| Wes Boyd's Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
|
| Wes Boyd's Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
Chapter 12
Now what the hell? Duane wondered as he saw Michelle vomiting over the side tube of her raft. He heaved on the oars to set his raft up to get closer to her; in seconds he was there. “You all right, Michelle?” he asked from a few feet away.
“Yeah, I guess so,” she said in a subdued manner. “I don’t know what happened. I was fine there for a minute or so after the run, and then all of a sudden, well, I just couldn’t hold it.”
“You sure you’re going to be all right?” he asked. “I could have Erika row for you until we stop to scout Hermit.”
“No, I’ll be all right,” she protested. “I feel better now that I’m rid of breakfast.” She got a smile on her face and added, “You just had to make your damn scrambled eggs again this morning, didn’t you?”
“Huh?” he replied, then remembered her wisecrack from the morning before. “Next morning, over easy, I promise.”
“That’ll help,” she smiled. “Give me another minute or two and then we can get going. I’ll be all right.”
Duane really wanted to get her off to the side and talk to her, because her saying that she felt fine except for her stomach being a little rocky and blowing her cookies at the bottom of the rapids a few minutes before didn’t equate to “fine” in his mind. Something wasn’t making sense, but right now wasn’t the time to explore it. “OK,” he said reluctantly, “we’ll see how it goes.”
Fortunately it wasn’t far to Hermit, where once again they stopped to scout the rapids; some of the customers got out to look, too, and most agreed that while it looked bad it wasn’t anything to worry about. That was fine with Duane, since he had something else to worry about.
At the first opportunity he got Michelle off to the side and asked, “You’re sure you’re OK?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “I don’t know what it was, but as soon as I got breakfast overboard I was fine. I don’t think there’s anything seriously wrong with me. I’ll be fine, Duane. Really I will. It’s just this damn bug, whatever it is. I should be able to throw it off. It wasn’t as bad this morning as it was yesterday at the bottom of Hance.”
“Well, all right,” he sighed. “Just don’t cover anything up. If there’s something wrong, I want to know. I love you, Michelle, and I don’t want you risking yourself if you’re not feeling up to par.”
“Like I said, Duane, I’ll be fine,” she replied. “Whatever it is, it can’t be anything major.”
Duane wasn’t happy about it, but really, there was nothing he could do. Boatmen got sick on the river from time to time, and mostly they toughed it out until they got over it. It had happened to him a couple of times, and usually he hadn’t said anything about it, except on occasions when he’d had a cold and had spent most of the trip hacking and sneezing his way down the river. That couldn’t be covered up, and he had gotten better before the trip was over with.
But the example of Dan Plemmons wasn’t far from his mind either. Several years before Dan had started a trip not feeling real good but not willing to louse up the schedule by complaining about it. The story was that he hadn’t gotten any better, and farther downriver than this trip was now he’d collapsed into unconsciousness. Fortunately Preach was on the trip and was an EMT; while Preach didn’t know what was wrong with Dan, he had realized it was serious. They’d had to get out the satphone and call a helicopter to fly him out. It proved that Dan had a brain tumor and had to have emergency surgery. The doctors – and Al – hadn’t let him back on the river since, which is why he worked in the office.
This didn’t seem nearly that bad, and Duane realized he was probably overreacting, making a mountain out of a molehill, mainly because he cared for Michelle as much as he did. “Well, all right,” he said finally. “Let’s run this sucker and see how you feel below. Maybe I’d better take point this time.”
As it turned out, they ran Hermit without any problems. Duane held up near the bottom of the rapids until Michelle came through, running sweep, and she just gave him a little wave to signal that she was doing fine.
It was three more miles to Crystal Rapids, and Duane spent much of the time mentally reviewing his options, not that he really had any. Whatever was wrong with Michelle didn’t seem anything like serious enough to call for a helicopter to get her out of the Canyon. The thing that made him nervous was that if something was wrong, he didn’t have much backup if she had to leave the trip. The next good place to get a replacement boatman sent down was somewhere around where he planned to end the day, the Bass Trail about twelve miles downriver. But if he were to use the satphone to call the office, it was probably too late already to get Al to send a replacement hiking down the Bass. It was a long hike, Duane knew well – he’d hiked out from a trip there once. The next chance would be at Havasu Creek, many miles downriver and an even longer hike in for a replacement. Michelle had done that once, to replace Dan when he’d had to be flown out.
At least if things went to hell and he had to call a helicopter – which didn’t seem likely, at least yet – there was another option laying there. Crystal and Preach had used it when Dan collapsed, and it had occasionally been used for training boatmen who weren’t quite ready to take passengers. When that happened, they’d redistributed the gear on the rafts, leaving one gear-heavy and the rest passenger-heavy. Duane was a little doubtful that Erika was ready to run a gear boat yet, but it could be done – after all, she had more experience than the swamper who had rowed the gear boat for a few days after Dan collapsed. It was a desperate solution, and fortunately Duane didn’t think it would be needed.
Most likely, he thought, there was nothing really wrong with Michelle and she’d shake this problem pretty soon. But still, it worried him all the way down to where they pulled into the landing above Crystal to scout the place out.
Though they might sometimes skip scouting some of the other big-ten rapids, especially later in the season, they always stopped to scout Crystal, since it changed a lot at different water levels, though it was always tough. As he had told the group the night before, Crystal was both big and went on for a long ways. At some water levels there was a way to avoid the worst of it by sneaking down along the right shore, but it was almost never done. After all, the point of running Crystal was to run it, to say that you’d done it the hard way and survived.
Most of the customers climbed up on the rock pile with the crew to look it over. It looked about as bad as ever to Duane, maybe a little bit less intimidating than Hance but almost always tougher. There was some brief discussion of the route to take, places to avoid, but it was one of those rapids you didn’t want to look at too long because it was just going to make you more nervous the more you looked at it. The thing to do, Duane knew, was to pick out your line, then go run it.
As they worked their way back to the boats once again, Duane got Michelle off to the side. “You doing all right?” he asked.
“Just fine,” she reported. “I didn’t have any problem with Hermit at all, and I shouldn’t here.”
“Well, all right, your call,” he shrugged. “Just suggesting, but you might not want to get too extreme here, just in case.”
“I already figured that,” she replied. “Like I said earlier, I don’t think whatever I have is anything to worry about. I haven’t had a trace of it since we left Granite. It’s just a bug, Duane. I’ve had worse on the river.”
“Yeah, I know,” he sighed. “But it’s got me a little nervous, that’s all.”
“Crystal is no place to worry about anything but Crystal, you know that,” she smiled. “Let’s get this over with. The next few days will be pretty easy, and I ought to be able to shake whatever this is in that time.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed. “Just to be on the safe side, let’s inspect all the boats before we start the run, and make sure the passengers all have their PFDs snugged up tight. I’ll take point again so I’ll be below to catch anyone if they come loose.”
In what seemed like seconds – or hours – they were out in the rafts again, with Duane pulling hard to set up his approach. It was fast, but a routine whitewater tongue, he knew he could handle that, but then came the heart-stopping drop, and heavy water, boiling cold, and there wasn’t much he could do but try to keep the raft heading downstream through the gaping white cauldron of the hole. In an instant they were riding big white water, water that grew even whiter, even angrier as the waves mounted higher. At first the flow held straight, then it swung right and carried the raft with it. The waves were huge and hostile now, encompassing them, and there seemed no clear distinction between the raging whiteness outside the raft and inside it . . . then they were dropping as the white chaos still rampaged around them. They splashed through it on sheer momentum, the raft full of water, but most of it drained right out again as they went up and up and over the backroller, down into the next one, out again . . . all of a sudden, it began to ease. Then it was over with, they were through the whitewater, into the calm below that was like the stillness following a tornado. He pivoted the boat to pull into the easy water, and fetched up in an eddy to wait for the other rafts to make their runs.
Though they might have crowded the interval a little in other rapids, they made sure not to here; Duane had told everyone to visually see that the raft ahead of them had completed its run before the next boat started. That meant that it was a couple minutes, minimum, between runs, but at least the next runs were clean, if wet.
Michelle was the last one to go, and Duane turned his eyes upriver to watch. He only got a glimpse of her pushing away from shore, and then in what seemed like an instant she was riding down the cauldron of water. Really, there was no need to worry about this, he thought; she’d done it lots before, almost a hundred times more than he had. But that didn’t keep him from worrying as her blue raft bounced up and down as it made its way down the river. Finally, she was down in the lower part of the run; she’d made it, clean as always if not quite the thrill ride she usually managed here.
The little group of rafts clustered together in the eddy at the bottom, with everybody in good spirits from having completed one of the real tests of the trip. “Everybody all right?” Duane called. He got a chorus of positive responses, even from some of the people who had been Nervous Nellies up above Hance.
“All right,” he replied. “Let’s take a couple minutes to get everything wrung out, and then get moving. We’re going to run a couple miles with some minor rapids, then take out for lunch. We should all be able to get pretty dried out then. That’ll give everybody a little time to polish their tall tales about running Crystal.”
The river was moving right along, and it didn’t take them long to get where they were going, an otherwise nameless place the Canyon Tours crews called “Baseball Man” from some ancient rock art up a side canyon. The White Team usually stopped there for the night if it was anywhere within reach, although Duane was of the opinion that the site was about as small as he cared to put a party as big as this. Worse, there was a stream running through it that had a tendency to flash flood, although there seemed little danger of it today – there wasn’t a hint of a thunderstorm anywhere in the sky, and they usually brewed up a little later in the day, anyway.
However, that didn’t keep Duane from using the place as a good lunch stop. It had a nice, easy hike to a pool and waterfall, and a short but somewhat more difficult one involving some climbing up to the native rock art. It was a fine place to wring out after Crystal and the rest of Adrenaline Alley, and lunch stops there usually went to the long side.
They had a leisurely lunch of cold-cut sandwiches, and yes, there were some tales from the passengers about running Crystal. After that, Terry and Erika led a short hike up the nearly dry little creek, while Barbie and Brett led the more adventurous up the rock scramble to the rock art. However, as always some of the passengers were content to just loll around on the beach, and this time Duane and Michelle were right among them, although just sitting together on his raft so they could talk again.
“I haven’t had any problems since up at Granite,” Michelle reported. “I’m thinking that whatever happened this morning had to be a combination of whatever this bug is and having to hit real big water right after breakfast. That was what happened up at Hance yesterday, too.”
“Well, you’re probably right,” he agreed. “But just thinking ahead, we can avoid having to make big drops right after breakfast, at least for the next few days and probably for the rest of the trip.”
“I’d appreciate that,” she nodded. “Jeez, barfing on the first rapids of the morning two days in a row. You know that’s going to go up and down the Canyon among the boatmen, and what the hell is that going to do to my reputation?”
“Well, maybe it’ll get people to thinking that you really are human after all,” he grinned, feeling a little better about things. Maybe all the worry this morning had been for nothing.
After a while the hikers got back. By then the lunch stuff had been torn down and reloaded on the rafts, so there was little time wasted in getting going. “For the rest of the afternoon we’re going to run a little hard,” he told the group. “We’re heading off into an area where there are not a lot of camps for the next several miles. The best thing to do is to get it over with and hope that we can get into one of the better ones in the next area where there are several. A lot of motor rigs start their Adrenaline Alley runs up above Hance, where we were yesterday morning, and run clear down there in one day, so getting a good site isn’t a sure thing. I personally think they miss a lot doing it that way, but it’s not my decision to make. I’m sure Brett can tell you more about that if he’s of a mind to.”
“I think they do, too,” Brett replied, and added what was a long statement for him: “But it’s not my decision to make, either, and usually they have to get a lot of miles on since the trips are so many days shorter but the distance doesn’t change.”
“Anyway,” Duane continued, a little amazed at Brett’s verbosity, “we need to get moving, and we probably won’t take a rest stop unless we have to. The rapids the rest of the day aren’t anything much to write home about, so I think we can get by without scouting them. Let’s saddle up and ride.”
Below Baseball Man the character of the trip subtly changed. Duane didn’t mention it to the passengers, but the crew was aware of it.
While the Grand Canyon is scenic and spectacular everywhere, it was the opinion of many that the best scenery, most spectacular views and most adventurous river running lie in the first hundred miles of the 226 mile trip down to the takeout at Diamond Creek. Most trip leaders acknowledge that fact, and tend to run their trips a little slow in the first hundred miles or thereabouts, so they can spend more time there and do a few more things. In the case of the Gold Team’s first trip, that meant the team was about a day behind where they ought to be if they had tried to run each day equally.
The only solution was to pick up the pace for the rest of the trip. It was hardly noticeable; they only had to pick up another two or three miles per day, perhaps an extra hour a day on the water, more than that in areas where the current was relatively slower. It was part of the reason Duane decided to push a little harder that first afternoon out of Baseball Man.
As luck would have it, they were beaten to the campsite that Duane wanted most, the one at the Bass trailhead, and by a motor rig trip that passed them in the last twenty minutes or so. No great loss; there was a perfectly acceptable campsite perhaps half a mile farther on. The only other down side to the place was that once again they’d have a rapids to run as soon as they got in the boats in the morning. However, this one was a tiddler by comparison to places like Hance and Granite, so Duane hoped it wouldn’t cause Michelle any problems.
Due to the length of the run they got in a little on the late side, although with time for a short hike up the creek. The hikers got back right about the time dinner was ready, and they had a good fire in the evening, with some more Adrenaline Alley stories being told. That evening, as Duane and Michelle lay cuddled together in their doubled sleeping bag with the muted sound of the rapids in the background, she told him that she hadn’t had any more problems with her stomach all day long, and that she hoped the worst was over with.
Over breakfast the next morning, Duane announced, “OK, I mentioned to Barbie that we’ve got to do some training to get her ready to be an assistant trip leader, so for practical purposes she’s going to do the job most of the time for the rest of the trip. That means, Michelle, you’re going to be running with the rest of the rafts, and Barbie and I will trade off taking point and sweep. Barbie, I think I’ll let you run point this morning. Along about mid-morning we’re going to hit Waltenberg, and that’s the only halfway-difficult rapids we’re going to see today, and nothing like what we saw yesterday. It’s your call whether we get out to scout it or not.”
“It’s OK,” Barbie said. “I can handle it. I’ll get a look at it from the raft before I make up my mind, so give me a little room when we get close.”
“Fine with me,” Michelle smiled. “It’s what we agreed on, after all.”
Before they got in the rafts, Michelle admitted to Duane that her stomach was still a little queasy, but nothing like as bad as it had been the day before. In any case, with the light breakfast she’d eaten, the small rapids they faced wasn’t enough to put her hanging over the side tube again, and Duane was happy. Maybe she was getting over this problem, whatever it was, he thought.
All in all it was a pretty lazy day, after some of the busy ones that had preceded it. They stopped for lunch at Elves Chasm, where a pretty little stream wound down through some greenery. They had a nice hike up to a scenic arch, then got back in the rafts and drifted on downstream. They ended the day at a camp just below Blacktail Rapids, another small one; it had been a good day, without any extra thrills or worries.
The next day they faced several moderately serious rapids, about the level of Waltenberg: Fossil, Specter, Deubendorff, and finally Tapeats; they spent the night at a site just below the last one, and once again spent the night with the whisper of the river in their ears. That evening Michelle admitted that she’d again felt a little upset stomach in the morning, but it hadn’t amounted to anything.
The next morning they made a brief run to Deer Creek Falls, which had another nice hike that took some time. Duane and Michelle just found a sunny spot and spent the time quietly together. She admitted that again she’d felt a little queasy, but wasn’t sure if it was anything real or just the memory of the fact that she’d felt less than perfect the last few mornings. The rapids that day were all pretty minor, except for the last mile when they had to go through Upset, which was a top ten for difficulty, one of the last ones they’d face. Duane let Barbie lead that one, as well, and they made it through routinely with no problems.
Below Upset was an area where there were few camps, but they got lucky and found one right below the rapids while it was still a little early in the day. It was kind of a cramped spot without any possibility of major hikes, but at this point on the river they pretty well had to go for the bird in the hand.
By the next day Michelle’s stomach problem had receded far enough into Duane’s mind that he didn’t even ask about it. Apparently it was over with. They made a long stop at Havasu Creek, and most of the party took a hike up the creek. Virtually everyone took the opportunity to take a swim in the warm waters of the creek, much more comfortable than the still-cold river; for most it counted as a bath. Once the hike was over with, they drifted on to Tuckup Canyon where they spent the night.
The next day was a relatively peaceful drift on through the Canyon, but with a big coda at the end of it: Lava Falls, the last big rapids of the trip, and many said the worst drop of all. Originally Duane had plans to run Lava at the end of the day, but as the day wore on he felt that people were a little tired and off-key, not a good thing for a place like that. It would be better to hit the place when everyone was fresh, and maybe keyed up for it a little. Not even thinking of his decision a few days earlier to avoid big drops the first thing in the morning, he pulled the group into a campsite about half a mile upstream of Lava. When he explained his decision up on shore, most people agreed with it, even Michelle.
