally fearless, most of the time.
Dale: Yeah, it is amazing.
Steiger: Yeah.
Dale: But yeah, there was some real characters. Of course it's neat to see André back. André was runnin' then. Tom Gallagher, Richie Turner. It's kind of interesting, at that time, Wally Rist headed up a crew, and Regan headed up a crew.
Steiger: So Regan, how did that work? He had gone to work like in 1972, 1973?
Dale: I believe that 1973 was his first year with Dories, full.
Steiger: But he quickly rose through the ranks?
Dale: You bet.
Steiger: 'Cause he knew what he was doin'.
Dale: He knew what he was doing. I mean, Regan told me the first time that he ever ran Horn Creek with him, they stopped and were looking at it, and they were looking at this left run in Horn Creek, left of the left horn. Good water. Regan said, "What are you guys doing?! Why don't you just drop between the horns?" They'd never even seen that run. Regan did it, and they liked it.
Steiger: That was just you guys' run?
Dale: We did that in good water.
Steiger: And that worked fine?
Dale: Yeah. Regan was kind of amazed that they were lookin' at this.
Steiger: Why you would want to start even further left in big water, yeah.
Dale: And I guess that was kind of a hairball run down the left of the left tongue. I mean, there's some stuff in there that once you do get by, you've gotta get back to the right. There was big rocks and pour-overs.
Steiger: Yeah, and then there's the wall way down the left.
Dale: Yeah.
Steiger: Doin' it the hard way.
Dale: But actually, Wally Rist kind of headed up the old Dory crew that Martin first hired to start his operation. You know, Jeff Clayton, Dane Minsy [phonetic spelling].
Steiger: I didn't really know any of those guys, but those are all names I've heard from them guys.
Dale: Mike Davis was starting about that time, too, but he pretty much went with Wally's crew. And then Regan kinda headed up the new guys: André, Tom Gallagher. Now Browskeen [phonetic spelling] was working then too. Browskeen was an older crew member, but he kinda ran with Regan a lot, I noticed. I started out mainly runnin' with Regan on his trips. It was just great. We swapped schedules. You'd be on a sixteen-day one trip, and the next trip you'd do an eighteen-day. A lot of the sixteen-day trips were all the way through, no changeovers. We did have one on the eighteen-day. But they were totally two different personalities leading the trips.
Steiger: Wally and Regan?
Dale: Yes.
Steiger: Where was Kenton in the mix then?
Dale: Kenton was running quite a bit, I think, on Regan's schedule; but then after a while, we started swappin' out a little bit. I remember doin' quite a few trips with Wally. He ran a different style trip, but I enjoyed doing that occasionally, you know. And then as Wally kind of started fading out of the scene, then other people [were] wantin' to lead trips, and so everybody started leadin' trips. We all had enough trips and the experience, and we took turns. But I think Regan still led a lot of trips. But there were times....
I remember this one trip I was leadin', I had three guys from Idaho. The trip went really smooth, and I remember we had lunch at Granite Park. We were gonna go down to 220 area somewhere to camp, and we were just eatin' lunch at Granite Park there, and the Idaho guys wanted to go down to Pumpkin. We were hangin' in the shade, it was a hot day. Gary Call was with me, and Beaudreau [phonetic spelling], Jim Starting [phonetic spelling] was on, I think it was about his first trip with his own boat. And so Jim and Gary stayed with me, and the Idaho guys took off. Then I remember an hour or two later, I pulled out, and as I rowed down, I was goin', "Good Lord, look at this hole!" That's just when that....
Steiger: It had just changed?
Dale: It just changed -the trip before, it wasn't there. There used to be a huge boulder right up on the shore. Remember that?
Steiger: That rolled? I don't really even remember, but I remember when all of a sudden it was nothin', and then it was somethin'.
Dale: There was this hole. And I pulled left. The whole time we were there, I never heard it or saw it or anything -never looked down there, it was just a riffle.
Steiger: Didn't even think of it, yeah.
Dale: And I remember I pulled left and got in that squirrely water and it flushed me through. I stood up in the boat, pointing for Beaudreau. I think he saw it anyway. He did fine, and Gary did fine, and then I was thinkin', "God, I didn't even watch the Idaho guys leave. I wonder how they did." But I got down to Pumpkin, they were just playin'. "You guys see that hole?" "Yeah!" They hadn't run a lot of trips, so I don't even know if they thought it was new or what.
Steiger: They didn't realize.
Dale: They'd just come up for a trip, most of 'em. But that's when that hole was formed, sometime during the seventies there. Probably late seventies.
Probably one of the most.... This one trip I remember, we used to walk our people at House Rock. We were still cookin' with wood, and we all went through empty, pulled in and picked up our people. But I stayed on the beach to gather wood. I got a tarp out and we were gonna camp at North or somewhere, you know. We were gatherin' wood and somebody says, "Look at Richie. Richie and his people are swimmin' in the river." I go, "What?!" I look out there, Richie had walked his people.
Steiger: Caught 'em in the eddy and flipped in the tailwaves.
Dale: Pulled out in the tailwaves and flipped.
Steiger: Oh, man!
Dale: I just watched it, there was plenty of help. They got the boat righted. That's a cold swim up House Rock.
Steiger: Yeah.
Dale: Anyway, so we went ahead and gathered up wood. And that trip was kinda uneventful the rest of the way. It was a trip with Wally. We camped at National Canyon. The old camp, the upper camp, remember it had a lot of vegetation and little nooks and crannies, and little individual rooms. I liked that upper camp then, moreso than I do now.
Steiger: Yeah, they both got reamed here....
Dale: Recently.
Steiger: Yeah, when I went by, ____________.
Dale: I found a big drainage ________ drainage.
Steiger: Yeah, the big one ran, and it looked like the upper one ran, too.
Dale: Anyway, we were camped at National that night, and it flooded, big time. The river rose, and we were goin', "Wow, what's this gonna do to Lava?" 'Cause it rose and it stayed up. And anyway, the next morning we went down to Lava, got there about ten. We dubbed it "invisible slot stage." Right was way too high; left wasn't high enough to go left, for a dory.
Steiger: Right looked terrible.
Dale: Right looked terrible, and it was too high for the slot. And we looked at it and it looked terrible, looked terrible. And so we decided to wait until it came up or went down. And I just went and found some shade. But ten minutes after we had made this decision, Dave Menzie [phonetic spelling] stood up and said, "I can't wait here any longer, I've gotta run it." And Wally was leadin' the trip and Wally said, "Okay, I'll go with you." In those days -I don't know how the Dories are doin' it now, you can tell me -but in those days, we'd have the people walk down along the rapid, look at it, and then make their decision if they wanted to ride or walk. It was their choice. They decided to ride, go back up behind where we scouted from above there, in a group.
Steiger: And then they'd be assigned to whatever boat.
Dale: They'd be assigned to whatever boat.
Steiger: They didn't get to pick which boat they were goin' with.
Dale: No.
Steiger: Actually, no, it's now you pick who you want. Well, you know, runnin' left, we don't even....
Dale: Take everybody.
Steiger: We don't even get into it. You can't, the option.
Dale: Right. Well, anyway, this group of people came back after lookin' at it, and Wally and Dane said they would do the first. We had six boats on that trip. Wally and Dane decided to go first. They each wanted one person in their boat.
Steiger: That's all they would want.
Dale: That's all they wanted. If they flipped -it looked bad, we figured we were gonna flip some boats -they just wanted two people so they could right their boat and get back in, not worry about people all over. So we said, "Take whoever you want." Of course they went up and picked the two best guys, which was good, because we wanted 'em down below.
Steiger: Waitin' to save you guys.
Dale: Rescuin' our ass when we came through. Anyway, they each got a guy and went back to the boat, and we're sittin' there. Meanwhile, Moki Mac shows up, Claire Quist. They all drop down the left, no problem.
Steiger: No big deal.
Dale: No big deal. I remember Dave Demory [phonetic spelling] was with 'em in a C-1. They all ran left, had nice runs. People are sayin', "What's so bad about this?" "We can't go there!" But I was in an aluminum boat. I was in an Enchaco [phonetic spelling] and I was thinking, "I might go there." (Steiger laughs) But anyway, here comes Wally and Dane floatin' down, and we figure, "Okay, whatever these guys...." We're runnin' the slot. We decided we'd run where the slot was. Wally dropped in there, curled him right over. Right gunnel over left.
Steiger: Oh man, boom! He hit it right on the money, too. He was in the right spot.
Dale: As far as we could tell, he was. But just because he rolled over this way, he might have been a hair left. But it was hard to tell. We called it the invisible slot. You couldn't see it.
Steiger: It just looked big and gnarly.
Dale: Kind of was just a solid wave all the way over. Rolled Wally right away. Gees. Takes him to the right, they float through everything.
Dane comes down, pops through the slot okay, but everything's goin' right. But you came in behind where the "V" wave was, but it took you right for the big hole.
Steiger: The bottom hole.
Dale: The big hole in front of the rock, and there was a lateral off the rock.
Steiger: Huge.
Dale: Huge. This big hole was in a constant crash. We watched Dane drop into that straight on. His boat disappeared in the froth at the top of that wave -totally gone. And we see him floatin' down, upside down, below. "Oh, shit!"
Steiger: That didn't look good.
Dale: Two boats through, two different types of flips. Tony Williams and Sharkey Cornell decided they were gonna go.
Steiger: After watchin' this?! "Okay, we've gotta go."
Dale: Yeah, they've gotta go. Meanwhile, some of the people that had come back to run, they started filtering back down. They were gonna take pictures.
Steiger: They were up in the group to run, but "no, maybe not." (laughs)
Dale: They went back down along the rapid.
Steiger: Yeah, "This is too good for photos. Can't miss these pictures." Sharkey and Tony both said, "We only want to take one person each." Richie and I were the last two, and we said, "Take whoever you want." They went and picked their people, one each, went back to their boats. Here comes Sharkey first -he was the third boat through. Sharkey makes it through the slot, to the right, makes it over the big wave, droppin' off the big wave, that lateral comin' off the rock is the fastest flip I've ever seen. His boat when just like this, "Schoomp!" He's upside down. Tony comes in, drops into the slot, his boat goes up on its side, but comes back down right-side up. One oar's gone. He's in the back seat. He scrambles back on the seat and is pulling on his one oar to get straight, but drifts right into the big hole sideways. We figure he's over. And it's so amazing, his boat just rode up sideways on top of this froth, got up on top of the wave, his boat turned slowly downstream. We thought, "All right, he's gonna make it!" He stalled out on top of this crashing wave, his boat just sitting there. And then slowly rolled, left gunnel over right. (Steiger: Oh, my God!) Just tipped over, real slow.
Steiger: Still on top?
Dale: Still on top of this big wave.
Steiger: Of the bottom hole? Oh, man!
Dale: Just stalled out, and his boat just slowly rolled like that. And we thought....
Steiger: That's four for four!
Dale: Four for four! All different types of flips.
Steiger: Different place, every one of 'em.
Dale: Different place. So Richie and I are sittin' up there. I look back up, there's three guys and Roberta.
Steiger: Left on the team?
Dale: Roberta usually went through with me. Richie's sittin' there goin', "I don't want to flip twice in one trip."
Steiger: Was Roberta cookin' or somethin'?
Dale: She was cookin' that trip. She would usually cook two or three trips, and then take a trip off and row. Any trips I led, she rowed a raft. Otherwise, she cooked, but she usually cooked a couple of trips and then took a break and rowed a raft.
Anyway, Richie's going, "I don't want to flip twice in one trip!" Remember, he'd already flipped at House Rock. This was that same trip. I said, "C'mon, Richie, let's just go show 'em how to do it."
Steiger: So you're still thinkin', the water's not doin' shit.
Dale: The water's not doin' nothin'.
Steiger: Stayin' right there.
Dale: And we're ready to go, we want to get it over, behind us. So Richie said, "I only want to take one person." I said, "Take whoever you want." And he went back, got his person, headed back to the boat. And I went up there, and there was these two guys and Roberta. I said, "You guys still want to ride through this, after what you've been watchin', huh?" And they said, "Yup." "So okay, you can all go with me." I was the only person with more than one person in my boat. But I put Roberta in the right front. She was a good high-sider. Put her up front and one guy in the back. Richie was already pulled out and leavin' by the time I got there. I pulled out. As I floated down, I saw Richie disappear on his entry. Then I couldn't see him. I saw him in the tailwaves, his boat was right-side up. Both he and his passenger were in the front seat, high-siding. I think what Richie had done was after he made his initial entry, he left the oars and went to high-side.
Steiger: He just deliberately decided, "To hell with it, I'm gonna high-side us through this thing."
Dale: High-side.
Steiger: That's pretty....
Dale: Yeah, why not? Everybody else was at the oars -didn't do 'em any good.
Steiger: For me, I'd run the right a bunch of times. I would always come out of the ["V" wave?] with no oars. (laughs)
Dale: Exactly, what good are you doin' there?
Steiger: Just high-side. Anyway....
[END TAPE 2, SIDE A; BEGIN SIDE B]
Dale: But anyway, Richie was right-side up. All right! Then I dropped in. I rolled up on my side too. The boat came back right-side up. I had [washed?] to the back seat, scrambled back up to my seat. One oar was there, one was gone. I just got straight, and it was the most helpless feeling I've ever had. You're dropping into the big hole (Steiger: God, it's so big.) and you're just sitting there. You can't push, you can't do anything.
Steiger: Except kinda keep it straight.
Dale: Just keep it straight. I'm just sittin' there like a dummy, you know. And Wally had walked back up by this time. Wally said he saw the whole bottom of the Nachaco [phonetic spelling] come out of that hole. Came out of that hole, and all of a sudden I was layin' straight back, and that one oar had me pinned, layin' down. And I was just tryin' to get rid of it, and we're gettin' knocked and everything, and spinnin' comin' out of the hole. The lateral rolled me up a ways. I guess that's what pinned me. I was just pushin' on that oar, 'cause there was a lot of pressure on me. I was really amazed. All of a sudden, it flew out, and we're in the tailwaves, spinnin' around. Goin' through the tailwaves, I get my two spares out, throw 'em in, pull into Lower Lava. No boats got in above Lower Lava.
Steiger: Oh! So nobody got right-side up before Lower Lava?
Dale: Right. Actually, everybody got right-side up before Lower Lava except Tony Williams. He went through Lower Lava upside down. And actually, when I pulled into camp, they were walkin' Tony's boat back up. We were campin' at Lower Lava.
Steiger: Whew! So there wasn't anybody down there to rescue anybody.
Dale: No rescues. What was really funny was Wally and Dean were the first two boats through. They both got right and pulled into the beach. And then Dane didn't see Sharkey's run, but he saw Tony's boat come floatin' by Lower Lava upside down. So as Sharkey pulled in, Dane started pullin' out and said, "Hop on, let's go get this boat!" And Sharkey jumped out and gave his boat to his guests to tie up, and Dane was already movin' out. Sharkey grabbed the transom of Dane's boat and was just hangin' there. Dane says, "Can't you get in?" He said, "Did you flip too?" (laughter) So they went out and got Tony's boat and pulled it in.
Steiger: 'Cause he wasn't with it?
Dale: I think he was on the bottom, but he couldn't right it.
Steiger: Just him or somethin'?
Dale: I don't know.
Steiger: But they got it before the next....
Dale: Yeah, we lined it back up to camp. Anyway, that night, four out of six boats over, lots of bumps and bruises. One guy had cut -like the lower part of his ear was just hangin' by a thread. We threw duct tape on it. Six oars downriver, unaccounted for, but we got 'em all back. And we partied.
Steiger: I'll bet you did!
Dale: We partied hearty that night.
Steiger: That must have been about 15,000 or somethin'?
Dale: I think it was a little higher than that.
Steiger: Fifteen, sixteen?
Dale: I'm guessing.... You know, to do the left run, we liked to have 25,000 over there in a dory.
Steiger: Yeah, that was different then, wasn't it?
Dale: Yeah, I think it was. But we liked.... Twenty wasn't enough. I'm guessing the lowest the water was that day was 18,000. (Steiger whistles) But the "V" wave was taken out of the factor, 'cause we went over below the "V" wave.
Steiger: Right, but you were still goin' right.
Dale: Everybody went right, everybody hit that hole.
Steiger: Oh, man!
Dale: So anyway, that was probably one of the more intense days at Lava I've ever had.
Steiger: That's incredible! It sure is different in a dory, isn't it, than in a motorboat.
Dale: You think about it a lot different. I get nervous in a motorboat when I'm runnin' Lava.
Steiger: I do when the water's goin' over that saddle on the black rock.
Dale: Yeah, that's scary. And now it does it all the time.
Steiger: Oh, yeah? I hadn't even down there mid-teens. [Huh? (Tr.)] It's been so long since I....
Dale: Since that left run, Prospect flood, and that left run opened up, that water's higher on that rock. And in lower water, it's surgin' up by that saddle now.
Steiger: I haven't had to.... I guess Roger ran right this year, him and Jano, on a runout.
Dale: Really?
Steiger: Yeah, there was just the two of 'em in their boats, and I guess they ran it one at a time, you know, with a high-sider. They ran out empty from somewhere -from Phantom, supposedly, but they went to Galloway or somewhere with the other trip, and then left 'em. But for some reason it was so low, they had to run right.
Dale: Well, you know, actually, Lew, I prefer to hit Lava low right stage. I like the right run, and if it was 10,000 or lower, I liked it. I liked the slot -I did like the slot, but boy, you know, you're goin' over these swales, you can't see anything.
Steiger: And it used to be there were those burbles that you could kinda.... But those aren't even reliable anymore. You gotta be left of them, don't ya'?
Dale: Well, you know, I never did use the bubble line. People would say, "Well, if you have your right chine on the bubble line, or your left chine on the bubble line, or whatever. And lookin' from shore, you could see the bubble line. But when you got down there, those bubbles were huge! What do you mean, "left chine on the bubble line"?! (laughs)
Steiger: I used that a couple of times, but now there's a little solid wave that breaks on the front of that hole that you want to be to the left of. There's like the hole that makes the left side of the right tongue. (Dale: Right.) And there's a wave that breaks off the face of that, that you can see really good comin' down.
Dale: Yeah, that's what I key on, too.
Steiger: And you just be left of that.
Dale: I keyed on the exploding wave to the right of the slot, right? (Steiger: Yeah.) Just to the right of the slot.
Steiger: Yeah, and you're to the left of that. (Dale: Right.) Just barely left of that.
Dale: And I keyed on.... And you knew that you were gonna move right, once you got close. You're movin', it'll take you right. But I remember the first time I ever ran the slot, I rode through with Jeff Zuck [phonetic spelling] in the Nachaco. I snuck on the river. It was like 1974, and I took my Yampa and got off the river on a Sunday, flew home, went down to Lee's Ferry Monday morning, rigged my little Yampa -all these companies were riggin' out -rigged my little Yampa, put on and went down the [ramp?].
Steiger: (laughs) So you were like by yourself, and just hooked up with the dories or somethin'?
Dale: No, but I ran into the dories -they were at Tapeats Creek, first time I saw 'em -and ended up bein' at Lava with 'em. And it was good slot water, and I decided to take my raft through there. But Jeff Zuck -they didn't have a lot of riders that day, and Jeff Zuck was rowin' the Nachaco, and asked me if I would go through with him. I said, yeah, it'd give me an opportunity to see the slot.
Steiger: And you couldn't see a thing!
Dale: I was ridin' up front in the Nachaco, I didn't see nothin'! But he had a nice run through there.
Steiger: Whatdaya gotta do? You just gotta turn it a little sideways?
Dale: Yeah. And then when you run stuff like Hermit and stuff, as you're going down the backside of waves, you can see real good. That's when you look. But I remember after goin' through with Jeff, wonderin' where the slot is -I didn't see nothin', you know. I hiked back up, and Claire Quist was up there. They had just pulled in, Moki Mac. And Claire goes, "Where you runnin' in your raft?" I said, "I'm gonna do the slot." He said, "Really?!" And I said, "Well, it looks like a good run to me." I'd never run it before, you know. So Claire told his boatmen they would watch me run. If I made it through....
Steiger: And it looked good, that's what [his] guys would do.
Dale: That what he was gonna do. And his instructions to his crew were, "We'll run the slot, until somebody flips. If somebody flips, back over to the right." And Claire flipped.
Steiger: Right behind you?
Dale: Well, they watched me run, and as I approached it, I didn't know really what to key on. I just came over those last swells and I said, "Wow, there's the slot!" Saw that little smooth and just pivoted my boat, dropped through there. It rolled me a little bit. And once you're through there.... (Steiger: End of run.) It took me left, I actually stuck my oars in the water to stay out of the domer over there -and you're done! I thought, "Wow, a neat run!" I had pulled in and hiked up and was sittin' with Regan up high and low, and we watched Claire come in. Claire came in and flipped, all their boats pulled right. (laughter)
Steiger: Did all the rest of 'em make it?
Dale: Yeah, they had big rides.
Steiger: Yeah, I bet! What did those guys have? Was that those big blue boats they have? They probably didn't have 'em yet.
Dale: I think he was runnin' Green Rivers back then. I think he was still running Green Rivers. I remember one of his passengers got slowed up along the wall, and was just driftin' down behind. Claire got in, and another boat pulled their boat in the eddy at Travertine Spring, and this guy was all alone, just floatin' down the wall. He was screamin', "Help!" And I stood up and yelled -he was gettin' near the eddy, all he had to do was a few strokes and pull in there -I yelled, "Swim left!" He [reacts] like he's thinkin' God's yellin' at him, "Swim left!" And he did, he started swimmin' left, and pulled into the eddy. But Claire was in there with his upside down boat, and he grabbed him. I just remember the guy lookin' skyward, like God might be talkin' to him.
Steiger: Oh, man.
Dale: And I was on the trip where Stevie Dalton lost the Emerald Mile.
Steiger: Oh, yeah?
Dale: Uh-huh, I was there that day.
Steiger: In the corner pocket?
Dale: Corner pocket.
Steiger: Missed the slot to the right?
Dale: Yeah, I kinda feel.... Seldom was I dead center in the slot. I usually missed it to the right, 'cause I didn't like to fool with the ledge. So I'd crowd that hole. My right front seat, I put my big boy in there and told him, "This might try to take us up a little, but you keep it down." I always plan to miss it a hair right. I did not like that ledge.
Steiger: I'm the opposite, I was always wantin' to make sure I got squared out left. And the last couple of times I ran it, I always kind of point a little bit left, try to push in there. But the last two times, both times it....
Dale: Tried to roll you?
Steiger: No, but I....
Dale: You're facin' left as you enter?
Steiger: I'm floatin' in, pointin' left, and kinda pushin' left.
Dale: Kenton did that.
Steiger: Well, that always felt good to me, but the last couple of times, I'd hit it, I'd come out, and then hook my nose kinda in the slow water behind the ledge. And one time it whipped me around, and then just surfed me over, way to the far left of the ledge. You know, where it's like I'm thinkin', "Oh shit, I'm gonna hit the chub rock."
Dale: Right, right. That's what you guys [call it?].
Steiger: I'd set up to pull backwards. Yeah, that domer.
Dale: Yeah, that chub rock, okay.
Steiger: And I had to row like back out to the right, to miss that rock. So I think I'm pushin' it too far.
Dale: Most of us would be facin' right, and drop in there. And like I said, I usually fudged it a little to the right, except for the very first time I ran it. The very first time I ran it, I was right in there. But it was such a great feeling to come out of there and it takes you left.
Steiger: Did you say it was Rich Turner, or Steve Dalton that got in there in the corner pocket?
Dale: Right. Well, Stevie and I were the last two boats to run that day. As we went back to our boats, I told Stevie.... You know, he was an Idaho boatman and had come down for a couple of trips. Actually, on that trip we camped at Aspayho [phonetic spelling] and we pulled the boats up, because the water would be up in the morning. We pulled the boats up, and as we pulled the boat up and sat it down, a piece of driftwood just went right through the stern foot well.
Steiger: Of the Emerald Mile?
Dale: Of the Emerald Mile. And we're thinkin', "Man, that floor must be rotten!" Which it was. It just went right through, a piece of driftwood. We patched it.
But anyway, that trip, Stevie and I were goin' back. Regan was over on the left, he had eddied out there. Other boats had pulled [in] down above Lower Lava on the right. And I went through. But anyway, as we were walkin' back, I was tellin' Stevie what I do. I said, "You know, I missed that slot just a hair right. I mean, you're in the slot, but you're fudgin' on the right side. I don't like that ledge hole. There's no forgiveness if you go in there."
Steiger: Well, it really sucks in there, for sure.
Dale: And as I miss it, a lot of times I'd stay cocked a little right.
Steiger: So a lot of times, you're in the bottom hole in the lateral off the black rock.
Dale: Never.
Steiger: Really?
Dale: Never.
Steiger: Always to the left?
Dale: I always came out and went left.
Steiger: Do you kinda like point left, right after that? Or it just takes you?
Dale: Well, as I'd hit, I usually just brought my bow on around. And more times than not, I had to stick my oars in. I thought I was goin' for the domer. More times than not, I'd stick my oars in, just to stop my momentum.
Steiger: Your leftward.
Dale: And then after that, it was all over, you know. I shouldn't say "never," 'cause one time I did go right, but that was after 1983, when that new rock -what do they call it, the Meteor Rock? Have you heard that term?
Steiger: Yeah. It's the thing that makes the left "V" wave.
Dale: Right. The last time I ran the slot, I hit the way I usually do, but....
Steiger: Yeah, and then you catch a piece of that.
Dale: Right. But actually, I just remembered telling Stevie, "It's not bad missing it right. It still takes you left." And after I was down in the tailwaves in that run, and I looked back, and I saw Stevie enter and I said, "All right, he looks okay." But he missed it further right. And I remember going down and thinking, "Well, Stevie should be coming out any second now." And I pulled in behind the black rock, down low, in the eddy, and I hung out there, 'cause I told my people, "Hey man, he shouldda been out by now, so look for somebody floatin' or whatever." And OARS was there that day, and they were on shore, and I could see a little movement up there, but I really had no idea what was goin' on. I figured he was in the corner pocket. And I waited out in that eddy for twenty minutes, a half hour. Finally stuff did start comin' down.
Steiger: Oh, man!
Dale: Chunks of gunnel, parts of bow posts. Anything we could retrieve, floatin', I rowed out, got it, rowed back. No bodies, though. Nobody was floatin'.
Steiger: So how'd that work out? Were they able to get him out, or did everybody stay in there?
Dale: Evidently what happened was, Stevie just surfed right over into the corner pocket, and it was there he turned over. And then once he turned over -he had two guys with him, one in the front, one in the back, or maybe they were both in the front, I don't know -but the boat surged up on the rock, and Stevie was hangin' onto the gunnel. And the first surge on the black rock after they flipped, Stevie cushioned the boat off the rock with his body. And it surged off and it surged into shore, came back out. As it started to surge up on the rock again.... Oh, one of the passengers went between the rock and shore.
Steiger: Through that little slot.
Dale: Washed through that slot. And then one guy was hangin' on toward the bow, and he reached over, before the boat surged up on the rock again, and grabbed Stevie and yanked him out next to him. A passenger did that, 'cause Stevie was kinda stunned after -he had hurt his back.
Steiger: Oh, man!
Dale: And then people got out on the black rock, they got Stevie and the passenger off on the black rock.
Steiger: And these were the OARS guys, ran down there and did that?
Dale: These were OARS guys. And anyway, then from what they tell me, the boat would just continually surge into shore, back out onto the rock -shore, rock. I got a slide sequence.
Steiger: Man, oh man! So did it finally just wash out on its own?
Dale: No.
Steiger: It stayed in there.
Dale: It stayed in there, it didn't come out. And after about twenty minutes, Regan rowed out. As he rowed by me, he said, "I think the Emerald Mile is dead," is what he told me. And I stayed out there, Regan went to shore and hiked back up. They eventually got a rope on it, they pulled it out, and around the black rock, and dumped it into the river there. Then somebody rowed it down to Lower Lava. We camped at Lower Lava that night.
Steiger: Was Martin on that trip?
Dale: No. We pulled it up on shore. The foremost part of the boat, Lew, the whole bow was gone. The front foot well was still there, and it was the forwardmost part. The front seat and the front foot well was the front of the boat.
Steiger: What was the back of the boat? Did the stern stay?
Dale: The stern was intact, chewed up. The gunnels were chewed up pretty bad. We talked about what to do with it. Rudy was on that trip. Rudy was rowin' his little seven-man raft. And Ken Lee [phonetic spelling] was cookin' the trip. So we decided, we put Ken Lee in Rudy's raft, and Rudy would row the patched-up Emerald Mile. We patched up the Emerald Mile good enough to get it out of the canyon. And Stevie was hurtin'. So he rode with Rudy, and Rudy rowed the Emerald Mile out.
Steiger: Man, oh man!
Dale: Martin met us at the end of that trip.
Steiger: Whew! That's the nightmare.
Dale: That's the nightmare. It was really scary.
Steiger: It seems like it's about 11,000, 12,000, somewhere right in there where it strikes me that somewhere, 11,000, 12,000, where it really sucks in there. Then a little lower, or even higher, it seems like it washes around there more.
Dale: I agree! I agree. If you're doin' the right run, if it's low water, when you come out of that "V" wave, you can get more current goin' to the right. But it was high enough for slots, so maybe it was 13,000, 14,000, I'm not sure.
Steiger: I have observed that. I was on a two-boat dory trip with Ian one time, and we watched these private guys runnin'. We watched this guy get stuck in there, and we went down and helped them out of there. Really stuck in our minds. But you could really see -even see in the water -you could just see that on this day there was a lot more....
Dale: ... current, right.
Steiger: You could see it goin' in there. I mean, goin' right and goin' into the corner pocket -as opposed to sometimes there's like this big old fence right there where you might go right down next to there, but then you're gonna wash around the black rock.
Dale: I would always hold my boat comin' out of the "V" wave, unless I went right, right away. If it started takin' me right, I'd pull, I'd pull back. But if I came out pretty straight, I generally held it. And usually, I would go around the rock.
Steiger: You'd go right of the bottom hole?
Dale: I'd be right of the hole. And sometimes I'd just kinda -if it started takin' me right, you know, go ahead and push out that way a little bit. But I've been up on the rock in a dory, with the bow -it didn't hit, 'cause of that cushion there, but I'd let it turn me, and (whoosh!) it's a fast wash around the rock, spinning.
Steiger: Oh, man! I saw Pete once be lookin' like he was headin' right in there, and just take one pull stroke, like one really hard stroke. And it's weird. You know, just like the hull speed, like if your hull's dead, and if you take a big pull in really fast current, and you get that upstream _____, it just surfed him right out of there. I mean, I think that was partly what was goin' on. But boy, that's spooky! Pretty wild.
Dale: Pretty wild. Anyway, we had to fix the oarlocks and stuff to get it good enough to go out. We threw a lot of bondo around the boat and duct tape and nails. And, you know, got it good enough to really row it out. Stevie just sat back in the stern, enjoyed his ride out. That's when we camped on the lake the last night, you know. Two days to row the lake. But we got to camp, and we knew Martin would be comin' over. We took a stick, propped it up where the bow post would be, you know, and someone threw a tarp over it, so it looked like someone was just dryin' a tarp out. Remember, Martin would always come across and walk along the beach and look at all the boats. And he never noticed. Later we showed him.
Steiger: "By the way...."
Dale: He never said anything then.
Steiger: Well, it's a whole different proposition for the passengers, isn't it? Between that and such a different ride, from that and a motorboat.
Dale: Oh, yeah. See, I liked what we did. At Crystal we walked 'em. Actually, we walked people, mandatory walks, at House Rock, Crystal, Bedrock sometimes.
Steiger: They don't even have the choice.
Dale: Not Bedrock too often, but Upset was a standard walk, if you're doin' the right run. We didn't do the left too much then. We didn't know the left....
Steiger: How easy it was.
Dale: Yeah. But those were kinda mandatory walks. But at Lava, we would tell the folks, "It's your choice. We like the weight, but there's a fifty-fifty chance you could end up in the river.
Steiger: Yeah. We haven't done that for a while. I'd almost forgotten about that. I mean, it's been so long since we've gone right.
Dale: Right.
Steiger: But yeah, that's about the only way to do it.
Dale: And some trips we had a lot of people ridin'. I remember one trip....
Steiger: Nobody wanted to go?
Dale: Bob Dye [phonetic spelling] had hiked in, was sittin' on the rock there. Roberta was gonna go through with me, and that was all. Very few people wanted to ride. I went up to Bob and said, "Hey Bob, you're goin' through Lava with me today." (Steiger laughs) And actually, that was the only other time I've been out of my boat at Lava -this last trip that I flipped in. But we were runnin' slot, and it had changed. That Meteor Rock, or whatever you want to call it, was out. I came to the slot about where I usually hit it, and it was just going straight downriver.
Steiger: Right to that thing.
Dale: Didn't get any left at all. And actually, it moved me a little to the right. And I remember flashing through my mind, I was coming up on the left side of the "V" wave, and I was thinkin', "How do I want to hit this?" I had plenty of time to think about it. "Do I want to pivot and hit it straight on? Or do I want to hit it at this angle and let it feed me down into the hole?" By that time, I was there, and I think I hit it at this angle. The next thing I knew, I was in the water, that fast.
Steiger: One of those kinda things?
Dale: I guess somethin' just took me off my seat. I popped up on the surface right away. There was an oar there, I grabbed it. It wasn't attached to the boat. The boat was right-side up, headin' down toward the big hole. I took a couple of strokes, grabbed the end of the oar, I just launched myself into the boat. I jumped up front with Bob and Roberta and high-sided through the bottom holes.
Steiger: No problem.
Dale: No problem.
Steiger: Piece of cake. (laughs)
Dale: And that was the last time I did the slot run. And I made up my mind I didn't like the slot anymore.
Steiger: Yeah. (laughs)
Dale: And also, once Prospect flooded....
Steiger: The left is so much easier.
Dale: Well, it doesn't look like the slot's there.
Steiger: You know, we ran left on this last trip I did, and it was like -I shouldn't waste too much time on this -it was like about 13,000. We had those Avon Spirits, so it wasn't any big deal. And we decided we kinda wanted to go left. And so we looked at it from over there, and it worked out good for me. And I don't know, but it looked terrible -the left didn't look good. I mean, that second hole down looked like it was just gonna eat us alive. And nothin' looked good. The right didn't look good, you couldn't see the slot. But you can't see it from over there anyway.
Dale: Well, that's true. I just think since Prospect flooded, I don't know about that slot.
Steiger: If it's even gonna be there, yeah.
Dale: And anyway, those probably are the most (Steiger: Harrowing, yeah.) exciting days at Lava.
One other little quick thing at Lava. We were on a sixteen-day. Kenton was a day ahead of us on an eighteen-day. On a sixteen-day, we'd make one day above Phantom, and one day below Lava, so we made up our time. And we were scoutin' Lava, and we see Kenton walkin' up the shore, and we're goin', "What's Kenton still doin' here?" We just sit there and waited for him to get up to us, and he said, "Do you see it?" Then we started lookin' and we saw -I think it was the Mono Lake -wedged between the rock and shore. You could just see the side of it, the green. It was over....
Steiger: In the corner pocket?
Dale: In the slot between the corner pocket.
Steiger: Oh, man!
Dale: There was the Mono Lake. Fleet had taken it in there. And we were runnin' slot that day. I don't think I missed the slot right. I didn't want to be anywhere near the Mono Lake, 'cause it was another obstacle in there.
Steiger: Man, oh man! Did you guys then help get it out?
Dale: They left it in there, they couldn't get it out. After the trip, they drove out Toroweap, hiked down, had a helicopter come. Helicopter got it out. They were down there to help it, and then the helicopter took it right up to Tuweap and dropped it on a trailer. The guys hiked out and drove it back to Hurricane.
Steiger: Pretty dicey thing for the helicopter, I would think. That's a pretty volatile thing to be draggin' around. I mean, just doin' the pull. Those guys are fearless.
Dale: Yeah, a lot of weight.
Steiger: I've got a question that I've been asking everybody. You know, once you train with somebody and you get to hear what their -you kinda learn from them, and then you're kicked out there and it's just you and your boat and these people, and you end up kind of makin' up your own stuff to tell 'em. (Dale: Right.) And I know for me, like there's certain stories that I have -I mean, it didn't happen deliberately, but there's certain little stories that I like to tell at different places, and I notice myself tellin' 'em over and over again. (Dale: Right.) Do you have any of those?
Dale: Yes, I do.
Steiger: Would you feel like talkin' about 'em?
Dale: Okay. (aside about continuing) Yeah, there's certain stories I tell, but generally it's history stuff. Personal stories....
Steiger: I mean about the canyon. I'm thinkin' of it from the perspective of maybe somethin' in the BQR. Just things that here's this generation of ours, and who knows how long we'll all be around here, but is there anything that we can hand down, things that we've learned that are good to tell these people?
Dale: Stories....
Steiger: (aside about changing batteries) The question was, what does O. C. talk to his people about, and the answer is, human history, stories that you've heard from Dock Marston, Bill Belknap, Bill Beer. I asked you to give an example, and I thought this machine was runnin', and you started talkin' about Willie Taylor.
Dale: Yeah. Dock Marston told me -it must have been 1956 -I think that was the year Willie died -and Dock told me that they pulled into this big beach just below President Harding Rapids, or Eminence Break, and Willie got out of the boat and was walking down the beach and fell over -what I recall Dock telling me -fell over and he was dead before he hit the sand. I've heard another version, and I'll tell you that in a minute. But anyway, they had a mild controversy on the trip. This is one of those motor trips that Dock was taking through the canyon. The group was split on what to do with Willie -whether to take him out or bury him, and Dock really wanted to bury him in the canyon. And they hiked him up under a little ledge, up a little canyon there, and scratched out a grave in the rock and the dirt, and put Willie in it, and they just scratched, "Willie" in the rock, which is still there today. Dock came back on a subsequent trip and put the plaque in. That's there now, too. But I guess they caught all kinds of hell from the Coconino County Coroner. But they did have a doctor on the trip who signed....
Steiger: Pronounced him dead.
Dale: Pronounced him dead, signed the death certificate. But still the coroner was pretty upset with them for buryin' Willie in the canyon. Now, Bill Beer told me that he was on that trip. I didn't know that, until Bill told me he was on that trip. Bill said that Willie wasn't feeling good, and at that same beach for a couple of hours he just went downhill fast. They had him shaded up, trying to make him as comfortable as possible, but that he did die. But it wasn't like Dock....
Steiger: Like he just dropped and that was it.
Dale: I don't know. But Bill was the one who told me about the big controversy between the group on what to do with Willie. Dock won out, Dock wanted to bury him in the canyon. So they did, they put him under that little ledge. And also, Willie's necktie story.
Steiger: I never really heard that one.
Dale: I'm not sure if I got all these facts straight, but from what I understand, the Esmeralda, one of the motorboats, they had a faulty motor on it.
Steiger: Was that Ed Hudson?
Dale: Ed Hudson, and Dock Marston, and Willie was on the trip, Wilson Taylor. Anyway, Dock was drivin' his little Criscraft [phonetic spelling], and you know, I'm not sure if it was the trip that they lost the Esmeralda in, where they abandoned it, 'cause of problems, or if it was the next trip down that they were gonna try to retrieve it.
Steiger: But the Rigg brothers beat 'em to it.
Dale: Is that right?
Steiger: Yeah, the Rigg brothers got it out.
Dale: Okay, the Rigg brothers got it out, so this must have been the trip when they abandoned it.
Steiger: Yeah, 'cause they were on a Mexican Hat trip, they found it, and they said, "Well, hell, there's nothin' wrong with this!"
Dale: Yeah, they fixed it up and got it out of there, huh?
Steiger: Yeah, it was a blown head gasket. And Frank Wright knew just what to do with that, and they just fixed it and drove it on out. But that's another story.
Dale: Anyway, for some reason, I guess it was in Tuna Creek Willie went out of the boat, and Dock saw him there and whipped up behind him, threw him a rope, figured Willie had grabbed ahold of the rope, and Dock just started motorin' off. This rope had wrapped around Willie's neck. And he was draggin' him by the neck, and I guess everybody was screamin' and yellin' at Dock to stop. Dock stopped and looked back and he was chokin' Willie to death. He finally let Willie get that rope off around his neck, and either towed him ashore or pulled him in the boat or whatever. But that's where Willie's necktie, or Esmeralda Bend.... I guess that's where they lost or gave up on the Esmeralda. I don't know where they pulled it into shore, or exactly how that goes. It'd be nice to....
Steiger: Yeah, Riggs had movies of that. I remember seein' his movie, and there's films. Ed Hudson, they sent for a helicopter, and the helicopter couldn't carry him out.
Dale: Yeah, I remember that story. But you know, like when I get around Upset, I talk about Shorty Burton. You know that story. Up in Marble Canyon I like to talk of how Powell named Marble Canyon -you know, with the redwall limestone. I just hit on a lot of quick, short topics -keeps the people's interest. Stanton, of course, is a fascinating story.
Steiger: Boy, it really is.
Dale: And his involvement with the canyon, and losin' Browns and Hansbrough. Some trips I do a -I call it "gloom and doom mile." I'll stop at Bert Loper's boat, take a short hike there, talk about Bert Loper; go down, hike people up to Hansbrough's grave; go down and hike up to Willie's grave. You know, just have a few short hikes, "gloom and doom day." (chuckles)
Steiger: (chuckles) Get everybody ready for the gorge.
Dale: Yeah, get 'em ready for the gorge. I like to talk about Nevills and Doris. I really like talkin' about John Hance and William Bass, tell their stories in the canyon. I talk about Major Powell, but I usually end up doin' Dock's version with Major Powell.
Steiger: Dock's version, the Colorado River Controversies version?
Dale: Yeah. Dock wasn't a big fan of Major Powell, but I still have to give Major Powell due respect for what he did -you know, bein' the first person to go through the canyon.
Steiger: Yeah, and havin' the eye on the big picture.
Dale: Yeah, havin' the eye on the big picture. I don't necessarily agree with the way -his personality conflict he had with William Dunn.
Steiger: Yeah, it didn't sound like he was being very good there.
Dale: He did have the gumption to put that together.
Steiger: I guess in that book it even says that -Sun Raven [phonetic spelling] says the whole thing was his idea, not Powell's. Isn't that in there?
Dale: Maybe. I can't recall right now. But, you know, Glen and Bessie Hyde is always interesting to the folks, one of the big mysteries of the canyon, what happened to them. Let's see.... Anyway, mostly just standard stories. You know 'em all.
Steiger: I don't know if I know 'em all, but yeah. I was just curious out of that. I do kinda the same thing, and it depends on trip to trip. You know, where they're at, different places where you talk about. I was just curious about it. I mean, I don't know.... I know, in my own mind, the idea of what my responsibilities are as a guide really changed over time, the older I got. (Dale: Yes.) At first, I started swampin' there in 1972, and rowed a boat in 1973 -pretty low water, got hammered, and just growin' up at ARR, got trained to be real conservative. And for the longest time, I viewed it as our responsibility is to just make everything safe. You know, cushion the danger from these people, get 'em through here in one piece, and that's the primary thing. Make 'em comfortable, make sure they aren't too cold and too wet and all this stuff. I mean, I spent a lot of time kind of in the middle of my career just bein' a little Jewish grandmother ["bubbeh" in Yiddish (Tr.)] for people, tryin' to take care of 'em, makin' sure everybody is comfortable. (Dale: Right.) And then later on, it finally occurred to me, well, you know, that's not really the point here, is to get 'em through the Grand Canyon as comfortably as possible. (Dale: Right.) Maybe there's a little more goin' on. And I finally came to the conclusion that it's not even.... And you know, you watch what happens with people, and sometimes it's not the easy times, it's the times that they're a little challenged that stay with 'em anyway. And so for me, the definition is now it's more like, well, what we're supposed to do is get 'em through in one piece, but also facilitate them havin' the most valuable experience they can, whatever that turns out to be for the individual. (Dale: Right.) And that's anybody's guess. I sort of feel like you make your own trip, and that our job is just to set it up so they can do that.
Dale: Basically, Lew, my philosophy is, I have a certain way I'm gonna run a boat through the canyon -rowing or motoring, whichever. And you want to, of course, show the canyon to the best of your ability. Not only talking about the different aspects of the canyon, but making certain hikes available to 'em, and let 'em experience off-river.... On the river, I'm a conservative boatman, I always have been. There's still some places I feel regardless of what kind of a boat I'm running, you can give 'em a good ride. Some places you don't have a choice. Up until this very last trip, I've never, ever cheated Hermit. Any water level, any boat, I've always taken it down the gut. This last trip I pulled left for the first time in Hermit, 'cause it was lookin' gnarly to me.
Steiger: It has been.
Dale: Yes, it has been.
Steiger: For the last couple of years now.
Dale: Even last year, though, I did that, the one fall dory trip. I thought it might be a little risqué, goin' down the gut, but I did, and it let me through. But yeah, Hermit's gettin' a little gnarlier.
But my philosophy is, I try to get nice campsites for the folks, nice lunch spots. You know, sometimes you don't always get what you consider a primo camp or whatever -you do with what you got. But my philosophy is I'm not gonna take the guests by their hands and baby 'em. They have to use a little of their own initiative, and get what they need or can out of a trip. You know?
Steiger: Yeah.
Dale: I try to make sure what's available is handy for 'em or whatever, and I'm conservative, but I still don't baby the people. That's probably the way I started out, because the people, the clientele did seem a little more willing to -whatever came their way, whatever the canyon and the river gave 'em, they accepted maybe more readily. These days, if someone's complainin' about the rain or wind or whatever, I say, "Well, that's the way it is. There's nothing I can do about that." I don't go out of my way to.... You know, there's too much goin' on, on a trip, that you can't.
Steiger: And it doesn't make....
Dale: No.
Steiger: What's funny to me is when I started, we wouldn't think twice about sending everybody off somewhere by themselves. We actually thought, at ARR with Moody and those guys, it was a good idea to let 'em have the experience for themselves. And our standard for a lot of times those years, we'd just park somewhere and say, "Okay, here we are," and kinda give 'em directions: "You guys go up there and come back in a couple of hours." You know? (laughs) And we weren't with 'em. We might go up a little later and be around 'em or whatever, but it was sort of we deliberately tried to let them experience as much of it on their own as possible. But now, it's funny, you wouldn't even -it's unheard of to have a hike without somebody with 'em.
Dale: That's true.
Steiger: Which is kind of ironic to me.
Dale: Well, anytime I'm at camp, I always tell the folks they're welcome to hike while we prepare dinner. I tell 'em, "Use the buddy system if possible, but if you want to hike and nobody else does, just let us know where you're goin', and we can tell you when to be back, and we'll know where to look for you if you don't come back." But there's a lot of times where I used to do a lot of that, too. You know, at Stone Creek, "Nice little hike here. Go for it! Nice waterfall, get under it." Doin' the short hike there. And I didn't feel that it was necessary at all times a guide be with the people, but you're right, with all the....
Steiger: Well, that's like a Park Service thing now.
Dale: Well, with the liability that the companies face now. (Steiger: Yeah.) Yes, they're never alone.
Steiger: I mean, yeah, we got somebody in the front, somebody in the back, and everybody has their hikin' first aid, and everybody's ready. It's a lot more.... That might not be bad. I mean, it's a lot more buttoned-up than it ever used to be. (Dale: Right.) But I don't know that it's that much safer than it ever was.
Dale: Probably not. But that's probably just over the years, the professionalism coming out, coming through. I remember we let people bail off the boat, float through little rapids. [END TAPE 2, SIDE B; BEGIN TAPE 3, SIDE A] I remember this one trip with Mike. It was just about the time he started runnin' dory trips. I was runnin' with him, I was ahead of him, and he came around the corner and he watched half my boat leap off at Spring Canyon, 204 Mile there. And later he asked me, "You let people swim the river?!" I said, "Yeah, I let 'em [swim] that, or somethin' like Three Springs -they'll bail off."
Steiger: This is Denoyer, you mean?
Dale: Yeah, Mike. I said, "Michael, you're startin' to run dory trips, you're gonna have people swimmin' in Lava Falls." He goes, "Oh, that's right."
Steiger: He's really hung in there pretty good.
Dale: Oh, yeah.
Steiger: I guess with those big ol' Whitewater boats, they probably -those boats were hard. I guess they never let 'em jump out of the boat.
Dale: (chuckles) Well, you know, Henry's philosophy, Mike and Marty, some of these Whitewater guys, when Mike and Marty took over Grand Canyon Expeditions, they hadn't been to Upper Deer Creek. Upper Deer Creek was off limits.
Steiger: Are you kidding?
Dale: No. Upper Deer Creek was off limits to Whitewater trips. Henry thought it was dangerous.
Steiger: Wow. That was another change. I remember doing that hike for years and never havin' anybody freak out up there on the high trail. I mean, never even stoppin' myself. It never occurred to me that it was even scary. (Dale: Right.) I don't think it's changed. I mean, did it get skinnier there? I don't think so.
Dale: And now it's a big deal, you have to warn 'em.
Steiger: Oh, yeah, there's gotta be somebody that's gotta be there, and you gotta help some of 'em across and all that. It's definitely different.
Dale: I remember leadin' hikes there. One trip, the overlook, looking down into the narrows, and start back, and never stop. Just keep goin', people....
I remember one time, we were back at the patio area -this was quite a few years ago -there was a kid on a trip, and we raced. I raced him from up there down to the boats. I mean, we ran.
Steiger: Really a full-on race, serious race.
Dale: Yes, I raced this kid down. And I look back now and think, "I can't believe I did that!" Not me, but havin' this kid run that thing, too, you know. The philosophy is definitely, I think, overall, in the guiding community.... I mean, I see trips that are way more conscious about things than I am. I tend to still, you know, that "old school" aspect, so to speak. "Have a good one!" I see trips now, they blow me away how.... What's the word I'm lookin' for? Like you said, you go on a hike, and there's four or five guides, and they got full-on first-aid kits and lots of water. You know, they're like they're preparing for an accident. And that's not bad, though.
Steiger: No, it's not bad to have all that if you need it.
Dale: I kind of agree to that. I wish I would have [adopted?] it more, but I don't. I mean, I'll pack a first-aid kit on a hike, stuff like that. You know, I agree with what you said, let the people experience it. They don't have to be held by the hand, because they're not gonna get as much out of it.
Steiger: Well, I find myself sometimes worry[ing]. Like when I was starting out, I would go sit out in front of that motorboat and I would hate gettin' wet. I mean, it'd be fun to get wet for a while.
Dale: On a hot day.
Steiger: Yeah, a few waves. But then, like on those big days like through the 20s and through the gorge and stuff, after a while it was like you just get pounded. So I got in the habit of runnin' a really dry boat and just tryin' to keep it smooth. Sometimes I fret about smoothin' it all out too much. I look at us as an industry, and I look at how much better the equipment's gotten. Man, oh man. That's a big change. Everything's so much more dialed-in than it was. You wonder how you answer this whole private thing about, well, what's better, or what's the commercial sector gonna do? I don't know what the answer is, or where all this is gonna go. I guess you'd have to talk to some passengers or something. I mean, how you figure out if we're really doin'....
Dale: I think it's pretty evident that the majority of trips are running really fine quality trips. The majority of the people come off thrilled and happy and well worth the money, whatever they spent. Occasionally you get the disgruntled guest, and that's too bad that they didn't have a better experience. But a lot of times, things that the folks complain about is nothing the boatman can change. (Steiger: Yeah.) I know this last fall trip, I talked to a couple of our guys that came off the river when it rained all week on 'em. Some people, after four or five days of it, were tired of it.
Steiger: This was a motor trip, you mean?
Dale: Yes.
Steiger: Yeah, but what are you gonna do?
Dale: Yeah.
Steiger: There's nothing you can do about that.
Dale: Something like that's out of our hands. There's some things we can't control. If it's a cold and wet trip, I can run as dry a boat as I want, just about -even on a dory. You can run way more conservative.
It's interesting, working on this new management plan, and what's all gonna come down from this.
Steiger: It's not lookin' too great right now, is it?
Dale: I don't know. You know, they can say this and that, and County Health can say, "Okay, you need to do this and that," but once you're down there, I tend to run the way I always have.
Steiger: Yeah, you're not gonna get a beard net?! (laughs) A hair net.
Dale: No. I still put soap down by the edge of the river and tell people to wash their hands. We do have a hand-washing system for the toilet, but I don't set two up, like people are supposed to now -one for the kitchen and.... I like -I think it was Brad that wrote one of the BQR's about, "Well, you know, we're cookin' a steak or a hot dog, ashes might fly into the food or whatever. Are we tryin' to clean it up so much that it's takin' away the experience?"
Steiger: Yeah. Well, it's funny. For that reason, just what you're talkin' about, just to keep the County Health at bay, and the law enforcement presence at the NPS, and the expectations down along those lines, for those things, wilderness [designation] seems like not such a bad idea to me. I mean, just the wilderness -what they were talkin' about was, "Well, couldn't you just get as close to wilderness as you can, but keep motors?" To me, that didn't seem like such a bad idea. But most people I talked to are really pissed about it. They hate the idea of wilderness at all. (Dale: Right.) What do you think about that?
Dale: I think that it's a great concept, the wilderness, but in Grand Canyon, first of all we have Glen Canyon Dam sittin' above our trip. Now hopefully somethin' can happen about that. I am definitely in favor of gettin' rid of that dam. I'm a big proponent of that. I think that's the main obstacle of havin' a wilderness area -at least along the river corridor. But like Crumbo, I know, is a big proponent for wilderness. Well, are we gonna get rid of Phantom Ranch and all the lodges and stuff on the South Rim?
Steiger: I don't think so.
Dale: Is Crumbo willing to do all that? But, you know, Grand Canyon's a spectacular, beautiful place, but it's not a wilderness. But as you say, as close as we can. I do believe there's a very viable place for motors on the river.
Steiger: I don't see how you could possibly handle the numbers, anything like what we're doing now, without 'em.
Dale: Well, a good example, Lew, is I believe it was 1977 that we had the ordeals [or oar deals? (Tr.)] goin' on, and I was workin' for the Dories at the time, and all the dory people are sayin', "Yeah, let's get rid of motors!" They were all for that, most of 'em. And my feeling was, "Well, look at it how it is now. You know, we're usually pretty much alone on our trip until we hit Little Colorado." That's one of the first places where you really stop and hang out for a while. It's great swimmin'. When we were there on dory trips, Wilderness World would pull in, OARS would pull in, AZRA, maybe a private trip or two, and we'd be together, vying for camps (Steiger: For the rest of it.) and a little solitude, until Havasu. After Havasu, or maybe even Lava, but after that, then we spread out again, and it wasn't so bad. Actually, I think in 1977 when there was a phase-out and motor trips had to start goin' to 25 percent rowing that first year, and then all of a sudden here were these motor companies showin' up generally with snout rigs, rowing into Little Colorado. And by the end of that season, most of these dory folks were sayin', "Hey, motors come and go, they don't bother us." But they did notice the extra congestion. (Steiger: Yeah.) And with 100 percent rowing, with everybody rowin'....
Steiger: Yeah. Oh, I'm right there with you on that. I don't see how they can possibly do it, unless they cut the traffic way down. And then what happens? Well, the price of the trip goes way up, and everybody's at each other's throats even more.
Dale: You know, there's some places you hate to blow off, 'cause there's a lot of people in certain places. Like if anybody's in Matkatamiba, I don't pull in on 'em. And I don't care who's at Havasu, Havasu's a big place, it can accommodate a lot of groups. But the same with Deer Creek, it's not as big as Havasu is, and you can't spread out as much. But sometimes you have to blow off Deer Creek or Elves [Chasm], and I find nothing wrong with that. It's hard, you hate for your folks to miss some of these spots. They usually go along with it. You explain why, or whatever, I've always found, you explain why to your folks, why you're doin' somethin', they back you -for the most part -and they'll go along with it. But yeah, I do blow off places if someone's there ahead of me. I would certainly hate to see assigned campsites or assigned times to visit places, because the one beauty of our trip is that we are so flexible. We look at the weather, we look at what the river's doing, we look at our group, and we make decisions based on a lot of different things. [Ooo, that's ultimately quotable. (Tr.)] You wouldn't be able to make a decision if you knew you had to be at Deer Creek by two in the afternoon, you had it for an hour or somethin'. Real bad idea. I'd really hate to see that happen. And I think that a lot of people agree with that.
Steiger: I don't know, I sort of am out of the loop here. I don't know, as far as talkin' to 'em or whatever. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with. I don't have a real good feeling about it right now.
Looks like you're kinda dug in for the long haul here, huh? You're gonna be doin' this for a while yet, aren't ya'? What are you thinkin' along those lines?
Dale: Well, let's see, I start my thirtieth year next year, Lew. I can't see switching careers right now. I turned fifty last April. I'll run rivers 'til I die. How long I stay active in the commercial end of it, it's hard sayin', but right now it's my only means of income, and it has been for thirty years.
Steiger: Is GCE comin' along in terms of pension and all those kinds of things? I guess you must have figured out a while ago that you gotta take care of yourself.
Dale: Right. There's different things. I know Mike and Marty are lookin' into different things. As a full-time employee, I've got health insurance. We don't have a pension plan yet. I have my own little thing goin' that I started a while ago. I know Mike's talked about it, and what they've decided, I'm not sure. One thing the company does, of course they have the bunkhouse they provide for everybody. If you don't live in town, you have that available to you. Wages are pretty good with our company. They give a Christmas bonus to everybody. GCE knows what other people are doin', and there's a lot of things.
Steiger: You guys have a fairly consistent crew now, huh? (Dale: Pretty much.) I guess there's hardly anybody that was around when you started, though, is there? _________. There's like another generation.
Dale: Yes. In this company there's nobody here that was here when I started.
Steiger: From the seventies.
Dale: Nobody. Bob Dye [phonetic spelling] is probably considered the most senior boatman, and he started here after I was workin' for Dories. He started with Grand Canyon [Expeditions] after I was with Dories. Of course Mike and Marty took over, I think in January of 1987, when they officially took over.
Steiger: Wow, I didn't realize that it's been that long.
Dale: Yeah. I know in 1986, I was tryin' to save my marriage, and I left the river that year, although I still had a twenty-day rowing trip for science -did a science trip, Fish and Game. Actually, it was a park trip. That's where I really first got to know Kim Crumbo. John Thomas hired me to run a boat. I did that trip that year, did an eighteen-day dory trip, and then did a nine-day GCE trip, and then I gave GCE my two weeks' notice and I got on with the post office here in Kanab. And I did that to try to save my marriage. Once I failed at that, I knew I wanted to go back to the river. It was during that time that Mike bought Grand Canyon Expeditions, so I went down and asked Mike for a boat back.
Steiger: Was it bein' a boatman.... That was the problem in your marriage?
Dale: Well, I have two theories on that, Lew.
Steiger: I mean, there's not very many people that have done it successfully.
Dale: Right, it's hard on a relationship. But I wasn't sure if it was being gone all summer, or being home all winter. (laughter) I really don't know. But I have no regrets about that, I've got two beautiful daughters.
Steiger: Oh, yeah. It's a heartbreaker that that one didn't last.
Dale: Right.
Steiger: Looking at it from outside, nobody could figure that one out totally.
Dale: You know, I'm sure I was hard to live with, but I didn't want to end it. I wanted it to work. But who knows.
Steiger: How'd you like life in the post office?
Dale: It was tedious, boring. During the summer I'd see all my river friends, and they would fill me in what was goin' on.
Steiger: That was 1987?
Dale: [That was] 1986.
Steiger: That was a big year, too, huh?
Dale: It was a big year. It was a hard year, in a lot of ways, on the river.
Steiger: Nobody was makin'.... I missed 1986, too. I was workin' on our first movie, and I never saw the river at all that year. Not a bad year to miss (chuckles), I guess.
Dale: That was the year Smedley [phonetic spelling] put his plane in the river. My cousin, Dale DeLamas [phonetic spelling], sank his boat in Crystal.
Steiger: Boy, there's a whole raft to talk about, Crystal stories. (whistles)
Dale: Yeah, Crystal. That was the year the plane and the helicopter collided above Crystal. It was a rough year.
Steiger: Yeah, that was Scott Thybony's brother, huh?
Dale: Yeah, he was the pilot of the helicopter, right. Yeah, it was a rough year.
Steiger: Nobody was makin' the cut at Crystal, I guess.
Dale: Crystal eatin' up boats that year?
Steiger: Yeah, apparently, since I wasn't there. But it seems like I've heard Brian and Brad and these guys talk about it was that constant 28,000 [cfs] to 32,000, and the lateral. Everybody was tryin' to run right, and that lateral just fed out there, and nobody was.... Every now and then somebody would accidentally get through there. Well, I mean, somebody would get through there, but it wasn't like you could.... It sounded like there wasn't hardly anybody that was makin' it regularly. Everybody was out there in the land of the giants.
Dale: Well, that was that trip.
Steiger: Those pictures that you were showin' me. That was your one Crystal trip?
Dale: That was 1986, that's right. Darrell [phonetic spelling] told me it was 1986. I was thinkin', "Was this 1984 or 1985?" but that was 1986.
Steiger: I'm lookin' at the picture. There's a picture that O. C. was showin' me before this interview: shows the sequence of about three or four shots of you goin' through in a dory through Crystal through just huge waves all around him, the boat gettin' spun around, one oar bein' blown. I remember you in combat boots. And I remember talkin' to other guys from the Dories, anyway -everybody would put on boots and their best shoes, and some people wore helmets, and no passengers ever rode, and it was one of those where you thought you could seriously get hurt doin' it.
Dale: I remember someone sayin', "Why do you wear combat boots?" and I'd say, "It's a war out there!" (laughs)
Steiger: Yeah, 'cause if you were gonna swim to the island or whatever.
Dale: That picture, that sequence, that's where I went after....
Steiger: Oh, you were right down through those?
Dale: Well, down the left, and after I came out of that second hole, my boat spun again, facing downstream, and (schoop!) it shot me right out through the middle of the island, and that bottom big [rada?] was making a hole. I mean, I was right on the corner of that. My boat was full of water, I didn't have any control. I pivoted a little bit, and I pivoted as I dropped off the corner, to hit it at an angle I wanted. Like I said, Curtis Chang.... [phonetic spelling]
Steiger: Did you have the other oar in?
Dale: Yeah.
Steiger: You got your other oar back?
Dale: The other oar stayed in. The left oar stayed in the oarlock, so when I got back on the seat, I just grabbed a spare, threw it in the right oarlock. I couldn't budge that boat, though. I was gunnel-to-gunnel. Then we were ridin' with each other, but Darrell had gone through with me, and I think we took the raft through first. I hung out in the eddy as rescue boat, and Curtis flipped in that bottom hole. Bronco was with him on that. They clipped more of that hole than I did, I guess.
Steiger: Yeah, I remember hearin' lots of stories. Brad, one time I guess he went out there and got all beat up but made it, and then went and rode with somebody and they turned over, and then he went back and rode with Elena [phonetic spelling] in the baggage raft, and they filled up, and they were goin' down, and she wasn't makin' the pull, and he had to jump off her boat and swim to shore to get back to his boat. (laughs) Left her all by herself. I remember there's a lot of wild, wild days.
Dale: That wild day that we were there at Crystal, as I pulled up, Curtis and Bronco weren't quite gettin' his dory right-side up.
Steiger: Wow, that's hard to believe.
Dale: Yeah. As Regan pulled into the eddy, _____ was through with somebody else, Regan jumped over on my boat and I pulled out and dropped Regan off. And the three of 'em righted the boat.
Steiger: _________.
Dale: And we got in above Tuna on the left, so there's two boats and four boatmen.
Steiger: Oops! (laughter)
Dale: On the left.
Steiger: You had to stop that boat, yeah.
Dale: But that was a private trip there, Lars was on a private, and Mike Brown who used to row for us, and Randy Febreeze [phonetic spelling] and they brought our boats and people down.
Steiger: Yeah, that guy Mike Brown, he's pretty cool. (Dale: Yeah.) He used to motor for you too, huh?
Dale: Yeah.
Steiger: Well, what's been the best part of it for you, if you could ever say? That hundred-day trip sounds like that was a pretty hard thing to beat.
Dale: That was a great time, just livin' in the canyon for all these years. It's kinda like, well, you've taken yourself out of the mainstream of life on the river. But it's important to be in the mainstream of life, you know. I feel that what we do as guides down there, I mean, we change -or we don't change, but we're an instrument for taking people down the canyon and the river that changes their life and outlook on things, and it justifies to me that what I'm doin' is important. If the canyon and river changes people, I'm sure it's for the better. So it kind of justifies what I do, and everybody else. We're doin' a service for our little part. But there is this quality time down there.
Steiger: I think so, too. It's amazing to me how clean it's gotten. I think that's pretty cutting edge. I mean, that we got, what is it now? Shit, it must be 25,000 people a year through there.
Dale: Uh-huh. Is there that many, really?
Steiger: I don't know, but I'll bet you it is.
Dale: Well, I always heard in the early seventies, 14,000 to 15,000 people went through the canyon. And if the numbers are frozen, how'd we get up to 25,000?
Steiger: Everybody goes faster, and there's exchanges.
Dale: And science and so forth.
Steiger: Yeah, science. But they're kind of wound down, but I don't think they're gonna wind down any more. (laughs) Do you?
Dale: No. But, you know, from the early seventies to now, the canyon is -it's amazing how clean, and the consciousness of everybody taking care of the place. Not that in the early seventies it didn't happen, but we didn't have all the tools to take care of it like we do now.
Steiger: Well, just the idea, too, the mind set: carry your shit out.
Dale: Right. Which is so much easier, really. I remember on that hundred-day, we camped at Nankoweap for five days. One full day, we sifted charcoal and cleaned up that camp.
Steiger: Just because.
Dale: Just because. But what really cleaned that camp up was 1983. Eighty-three cleaned the canyon up.
Steiger: I hadn't thought of that.
Dale: Even after sifting charcoal from Nankoweap all day at the main camp, the sand was still more -there was a lot of black sand at that beach. But after 1983 cleaned up the canyon tremendously -I mean, no matter how much sifting we did and stuff, we couldn't compete with what the river did in just a short period of time. And by that time, everybody was already on their programs for (Steiger: Keepin' it clean.) keepin' it clean. Since 1983, it's just been sparkling down there.
Steiger: I never thought of that, but you're right. I always thought 1983 was terrible, because I always had in my mind's eye, the beaches the way they were before. You know, like Lower Bass, how big that used to be -National and some of them. There's a lot of 'em -I mean, I don't think it ever has come close to what it was just before then, in terms of size.
Dale: Right.
Steiger: I've been thinkin' 45,000 was too high of a flush, but maybe you don't. So you don't think it's a bad thing for 'em to crank it on up there?
Dale: In 1983 they had no choice. I'm not a big fan of the spike flows.
Steiger: I didn't like the 45,000 at all. I mean, everybody was goin' on about what a rip-roarin' success that was. To me, I mean, for campin', all I can see now is all these beaches that we used to use, there's just this real high, steep, coarse sand.
Dale: Yeah, coarse sand, right.
Steiger: Really heavy sediments.
Dale: In 1983, of course -this is what I have to laugh at -they were doin' that spike flow. Was that a couple of years ago, the 45,000?
Steiger: Yeah.
Dale: And they were sayin', "We're interested in seein' what it does." Well, we know what the high water does. We saw it in 1983.
Steiger: Yeah, we did. And we were mildly surprised. We thought when the river drops (Steiger: There won't be anything.) there won't be anything. And here was all these -I mean, Lower Tapeats, not a rock to be seen.
Steiger: But where is it now?
Dale: Yeah, all those beaches rapidly disappeared. But look at 110 Mile -ripped everything out of 110 Mile. And since the river went back to normal, that sand started comin' back in.
Steiger: Yeah.
Dale: Strange.
Steiger: Well, that's the one thing -even the 45,000 -there are those places where they get knocked out by side canyon flash floods. And then when the river gets up, it kind of builds those back up, but how high does it really need to be? That's the question.
Dale: I agree with Stewart. Remember a few winters ago when the Little Colorado ran high all year?
Steiger: That's what builds the beaches.
Dale: That's what dumps in all that nice fine sand.
Steiger: Where you walk on the beach and it's muddy.
Dale: Right.
Steiger: And stuff sticks together, that clay.
Dale: But you know, I agree with Stewart, if they want to bring the river up to 30,000 or 35,000, I don't think the bigger flows are that great. But redeposit a little sand a little higher -do it when Little Colorado's crankin', Paria might be crankin'.
Steiger: Yeah, me too.
Dale: But still in 1983, and still during that spike flow, a lot of sand went to Lake Mead. That river was muddy down there.
Steiger: Yeah, and there is a lot of sand down there now. It's funny, science, they always get off at Diamond Creek.
Dale: Yeah. (chuckles) Yeah, are they doin' a full-on study, or what?!
Steiger: Yeah. It'll be interesting.
Dale: I did a lot of science trips and I have to admit, I enjoyed goin' out at Diamond Creek.
Steiger: Oh, yeah. Sometimes I've watched these guys get up in rooms and talk about how the sand's being moved from the beaches further upstream to beaches further downstream. It's like, yeah, like right about at Lake Mead. (laughs) But I don't know, I think someday the river will just overwhelm 'em up there at that dam.
Dale: Well, I've always said, Lew, Glen Canyon Dam is like a pimple on an elephant's ass. And we're tryin' to do so much to rectify that dam. I don't think we can do that much. Just be patient, the river will be free again some day. Maybe not in our lifetime. I'd like to see that happen. I actually believe that the restoration of Glen Canyon isn't gonna take hundreds and hundreds of years. I think with lots of big storms and some major flash floods down side canyons, it's gonna take a while to clean out. A lot of people don't agree with me, but I'm thinkin' for one year of the dam, one year to clean up. So I'm thinkin' like once that dam goes, at this point, thirty, thirty-five years, a lot of that silt that's built up in there is gonna be washin' away. It might take longer for some of those side canyons like Music Temple and Hidden Passage and Dark Canyon and Cathedral of the Desert and all these things, to come back. I mean, it's gonna take a while, but I'm sayin' not hundreds and hundreds of years.
Steiger: It'd be interesting. I don't know, it'll be interesting to see if it lasts the rest of our lifetimes. I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't -I really wouldn't.
Dale: Well, it almost went in 1983 -it came close.
Steiger: So you were back to GCE in 1983?
Dale: Right.
Steiger: Did you have a pretty wild time through that?
Maybe we're gettin' tired here, I don't know. That's a whole nother can of worms, 1983. There's a picture of you runnin' -you ran 70,000 on the way back down?
Dale: Well, I launched from Lee's Ferry at 70,000 comin' up.
Steiger: And so you probably got there, and it was like 80,000 or 90,000?
Dale: That might have been the peak, whatever that -100,000, give or take 10,000. But I was pretty lucky, I had a single-boat trip of ten people.
Steiger: Okay!
Dale: On a motor trip. It was very, very nice. I remember gettin' to Lee's Ferry, and I was on the bus, and we had another two-boat trip launching, and I was in the back of my boat doing something, and Brad Dimock comes running out on my boat and says, "Guess what?" and I said, "What?" and he says, "The river's closed!" I said, "What?!" And I immediately went up and called Ron Smith. I said, "Hey, they've closed the river." Ron got in touch with the superintendent. Meanwhile, Dick McCallum was there. That's who Brad was runnin' with -Expeditions. They had their boats there. There was about six lunch tables. You know, the river was up to the asphalt, and there was all these lunch tables up on the asphalt. I sat mine up, fed my people, packed it away. The ranger came down -I forget who.
Steiger: It must have been Workman.
Dale: Workman was there. I guess it was Workman. But they came down and said, "The river is open for commercial trip, closed to privates." I immediately loaded my people and left before they could change their mind. I wasn't gonna do anything foolish, my young ass is on that boat, too.
I had a real pleasant trip. Went down that first night and I camped at 23 Mile. The next morning at 24˝ [Twenty-four-and-a-half Mile], up above the rapid, there was a private trip, there was about six boats pulled up, abandoned. Not one person was there -just a private trip. Everything on the boats, the boats were tied up way above high water.
Steiger: They drug 'em up?
Dale: They drug 'em up and left. I heard some commercial guides came in and took 'em out later.
Steiger: Was that Dories?
Dale: They came back and took those boats out?
Steiger: No, the private trip.
Dale: No, there were no dories, it was rafts, small rafts. But 24˝ had freaked 'em out, and it was big. Twenty-four-and-a-half was big. But we just had a real pleasant trip. We had to stop at Phantom, and we had to turn in a trip manifest to the ranger of all our people. While I was there, I called up Ron and said, "Hey, we're havin' a great time. We're goin' down to Crystal now."
Oh, that first night at camp, at 23 Mile, a helicopter went over and dropped us a note that said, "Crystal's closed." Four big boats had tipped over that morning at Crystal. There were numerous injuries, one fatality. "Crystals closed. Boatmen and swampers can take it through."
Anyway, while I was at Phantom, I called Kim Crumbo, too, and said, "What's the deal with Crystal?" He said, "It's no big deal. There's plenty of room." But all these guys had been running it....
Steiger: Didn't know how to do a turnaround?
Dale: Well, what they had done.... Okay, look at it this way, Lew: nobody had ever seen Crystal -alive or dead -nobody had ever seen Crystal at that water level since it had changed. Right? Nobody. So why wouldn't you stop and take a look at it? 'Cause it's a blind entry, you can't see nothin'.
Steiger: Yeah. I was actually down there in the middle of all that shit, and I wasn't gonna stop. I was leadin' a trip and I was with Stoner, and I had seen it. I was goin' week-to-week, and I had seen it at 50,000. And then we left on 60,000, and then it came up to 70,000 when we were at Saddle. And so we went another day, and then we were gonna run it, so it had been 70,000 for like a day -72,000.
Dale: Maybe comin' up.
Steiger: And I thought, "Aw, it's gonna wash out." Just from lookin' at it at 50,000, I thought.... You know, 'cause the hole was really big, but it was kinda soft on the right side, and it was like, well, you know, even if you got over there, it might be a fun ride (Dale laughs) was what I.... And in my mind, I was just gonna -we had camped at Unkar or somethin', and I was just gonna blaze on through there. And I get to Shinumo and eat lunch, but I got up that morning and I go, "Is there anything you want to do today?" to Stoner. And Stoner goes, "Yeah, I wanna look at Crystal." "Okay." I never thought again about it, but if he wouldn't have said that, that could have been me, too.
Dale: But you probably went in there, drivin' right.
Steiger: I would have went in there drivin' right, and I would have made a turnaround, I'd like to think, (Dale: _______ stern.) I don't know.
Dale: I remember comin' around the corner at Nankoweap and thinkin', "That might be a fun wave down there to run, you know." I came around the corner and I looked down there, and it was a big wave. But I looked at the hydraulics behind the wave, and I thought, "that looks a little gnarly to me," and I pulled out, didn't run it. And later on that day I heard Wilderness had tipped over there the day before.
Steiger: Yeah.
Dale: Well, that guy didn't see the same thing I did, I guess.
Steiger: Yeah. I mean, he probably did, he just didn't see it, huh?
Dale: Now, I had seen the river runnin' about 50,000 when we were on a private trip in 1972. Little Colorado flooded 25,000. The river had 25,000. So I'd seen some stuff at 50,000.
But anyway, I think the thing that amazed me the most of that was when I drove into Granite.... [end of Master Tape 2, my cassette copy keeps goin'. (Tr.)]
Steiger: Okay, this is Tape 3, River Runners Oral History Project. Lew Steiger talkin' to O'Connor Dale in Kanab. It's October 12, 1998. This is Master Tape 3. We were back there in 1983, and you were headin' into Granite Narrows at 90,000.
Dale: Oh, yes! You know, I pulled into Tapeats Creek, and there was a private trip pulling out. I didn't pay too much attention, they pulled out. I pulled in there and had some lunch with my little group, and then pulled out. Just before I got to Granite Narrows, I looked over. It was like just below Helicopter Eddy, in one of those little eddies on the left shore, there was a boat in there that was upside down.
Steiger: In Helicopter Eddy?
Dale: Well, I think Helicopter Eddy isn't too much in good water -it's in low water that it gets a little gnarly. But I just looked over, they were there. I looked at 'em, I gave 'em a sign like, "Do you need help?" and they gave me the okay sign, "We're all right." But they must have flipped in Tapeats, pullin' out, and I never saw it. I just had my back to 'em as I pulled in. And that's the only place I figure they might have flipped.
Steiger: Yeah. Well, maybe [Outlaw?].
Dale: Yeah, maybe somethin' else down there. Who knows? This is a private trip. Who knows where they....
Steiger: Actually, I've had two flips. One of 'em was in Owl Eyes at 40,000. I don't know if it would have been like that at 90,000. But anyway, that's another story.
Dale: That's another story. But anyway, I turned around, after kinda conversin' with these people, went into Granite Narrows, and all of a sudden here was this current goin' from the left wall to the right wall -hard. And I pivoted my boat immediately, put my nose into it, and I was dead sideways, and it backed me up a little, probably about a foot off the right wall. I was headed straight to the left shore, full cob. I wasn't goin' anywhere. I was directly into the current.
Steiger: You're slowly backing into the wall?
Dale: I wasn't going back. I was at full cob, but I was a foot off the wall, and I wasn't gaining -at full speed. I stayed there for a few seconds, and thought, "I gotta start angling down." It looked bad enough to me, that if I went up against the wall sideways, it could flip me. So I held that angle and then ever so gently, cocked it to the right, the bow to the right a little, and then just angled at that angle, all the way to the big eddy where the bat cave is, and then it ended.
Steiger: (whistles) That was how far that current was goin'?
Dale: That's how far it went. And then I was thinking, "Good Lord, what's a rowing trip going to do here? They're history here." And I did hear there was a lot of cartwheeling going down that.
Steiger: A lot of scrapin' on that wall.
Dale: But I didn't hear about anybody goin' over. That amazed me, cause I thought even in a big rig, if you got pinned on that wall, you could go over.
Steiger: I guess there was some kind of "suck down" on the wall or something, Brad and those guys said, where you'd get on it, and then you could kinda like just push yourself along, where it wasn't trying to suck you upstream.
Dale: Like maybe a cushion comin' off or something?
Steiger: But like a reverse cushion or something -not like a cushion, like where it would push you off very good. I don't know.
Dale: It looked scary to me, and I was thinkin', "Man, I feel sorry for someone havin' to row off that wall, rowing."
Steiger: Especially in a dory.
Dale: Especially in a dory. They seemed to do okay, I talked to them. Well, right after we got off this trip....
Steiger: You guys went and did a dory....
Dale: We did a dory rescue.
Steiger: (laughs) How did that go?
Dale: That was bizarre, I'll tell you that.
Steiger: That was you and Stewart (Dale: Yeah.) rescuin' a motor snout?
Dale: Yeah.
Steiger: Now, what was the deal on that? They'd had a little trouble somewhere?
Dale: Colby [phonetic spelling] flipped in 24˝ Mile, (Steiger: Easy to do.) and just had a horrendous swim. He had four girls with him -one of 'em was the cook, Donna Katadi [phonetic spelling]. They all wanted out of the canyon (Steiger: That were with him?) that were with him.
Steiger: Including Donna Katadi?
Dale: Including Donna.
Steiger: "Get us outta here!"
Dale: The other three girls left at Little Colorado.
Steiger: That was it, man.
Dale: They wouldn't let Donna go, she was cookin'.
Steiger: That was how bad the swim was.
Dale: Freaked 'em. Freaked 'em out pretty good.
Steiger: I wonder how far they went. They must have gone a ways, huh?
Dale: Hard tellin'. I think they circled in the eddies for a while, too. Hard tellin', but they were freaked out, and they wanted out. So did Donna.
Anyway, I'd just gotten off the trip I was just tellin' you about. It was back in Kanab. Tuck Wyles [phonetic spelling] called me up and told me he was looking for a boat. He asked me if I would run a boat down and join the dories. He said, "It's not going good."
Steiger: "We want motor support."
Dale: And I said.... Actually, Martin had talked to Ron, or Tuck had talked to Ron, to rent a boat. I don't know how true this is: I heard Ron said, "Okay, $8,000," and they turned him down. So I told Tuck, I said, "I'll tell you what. I'll look around here. An ideal boat would be a snout boat. I'll look around here in the Page area. You look around elsewhere."
Steiger: So you felt like a snout boat would have been stable enough, you didn't have to worry about tippin' it over?"
Dale: Well, yeah, and very maneuverable if dories needed help and stuff like that. So I called Bill Diamond.
Steiger: ___ one of those, huh?
Dale: No. I told him what I wanted it for, he said no, he didn't want to help out Grand Canyon Dories or Martin Litton.
Steiger: Really?!
Dale: Yeah.
Steiger: No shit!
Dale: Yeah, there was some kind of....
Steiger: Was he still poutin' over the motor-rowing thing or something? But Martin wasn't bangin' a drum to get rid of motors.
Dale: Not too much, but I'm sure Martin was [END TAPE 3, SIDE A; BEGIN SIDE B] pro-oars. But Bill Diamond, I didn't know Bill. I met him a couple of times. But he just flat-out told me no. It shocked me. I told him we were gonna go help a trip in trouble, the dories. And I knew they had snouts.
Steiger: Yeah, good ones with motor transoms and everything.
Dale: Yeah. So anyway, I got off the river on a Sunday. This was like a Monday. I was due to go out the next week. A little later Tuck calls me back and said, "Stewart's got a boat at Lee's Ferry, rigged out, ready to go. I talked to him about rentin' it or payin' him to run the trip, and you." I said, "Okay." He said, "The boat's in the water, all ready to go. Stewart said he was gonna leave probably about between noon and two o'clock tomorrow afternoon." I said, "Okay." I called up Ron or Mark Smith, one of 'em, and told 'em I was doing this trip and I was baggin' out on my next motor trip, which they would have no trouble filling, you know. I drove down to Lee's Ferry the next day about noon. Took Roberta with me. I said, "You know, we'll be at Phantom tomorrow. Why don't you go?, and you can hike out." My uncle, Jim Bear, picked her up on the North Rim, hikin' out North Kaibab. "But," I said, "you oughtta see this water." And it was already droppin'. It had peaked at 90,000 and was down to 70,000 again. I was leavin' Lee's Ferry at the same water stage.
Steiger: And he had the big swim at 70,000? Or was that at 90,000? And then the water went down on 'em or somethin'? Like they must have sat for a day or two, huh?
Dale: Well, they had been moving downriver.
Steiger: I guess they could, once they're below.... If you flipped in 24˝.
Dale: They told us that Martin had flown over and talked to 'em, and Tuck told us they'd be somewhere above the gorge that night.
Steiger: But they got the girls out at the Little Colorado?
Dale: Yeah, that same morning.
Steiger: That same morning?!
Dale: Not the morning of the flip -the morning we joined 'em.
Steiger: Ah! Okay. They just got a special helicopter in there? They called for an evacuation?
Dale: It was an evacuation, fly 'em in anyway.
Steiger: Post-traumatic stress!
Dale: Scared shitless.
Steiger: Yeah. (laughter) I shouldn't laugh.
Dale: So Roberta and I drove down to Lee's Ferry. We got somebody to watch the kids for overnight. Stewart was there in a snout rig, grinnin', you know. We were lookin' forward to this.
Steiger: Yeah! (laughs)
Dale: Anyway, we left Lee's Ferry at two o'clock, punchin' it. He'd drive for an hour, then I'd drive for an hour. Anyway, we got to Redwall and we circled in Redwall. There was no sand in Redwall, we just went all around Redwall and back out. _______ had borrowed the boat from Mark Sleight, and the engines from Claire Quist. So as we went by Kwagunt, there was Mark Sleight. Mark Sleight was pulled up in there on the big beach down below Kwagunt. He was up in that little drainage in the shade -it was a hot day. So Stewart pulled in -we stopped there for a little bit -to tell Mark what we were doin', and Mark said fine, you know.
Steiger: Oh, he had borrowed it from Mark without Mark knowin' it?
Dale: Right. He had borrowed it from Mark just to go see the high water.
Steiger: Oh, okay, and then things had changed.
Dale: And then that's when Tuck got ahold of him. And Tuck paid both him and me Dory boatmen's wage for doin' this. So then off we go. We got to Little Colorado, I said, "Stewart, you gotta take Roberta up Little Colorado, 'cause that's unique in itself," 'cause you know, you run your boat up past the rapid where everybody swims. We're goin' up Little Colorado, there's a Hatch trip up there, parked -camped. It was Billy Ellwanger and maybe Scotty Davis -I forget who was there, but Ellwanger was there. They saw this white snout rig comin' up the river, they thought, "Park Service!"
Steiger: "We're toast!"
Dale: "We're toast." We pull in, they discover it's us, they're givin' us beer and whiskey and we're drinkin' it, you know. We're havin' a good time. Still plenty of daylight -you know, it's June. We'd been drinkin' beer all afternoon, too. Anyway, I tell Ellwanger....
Steiger: Gettin' into the spirit of this solemn occasion! (laughs)
Dale: Yeah! Anyway, I tell Ellwanger, "Ellwanger, you're okay camped here." He said, "Why is that?" I said, "You're more than a mile from the mouth. That's the rule." He goes, "Yeah, that's right!" They didn't say anything about it bein' upriver. Anyway, they tell us Jimmy Hall's down the road a way. So we leave them and head out, get back in the river, head on down. We come across Jimmy's camp, pull in there, and we're pretty shit-faced by now. I'm standin' up on the front of the beavertail as Stewart's pullin' in. He bumps Jimmy's boat, I go in the river, Stewart runs me over. (laughter)
Steiger: Oh, no! Yeah, "We're down here to rescue the dories." Oh, shit! So he didn't see you?
Dale: Oh, no, I mean, I grabbed ahold of the strap or somethin'. He just went.... And Jimmy gives us some beer and more whiskey. I think he's about at Carbon, and he tells us the dories are just below Tanner, so we figure we've got a little time. So we hung out with Jimmy for a while, drank more beer and whiskey, got back on the boat, goin' down. It's just getting dusk, it's probably about eight o'clock at night, or 7:30. I mean, we left Lee's Ferry at two. The dories are all parked along that rock bank. They're camped out up above, and they all come out on the beach. The whole group comes out on the beach, and they are somber. They are pretty somber.
Steiger: Colby is, of course. I can just picture it. He's real somber himself. (laughs)
Dale: Anyway, Stewart plows into the rocks, I fall down again. I jump off the boat and fall. Stewart says, (drunkenly) "We're here to rescue you!" Oh, shit! Anyway, Donna Katadi. She comes down and throws her bags on the snout rig.
Steiger: Right away! (laughter)
Dale: Anyway, they saved a little dinner for us, we ate. I guess Martin flew over and told 'em we were comin'. And the next day, [we] headed down to Phantom and Roberta hikes out, and the dories didn't have a bit of problem. It kept droppin' a little bit every day. I think it was about 70,000 that day. Martin told 'em 70,000. But they dropped it to 60,000, I believe, and kept it at 60,000 for a little while. But the dories didn't have any trouble. The group dynamics were stranger than any trip I've ever seen. The crew was quiet, the guests were quiet.
Steiger: You and Stewart were kinda on your own.
Dale: Stewart and I were on our own.
Steiger: Donna -did she jump on with you?
Dale: She rode with us for a while. I switched boats for Kenton for the middle Granite Gorge.
Steiger: So he must have just been back from his speed run.
Dale: Yes.
Steiger: He was kinda beat to shit, then.
Dale: He passed me that first night I camped at [Mile] 23 on the trip before. He went by me sometime....
Steiger: Yeah, he went by me almost at Mohawk, the one and only time I ever camped there.
Dale: The next day. (Steiger: Yeah.) Probably the same day. He left at midnight, so probably the same day he went by you at Mohawk and I was at 23 Mile. I didn't see him, of course. I didn't even know he was launchin' -I heard later.
But it was kind of a strange trip. We didn't really fit in with the group. It just wasn't a lot of....
Steiger: Were those three girls the only ones who left?
Dale: They had gone out that morning at Little Colorado.
Steiger: They were just not interested.
Dale: Yeah, that swim scared 'em bad. Must have been a hard one.
Steiger: Yeah.
Dale: But anyway, it was kind of a strange trip. Reedy and Ken Lee [phonetic spelling] were on it, and I think Vincent, Kenton -Donna was cooking.
Steiger: Oh, Colby wasn't leadin' it? Was Kenton leadin' it then?
Dale: I believe Kenton was leadin' it. And Colby, of course. I mean, like after dinner everybody grabbed their shit and disappeared. Breakfast was "solemn as a funeral" as Powell would have written. Every morning, start the day....
Steiger: I remember hearin' about it, and hearin' that you guys went to rescue 'em, just laughin' about that.
Dale: Stewart and I just kinda hung out. We'd get below rapids and wait. But everybody had good runs, no problem. Nobody had any problems.
Steiger: Yeah, that was a wild year, though. Man.
Dale: Yes, 1984 too. Didn't it go up to 80,000 in 1984?
Steiger: I can't remember. I was doin' it.
Dale: For a while it went up there for a little bit. I just remember that it was interesting to see that high water, but I wouldn't enjoy runnin' it very much.
Steiger: I was drivin' a cotton boat -the last cotton boat that ARR had -they had these old wood frames. Every now and then you're worried about puttin' the frame through the boat, you know if you hit something really big. So I was runnin' pretty....
Dale: Conservative?
Steiger: Yeah. I remember drivin' around a lot of really big shit. Kind of disappointing people.
Dale: Some places, you really couldn't miss stuff. I remember Hance got huge. Do you remember 192 and 194 Mile at that high water? They were like Hermit. Both of 'em, 192 and 194 -huge!
Steiger: God, I don't.
Dale: Huge standing waves, consistent. That blew me out. Those were huge. Most stuff got washed out. Actually, rapids was a chance to take a break, just that fast water without boils. You could rest in rapids.
Steiger: Well, it's easier to think what Georgie was thinkin' when she designed her big rig. You know, like she designed it with that water in mind.
Dale: Yeah, it might of been. I'd like to -you know, we were talking about the quality of trips and guiding. One thing I'd like to mention was every fall I'd go up and run with Fastwater Expeditions, sportyak trips with Bill Belknap, and most of his summer crew would be goin' back to school. I'd go up every fall and do a trip or two, and those trips, Lew, they were just really incredibly good trips.
Steiger: A sportyak is a little plastic orange bathtub that's about seven feet long?
Dale: Well, it was six-and-a-half-foot oars.
Steiger: And everybody gets their own boat.
Dale: Everybody rows their own boat.
Steiger: I did one of those, too. I thought it was terrific.
Dale: I actually didn't like the sportyak 2, I liked what was called the sportyak 3. It was a bigger, more square.... I would carry a big meat cooler, like an [eighty got?] cooler, firepan, shovel -what Bill called "hardware" -the dirty iron -you know, firepans and stuff.
Steiger: In a raft?
Dale: In this sportyak.
Steiger: Oh, no kiddin'?
Dale: I'd carry a radio, a tool kit, and a first-aid kit, small [twenty meals?]. Not twenty meals, but the....
Steiger: Yeah, the tall fifties?
Dale: What the standard box you give your guests, that size. I put three of those down and put a cushion on top, sit there, and it was a great boat. I didn't like the sportyak 2.
Steiger: Too little for you?
Dale: Too little for me. But the sportyak 3, I wanted to take it down Grand in low water. But I didn't really care for the sportyak 2 -I only rowed the sportyak 3. And Bill's brochure said, "Why should guides have all the fun?" And people rowed their own boat. He was very thorough on teachin' 'em. The river starts out the first twenty miles is flat water.
Steiger: Perfect for teachin' 'em.
Dale: And then you start runnin' rapids. He always thought Steer Ridge Rapid was a little too quick for 'em, which it was, it was a horrendous rapid. My mother had an exciting story in there. She got pinned on a rock.
Steiger: It's like the only real one down there, isn't it? Or is it?
Dale: No, there's some good rapids, but they come down lower. Steer Ridge jumps in pretty quick.
Steiger: I don't remember. I only did this one trip ___________ and we didn't have a bad experience there. I remembered....
Dale: It's a pretty low-key river.
Steiger: Well, I remember it bein' just right. By the time they got to the harder stuff, they were more ready for it.
Dale: Right. And Bill would stop and diagram rapids or scout 'em. He had exercises for 'em to do.
Steiger: Oh, training exercises?
Dale: Yeah, like figure 8s from eddy to eddy across the river and stuff. Just get 'em used to (Steiger: Current.) current and feelin' the oars and what the oars did when you pushed or pulled on 'em. And leavin' Sand Wash there, I always was amazed, 'cause these people, you know, looked like they were tryin' to beat the water to death with their oars. I remember I'd always kinda row up next to Bill and think, "God, Bill, how are we gonna get this batch through?!" But by the end of the trip, they were reading water, puttin' their boat where they wanted to. Real satisfying trip. They did the cooking, they had cook teams and they did the cooking.
Steiger: You know, isn't there any way we could do something like that in the Grand Canyon? Or is there? Is it just too gnarly?
Dale: (laughs) I don't think so.
Steiger: Just too crazy? There isn't the right craft for it? I mean, obviously, a sportyak wouldn't be it. I just mean the participation thing. I mean, I like a paddle trip -I've never run one, but theoretically I like it. (laughs)
Dale: I like it too, and I've never run one -not in Grand. I've run a paddle boat in Desolation.
Steiger: But, I mean, you observe.... I've been on one at the GTSs, and I think they're fun for that reason, because you gotta get involved. I actually think that for our success, that we'd be smart in the commercial sector to put as much participation into it as we could.
Dale: Probably a paddle boat is probably the only way you could do it. Or those little Tahitis, or little two-man inflatable kayaks that people can run in easier water. Yeah, you couldn't....
Steiger: Well, I guess those orange torpedo guys do it. Have you seen those guys?
Dale: Yeah, but not in Grand.
Steiger: Yeah, I've seen 'em in Grand.
Dale: Who do they send 'em with?
Steiger: They go through with Tour West.
Dale: Really?!
Steiger: They do. I've seen 'em a couple of times -those Surveilors [phonetic spelling].
Dale: Sevlers?
Steiger: Which are kind of cheesy, even.
Dale: Well, I didn't realize that.
Steiger: That'd be nerve-wracking.
Dale: I don't see how you could do it in Grand. I mean, you can't say, "Okay, everybody pull over here. This is Crystal, we're gonna walk down and show you what you should do here."
Steiger: (laughs) No, you'd say, "Everybody pull over. This is Crystal. Now, this is where you pick your boat up and you carry it."
Dale: Carry it around.
Steiger: No, I don't know. But I know what you're talkin' about. _______ trip.
Dale: They were just very satisfying trips. It was kind of neat to watch at the end of the day, people are up talkin' about their runs in certain places -instead of just guides.
Steiger: Yeah, "why should guides have all the fun?" Pretty good. He must have been a pretty sharp guy, old Belknap.
Dale: Yeah. And he used to run unsupported sportyak trips, but his clientele changed, too, although he'd screen the people really good. But these trips in the fall that I would do with him, they were Smithsonian trips, and Smithsonian wouldn't screen like Bill would, and we had a little bit of trouble where people....
Steiger: Would be in over their heads?
Dale: Way over their heads. We had one guy on a trip who was a little mentally retarded. We had a tough time with him. So Bill started runnin' support boats, and like my father, Ebin, came up and rowed a support boat through there. Roberta did, and just different people.
Steiger: But your mom had a bad time?
Dale: She did one sportyak trip and I don't really know. Bill wasn't on the trip. He had had a shoulder problem one year. I guess they gave the folks an option of an easier run as far as waves and stuff, but it dealt with big boulders.
Steiger: She smacked one?
Dale: She got pinned on one. Probably her head and shoulders were out of the water.
Steiger: She herself was pinned?
Dale: She was pinned for about a half-hour. It was pretty scary.
Steiger: No kiddin'?! You mean not in the boat, but....
Dale: The boat was pinned there, too. I think she was ________. I wasn't there, so I don't know, but I just didn't like the idea of givin' -you know, you stay out in the main current you might flip or bump off a rock or go through a hole or whatever (Steiger: Big deal.) but you're not dealing with these big boulders. So that was a rough one for her. They went up on a trip.
Steiger: Well, I guess we're about.... How you doin' here?
Dale: Good. Let's take a break.
Steiger: Yeah.
[END OF INTERVIEW]