CHAPTER VI. HELL'S HALF MILE

We began our work the next morning where we left off the night before by bringing the remaining boat down along the edge of the "Triplets." Then, while Emery cooked the breakfast, Jimmy and I "broke camp." The beds came first. The air had been released from the mattresses before we got up, - one way of saving time. A change of dry clothing was placed with each bed, and they were rolled as tightly as the two of us could do it, after which they were strapped, placed in a rubber sack, with a canvas sack over that, both these sacks being laced at the top. The tent - one of those so-called balloon silk compositions - made a very small roll; the dark-room tent, with its three plies of cloth, made the largest bundle of the lot. Everything had been taken from the boats, and made quite a pile of dunnage, when it was all collected in a pile ready for loading. After the dishes were washed they were packed in a box, the smoke-covered pots and pans being placed in a sack. Everything was sorted and piled before the loading commenced. An equal division of nearly everything was made, so that the loss of one boat and its cargo would only partially cripple the expedition. The photographic plates and films, in protecting canvas sacks, were first disposed of, being stored in the tin-lined hatches in the bow of the boats. Two of the smaller rolls containing bedding, or clothing; a sack of flour, and half of the cameras completed the loads for the forward compartments. Five or six tin and wooden boxes, filled with provisions, went into the large compartments under the stern. A box containing tools and hardware for the inevitable repairs, and the weightier provisions - such as canned milk and canned meats - went in first. This served as ballast for the boats. Then the other provisions followed, the remaining rolls of bedding and tents being squeezed in on top. This compartment, with careful packing, would hold as much as two ordinary-sized trunks, but squeezing it all in through the small hatchway, or opening on top, was not an easy job. One thing we guarded very carefully from this time on was a waterproofed sack containing sugar. The muddy water had entered the top of this sack in our upset, and a liquefied sugar, or brown-coloured syrup, was used in our coffee and on our breakfast foods after that. It gradually dried out, and our emptied cups would contain a sediment of mud in the bottom.

Such was our morning routine, although it was not often that everything was taken from the boats, and it only happened in this case because we made a portage the night before.

Our work was all undone an hour later, when we came to the sharp descent known as Hell's Half Mile, A section of a cliff had fallen from above, and was shattered into a hundred fragments, large and small; gigantic rocks were scattered on both shores and through the river bed, not an orderly array of rocks such as that found at Ashley Falls, but a riotous mass, looking as though they had been hurled from the sky above. The stripped trunk of an eight-foot tree, with roots extending over the river, had been deposited by a recent flood on top of the principal barrier. All this was found about fifty yards below the beginning of the most violent descent in Lodore Canyon. It would have been difficult enough without this last complication; the barrier seemed next to insurmountable, tired and handicapped with heavy boats as we were.

With a weary sigh we dropped our boats to the head of the rapid and prepared to make the portage. Our previous work was as nothing to this. Rounded limestone boulders, hard as flint and covered with a thin slime of mud from the recent rise, caused us to slip and fall many times. Then we dragged ourselves and loads up the sloping walls. They were cut with gullies from the recent rains; low scraggy cedars caught at our loads, or tore our clothes, as we staggered along; the muddy earth stuck to our shoes, or caused our feet to slip from under us as we climbed, first two or three hundred feet above the water, then close to the river's edge. Three-fourths of a mile of such work brought us a level place below the rapid. It took nine loads to empty one boat.

Darkness came on before our boats were emptied, so they were securely tied in quiet water at the head of the rapid, and left for the morning.

The next day found Emery and me at work on the boats, while Jimmy was stationed on the shore with the motion-picture camera. This wild scene, with its score of shooting currents, was too good a view to miss. With life-preservers inflated and adjusted, Emery sat in the boat at the oars, pulling against the current, lessening the velocity with which the boat was carried down toward the main barrier, while I followed on the shore, holding a rope, and dropped him down, a little at a time, until the water became too rough and the rocks too numerous. All directions were given with signals; the human voice was of little avail in the turmoil. We kept the boats in the water as long as it was safe to do so, for it greatly lessened the hard work of a portage. With one end of the boat floating on the water, an ordinary lift would take the other end over a rock with insufficient water above it to float the boat. Then the boat was balanced on the rock, the opposite end was lifted, she was shoved forward and dropped in the water again and another threatening rock was passed. Foot by foot we fought our way, now on the shore, now waist deep in the water below some protecting boulder, threatened every moment by the whirling water that struggled to drag us into the torrent. The sand and water collecting in our clothes weighted us down; the chill of standing in the cold water numbed our limbs. Finally the barrier was reached and the boats were run out close to the end, and tied in a quiet pool, while we devised some method of getting them past or over this obstruction.

Directly underneath and beyond the roots of the tree were large rounded boulders, covered with slippery mud. Past this barrier the full force of the water raced, to hurl itself and divide its current against another rock. It was useless to try to take a boat around the end of the rock. The boat's sides, three-eighths of an inch thick, would be crushed like a cardboard box. If lifted into the V-shaped groove, the weight of the boats would wedge them and crush their sides. Fortunately an upright log was found tightly wedged between these boulders. A strong limb, with one end resting on a rock opposite, was nailed to this log; a triangle of stout sticks, with the point down, was placed opposite this first limb, on the same level, and was fastened to the upright log with still another piece; and another difficulty was overcome.

With a short rope fastened to the iron bar or hand-hold on the stern, this end was lifted on to the cross-piece, the bow sticking into the water at a sharp angle. The short rope was tied to the stump, so we would not lose that we had gained. The longer rope from the bow was thrown over the roots of the tree above, then we both pulled on the rope, until finally the bow was on a level with the stern. She was pulled forward, the ropes were loosened and the boat rested on the cross-pieces. The motion-picture camera was transferred so as to command a view of the lower side of the barrier, then the boat was carefully tilted, and slid forward, a little at a time, until she finally gained headway, nearly jerking the rope from our hands, and shot into the pool below.

We enjoyed the wildest ride we had experienced up to this time in running the lower end of this rapid. The balance of the day was spent in the same camp below the rapid. Our tent was put up in a group of box elder trees, - the first trees of this species we had seen. Red cedar trees dotted the rocky slopes, while the larger pines became scarce at the river's edge, and gathered near the top of the canyon's walls. The dark red rocks near the bottom were covered with a light blue-tinted stratum of limestone, similar to the fallen rocks found in the rapid above. In one land-slide, evidently struck with some rolling rock, lay the body of a small deer. We saw many mountain sheep tracks, but failed to see the sheep. Many dead fish, their gills filled with the slimy mud from the recent rise, floated past us, or lay half buried in the mud. These things were noticed as we went about our duties, for we were too weary to do any exploring.

The next morning, Monday, October the 2d saw us making arrangements for the final run that would take us out of Lodore Canyon. No doubt it was a beautiful and a wonderful place, but none of us seemed sorry to leave it behind. For ten days we had not had a single day entirely free from rain, and instead of having a chance to run rapids, it seemed as if we had spent an entire week in carrying our loads, or in lining our boats through the canyon. The canyon walls lost much of their precipitous character as we neared the end of the canyon.

A short run took us over the few rapids that remained, and at a turn ahead we saw a 300-foot ridge, brilliantly tinted in many colours, - light and golden yellows, orange and red, purple and lavender, - and composed of numberless wafer-like layers of rock, uptilted, so that the broken ends looked like the spines of a gigantic fish's back. A sharp turn to the left soon brought us to the end of this ridge, close to the bottom of a smooth, sheer wall. Across a wide, level point of sand we could see a large stream, the Yampa River, flowing from the East to join its waters with those of the Green. This was the end of Lodore Canyon.