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Kenton Grua: Grand Canyon Legend · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:01
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
1:04
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
1:06
Speaker 1: should know.
1:08
Speaker 3: That's right.
1:09
Speaker 1: Life is a highway. I want to arrive in all
1:12
Speaker 1: night long, not again down the.
1:14
Speaker 3: River Canadian legend Tom broke off. That's right. No, it's
1:20
Speaker 3: not right.
1:20
Speaker 2: But hey, we want to welcome yet another new writer
1:26
Speaker 2: that's helping us out. Welcome Anna, because Anna helped us
1:30
Speaker 2: with this and Anna Green and I thought this. She
1:34
Speaker 2: did a really good job. And we hope Ana can
1:37
Speaker 2: write some more stuff for us in the future. And
1:40
Speaker 2: I could have sworn this was a listener suggestion, and
1:45
Speaker 2: I looked and I just could not find it. So
1:47
Speaker 2: if someone suggested that we do a show on a
1:50
Speaker 2: gentleman named Kenton Grua who was a Grand Canyon river guide,
1:56
Speaker 2: pretty remarkable person, then I'm really sorry because I really
1:59
Speaker 2: I looked and looked there em but I just couldn't
2:00
Speaker 2: find it. So that was nice. Yeah, if you want
2:03
Speaker 2: to write in and say, hey, that was me, I'll
2:06
Speaker 2: check it against my records and we'll give you a
2:08
Speaker 2: future shot out.
2:10
Speaker 1: Also, I got to give Anna the coronation. You ready,
2:16
Speaker 1: that's right? All right?
2:16
Speaker 3: Welcome aboard the old mouth wornon.
2:20
Speaker 1: So we're talking Kent and grewa never heard of this
2:22
Speaker 1: person before in my life until I started researching this person,
2:27
Speaker 1: this man, this legend actually really Yeah, he's especially if
2:32
Speaker 1: you spend much time hanging out with Grand Canyon riverfolk,
2:37
Speaker 1: you will you will hear stories of Kent and Grua,
2:40
Speaker 1: although apparently not from him while he was alive. He's
2:43
Speaker 1: supposedly very humble as far as his own accomplishments go.
2:48
Speaker 1: But if you if you talk to one of his friends,
2:50
Speaker 1: you would probably get some thrilling stories out of them
2:53
Speaker 1: because he did some pretty interesting stuff along that Colorado River.
2:58
Speaker 3: Yeah.
2:59
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And we also want to shout out a book
3:02
Speaker 2: that both Anna and we and we used. Kevin Fodarco
3:08
Speaker 2: wrote a book called The Emerald Mile about this river run,
3:11
Speaker 2: this record breaking timed river run down the Grand Canyon River,
3:15
Speaker 2: Colorado River, and I knew the name, and then I
3:19
Speaker 2: remember that I watched this great documentary from nat GEO
3:23
Speaker 2: called Into the Canyon and Kevin Fodarco was one of
3:27
Speaker 2: the guys. He and a guy named Pete McBride hiked
3:31
Speaker 2: almost seven hundred and fifty miles from one end of
3:33
Speaker 2: the canyon to the other and made this really gorgeous,
3:36
Speaker 2: gorgeous documentary so I highly recommend Into the Canyon as
3:40
Speaker 2: well as the book The Emerald Mile and Big thanks
3:43
Speaker 2: to everything that Kevin Foderco does in terms of raising
3:47
Speaker 2: awareness for the Grand Canyon.
3:49
Speaker 1: Like, think about that, man, that's so many miles you
3:51
Speaker 1: would have to get a new pair of shoes. At
3:53
Speaker 1: some point in the middle of that.
3:56
Speaker 2: I think they did you have to take they I
3:59
Speaker 2: think they bailed on an attempt and then came back
4:01
Speaker 2: and did it or something I can't remember, but just
4:03
Speaker 2: gorgeous photography and really good stuff. The Grand Canyon is
4:08
Speaker 2: just a truly a magical place. If you've never been there,
4:12
Speaker 2: just go. It's one of those places that were like, yeah,
4:14
Speaker 2: I've seen pictures and stuff, but it's one of the
4:17
Speaker 2: place one of the few places that where I truly
4:19
Speaker 2: understood the meaning of bread taking. Like I actually literally
4:23
Speaker 2: got physically short of breath when I first stood there
4:26
Speaker 2: on that rim.
4:27
Speaker 1: Like you had a panic attack.
4:30
Speaker 2: No, it was just truly breathtaking. It's really really just
4:33
Speaker 2: you gotta go, you gotta do it.
4:35
Speaker 1: Have you been, Yes, I have. I've been to the
4:38
Speaker 1: North Rim. I didn't ride a burrow or anything like that,
4:40
Speaker 1: but I did look down and get to see the
4:43
Speaker 1: whole thing from that wooded, forested north Rim. That is
4:48
Speaker 1: not like what you think of when you think of
4:50
Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon. It's like just a whole other side
4:52
Speaker 1: of it. It's really neat.
4:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's amazing.
4:55
Speaker 1: I did have a panic attack, That's why I couldn't
4:57
Speaker 1: breathe because I was looking over into it. I'm like,
5:00
Speaker 1: I'm this is I can't do this. But yeah, it's
5:03
Speaker 1: pretty pretty neat for sure.
5:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never been down to the river. My friend
5:08
Speaker 2: Brett and I hiked down there's I don't know, I'm
5:11
Speaker 2: not sure how far down it is, but we hiked
5:13
Speaker 2: down to there's this one sort of area where you
5:15
Speaker 2: can hike down to and hang out for a bit
5:17
Speaker 2: if you don't want to go down all the way,
5:19
Speaker 2: and then hike back out and young in shape Chuck.
5:23
Speaker 2: That hike out was one of the toughest things I've
5:25
Speaker 2: ever done.
5:26
Speaker 1: Because you're basically just going up right.
5:28
Speaker 3: Up, up, up up up up in the heat. Heat. Heat.
5:31
Speaker 1: Oh wow. So back to Kent and Grua. He was
5:35
Speaker 1: somebody who could hike up the sides of the canyon
5:39
Speaker 1: up out of it because he did that a lot,
5:41
Speaker 1: mostly because he spent a lot, essentially his entire adult
5:45
Speaker 1: life in the Grand Canyon along the Colorado River, and
5:49
Speaker 1: if you wanted to go see his family or friends
5:52
Speaker 1: see a movie, that's what he had to do. He
5:54
Speaker 1: had to hike out of the Grand Canyon to go
5:57
Speaker 1: do those things. So he was, from every thing I saw,
6:00
Speaker 1: extraordinarily fit but also kind of at one with the canyon.
6:07
Speaker 1: If anybody could be, he was definitely one of those people.
6:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. He was born in Salt Lake City
6:14
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty and was really big into snow skiing
6:19
Speaker 2: until he was twelve years old when his family, because
6:22
Speaker 2: of business his father started a trucking company, moved to Vernal, Utah.
6:28
Speaker 2: At the time, there was no skiing in Vernal and
6:31
Speaker 2: so his dad said, hey, kiddo, you're twelve, you'd love
6:36
Speaker 2: to be outdoors in adventure, so let's go on a
6:39
Speaker 2: rafting trip. And they went to the Yampa River for
6:42
Speaker 2: his birthday and kitt and Grua was like, this is
6:45
Speaker 2: where it's at. I love river rafting. So pops bought
6:50
Speaker 2: him a army surplus raft and he, as a young kid,
6:54
Speaker 2: started taking these little solo rafting trips. And that's kind
6:57
Speaker 2: of where he learned how to navigate rivers. Initially he
7:00
Speaker 2: got the river bug. He totally got the river bug.
7:03
Speaker 1: A few years later, he was going to study mechanical
7:06
Speaker 1: engineering at the University of Utah, and during winter break
7:11
Speaker 1: of freshman year, he was offered a job working for
7:14
Speaker 1: Hatch River Expeditions, river boating outfit along the Colorado River
7:20
Speaker 1: in the Grand Canyon. And he said, so long college,
7:23
Speaker 1: I'm going to go do this. And the job was
7:27
Speaker 1: even just patching boats, like it wasn't even as a
7:29
Speaker 1: river guide. But that's how much he'd loved spending time
7:33
Speaker 1: not just on the river but specifically the Colorado River
7:36
Speaker 1: in the Grand Canyon itself. Yeah, but because of his
7:40
Speaker 1: natural talent and his just complete passion for the job,
7:43
Speaker 1: he became river guide within just a few months of
7:45
Speaker 1: his first job there.
7:48
Speaker 3: Yeah.
7:48
Speaker 2: Absolutely, so he's now taking an adventuresome tourist through the
7:53
Speaker 2: Grand Canyon down the river. He got another job after
7:57
Speaker 2: that at Grand Canyon Expeditions for a little while and
8:00
Speaker 2: met a really important person in his life. There, a
8:03
Speaker 2: mentor in some way as far as conservationism god named
8:08
Speaker 2: Martin Litton l I T t O N who was
8:12
Speaker 2: starting his own company, his own expedition company, and Litton
8:16
Speaker 2: was about he was all about just preserving the not
8:21
Speaker 2: just the Grand Canyon, but just all of nature, and
8:24
Speaker 2: was just sort of ashamed of what humankind had done
8:28
Speaker 2: to nature. And in fact, the boat that grewa would
8:33
Speaker 2: eventually pilot down the Colorado River for that record breaking run.
8:39
Speaker 2: It was called the Emerald Mile. These boats Linton had,
8:44
Speaker 2: he would name them after natural wonders that had been
8:47
Speaker 2: destroyed by humans as a reminder. And this apparently the
8:51
Speaker 2: Emerald Mile was a stretch of old growth redwoods in
8:53
Speaker 2: California that were clear cut in the sixties. So he
8:56
Speaker 2: named this wooden dory, this boat that you paddle with
8:59
Speaker 2: oars after that stretch of redwoods.
9:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, and no Dori in particular. For the most part,
9:05
Speaker 1: people at the time, and I think still today, were
9:08
Speaker 1: going down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon on
9:11
Speaker 1: these expedition tours in rubber boats like zodiacs, like motorized
9:15
Speaker 1: boats that you could bump up against rocks all day
9:18
Speaker 1: and they were probably going to be fine.
9:21
Speaker 3: That's Some of them were regular boats.
9:23
Speaker 1: What do you mean regular like a pontoon.
9:26
Speaker 2: No, Like in the early days, they were just like,
9:28
Speaker 2: I saw something that looked like old wooden Chris crafts.
9:31
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, wow, that's kind of cool talk about
9:33
Speaker 1: doing it.
9:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay.
9:36
Speaker 1: So the dory itself, though, it was originally like a
9:39
Speaker 1: fishing boat that Europeans, I think the Portuguese were the
9:44
Speaker 1: ones who really kind of perfected it would take out
9:47
Speaker 1: on the ocean, so they were like sea worthy row
9:49
Speaker 1: boats basically, and they eventually made their way to New
9:52
Speaker 1: England where whalers would take them out, and then Martin
9:55
Speaker 1: Linton got his hands on them for the Grand Canyon
9:58
Speaker 1: because he was just like you you experience the Colorado
10:02
Speaker 1: River in a dory in ways that you can't possibly
10:06
Speaker 1: in a raft, let alone a motorized draft. So there
10:09
Speaker 1: it's like a purposefully old timey antique way of going
10:13
Speaker 1: down the Colorado River. And they still use dories today
10:15
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, some outfits too.
10:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Greua was like, this thing is amazing, because
10:22
Speaker 2: you know, he wanted, as we'll see, he really enjoyed
10:25
Speaker 2: getting down that river fast and this the dory is
10:29
Speaker 2: like they won't obviously, because they're made of wood, they
10:31
Speaker 2: won't bounce off a rock like a raft will. But
10:33
Speaker 2: they're much more able to be steered, they handle a
10:37
Speaker 2: lot better, they're much more I don't know if lithe
10:40
Speaker 2: is the right word, but you can motor down that
10:44
Speaker 2: river in a dory better than you can in a
10:47
Speaker 2: raft if you're into speed and churning.
10:49
Speaker 1: Sure, but a lot of the most of the dory
10:52
Speaker 1: expeditions use ors their road, right. Oh yeah, So the
10:57
Speaker 1: other thing about it that you mentioned is that like
11:00
Speaker 1: it won't handle bumping against rocks like a raft will.
11:03
Speaker 1: They're much more fragile, much less forgiving than a rubber raft,
11:07
Speaker 1: which means you have to be that much more experienced
11:11
Speaker 1: and have that much greater ability to take a dory
11:15
Speaker 1: down the Colorado River than you would like a raft.
11:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, they can get dinged up a
11:20
Speaker 2: little as I kind of thought at first, like you
11:23
Speaker 2: hit a rock with one of these and you're sinking immediately.
11:26
Speaker 1: This explosion catches fire, right.
11:28
Speaker 2: Exactly, And I'm sure that can happen. But as as
11:33
Speaker 2: you will see, you know they can. They can get
11:35
Speaker 2: bumped up a little bit, and you know they're pretty hardy.
11:38
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, no, for sure, but it's just some
11:40
Speaker 1: of those rapids can be pretty rough on the old boat.
11:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely so.
11:46
Speaker 1: Grua was in love with dories just like Martin Linton was,
11:49
Speaker 1: and he came on Linton's company, Green Canyon Dories and
11:53
Speaker 1: began piloting a dory called the Chattahoochie. He did that
11:57
Speaker 1: for like ten years down the Colorado River. He made
12:01
Speaker 1: nearly one hundred trips, which, by my estimation, that's almost
12:07
Speaker 1: half of the days between nineteen sixty nine and nineteen
12:11
Speaker 1: seventy nine. When he made those hundred trips he spent
12:14
Speaker 1: on the Colorado River. That's a lot of time on Colorado.
12:19
Speaker 1: That's exactly what he wanted to do. He could not
12:21
Speaker 1: have been happier. He chose this life for himself and
12:24
Speaker 1: he just did it. He made it work, and he
12:26
Speaker 1: became an expert on the Colorado River as it runs
12:29
Speaker 1: through the Grand Canyon.
12:31
Speaker 3: Totally like reading this, I got very jealous of his life.
12:35
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was looking at some of the dory expeditions
12:38
Speaker 1: they have and I was like, man, that's amazing. Then
12:40
Speaker 1: it's like eighteen days. I said, no, I'm not going
12:43
Speaker 1: to do that. Like, are there helicopters that you can
12:45
Speaker 1: lower in and do a couple of days and then
12:47
Speaker 1: come out. No, there's not apparently.
12:51
Speaker 2: Well sadly, there are helicopter trips that they will take
12:55
Speaker 2: you down and land you on a big plateau. That's
12:57
Speaker 2: one of the things I learned from that documentary that
13:00
Speaker 2: Fiderco was in was they were trying to raise awareness
13:03
Speaker 2: for these you know, they were trying to build some
13:06
Speaker 2: big like hotel basically like halfway down the canyon, and
13:11
Speaker 2: all these people were fighting it, seeing like you can't
13:13
Speaker 2: do that.
13:13
Speaker 3: You can't turn this into.
13:16
Speaker 2: A place where people can get rich, people can get
13:19
Speaker 2: helicoptered in and stay in a five star resort.
13:22
Speaker 3: Like no, no, no, okay.
13:25
Speaker 1: First of all, I felt like a jackass before. Now
13:27
Speaker 1: I really feel like a jackass.
13:29
Speaker 2: But some of you were talking about getting dropped off
13:31
Speaker 2: to Row. Sure, like ziplining out like a ranger.
13:35
Speaker 1: Right, But I mean like walking down from a resort
13:37
Speaker 1: to go row for a couple of days.
13:39
Speaker 3: Maybe that's as pretty good.
13:41
Speaker 2: But the.
13:44
Speaker 1: Kind of upshot of what you're saying is a good
13:47
Speaker 1: analogy from what I understand. To compare rafting or boating
13:51
Speaker 1: down the Colorado River these days would be like going
13:55
Speaker 1: on an expedition to Everest. It is nothing like it
13:59
Speaker 1: used to be. Yeah, even twenty thirty, forty years ago,
14:03
Speaker 1: it's just gotten so much easier. There's so much money
14:06
Speaker 1: being thrown at this now, it's just not even a
14:09
Speaker 1: challenge any longer. It's like a posh vacation for people
14:12
Speaker 1: who like to act like their adventurers. And I'm saying
14:16
Speaker 1: that I'm not going to climb Everest, so I can't
14:20
Speaker 1: really be critical, but I'm saying comparing it to how
14:23
Speaker 1: it originally started, when these outfits were first created in
14:27
Speaker 1: like the forties, fifties, sixties, it's just nothing like that today.
14:31
Speaker 1: It's far more commercialized, I guess, is what I'm trying
14:33
Speaker 1: to say.
14:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, so in the meme how it started, how it's
14:37
Speaker 2: going to be a person like bleeding from the head
14:40
Speaker 2: and spitting a river water out of their mouth, and
14:43
Speaker 2: then another one with a dude holding a martini as
14:47
Speaker 2: he goes down the river.
14:47
Speaker 3: Exactly, all right, I said.
14:50
Speaker 2: We took a break, oh yeah, and we come back
14:52
Speaker 2: and we talk a little bit more about Kenton Grua
14:56
Speaker 2: the man. All right, as promised, We're going to tell
15:19
Speaker 2: you a little bit more about the personality of Kent
15:21
Speaker 2: and Grua. He was quite an adventurer like you said
15:26
Speaker 2: was just in love with nature, and in particular the
15:28
Speaker 2: Grand Canyon in that river. His nickname was the Factor.
15:32
Speaker 2: If you ever read anything you're going to see him,
15:34
Speaker 2: probably called Kenton the Factor Grua and that was because
15:38
Speaker 2: apparently he was just like this larger than life personality
15:42
Speaker 2: and like anytime he was a part of something he
15:45
Speaker 2: had some sort of influence on it, he was a factor,
15:48
Speaker 2: and thus the Factor.
15:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll put he was also very fond of pot
15:54
Speaker 1: and drinking liquor while he was working on the trail
15:59
Speaker 1: and after, I guess after rowing for the day, sitting
16:02
Speaker 1: on a beach, Yeah, you'd probably light up what one
16:05
Speaker 1: might call it.
16:06
Speaker 3: Split back then might be a doobie for sure.
16:10
Speaker 1: And I'll bet it just gave you a headache instantly.
16:14
Speaker 1: But he also is a little kind of fashion conscious,
16:17
Speaker 1: you can say. Anna points out that he would wear
16:19
Speaker 1: cutoff levies that look cool, especially if you're barefoot and
16:24
Speaker 1: you have long hair in your stone. But if you're
16:28
Speaker 1: like falling the water, it takes like a week for
16:31
Speaker 1: those things to dry out. So long story short, Kent
16:35
Speaker 1: and Gruel was very frequently chafed on the inside of
16:38
Speaker 1: his thighs.
16:39
Speaker 3: Right he was not at all man.
16:42
Speaker 2: He was five foot six, but you know, had an
16:46
Speaker 2: outsized personality and sense of adventure. I guess there was
16:51
Speaker 2: one story that he was on one expedition and they
16:54
Speaker 2: drank all the booze, so he hiked all the way
16:57
Speaker 2: out of the Grand Canyon to go get more booze,
17:00
Speaker 2: hike back in.
17:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's just one story about Kent and grew, but
17:05
Speaker 1: it definitely drives the point home. Like he liked booze,
17:08
Speaker 1: but he was also willing to physically exert himself at
17:11
Speaker 1: the drop of a hat. So he was a tough
17:13
Speaker 1: dude essentially, But he was also supposedly really kind and
17:19
Speaker 1: gentle with the tourists that he took down the river. Yeah,
17:23
Speaker 1: he was well known for that. But he was also
17:25
Speaker 1: known for being very opinionated about how the river should
17:29
Speaker 1: be navigated, how an expedition should be run, and so
17:34
Speaker 1: he would be more than likely to butt heads with
17:36
Speaker 1: some of the other river guides that he worked with,
17:39
Speaker 1: but that didn't rub off toward the passengers, which I
17:42
Speaker 1: think makes him a pro.
17:44
Speaker 2: I'd say, yeah, absolutely, And you know we're going to
17:47
Speaker 2: build up sort of story wise to the record breaking
17:51
Speaker 2: river run. But he did some pretty remarkable things before that,
17:55
Speaker 2: one of which was to hike the entire length of
17:59
Speaker 2: the Grand Canon from Lee's Ferry to Grand Wash Cliffs.
18:04
Speaker 2: He read a book in nineteen sixty eight that was
18:06
Speaker 2: a backpacker named Colin Fletcher who did that hike, well
18:10
Speaker 2: sort of, we'll see the man who walked through Time
18:14
Speaker 2: was the book and he said, I'm the first person
18:16
Speaker 2: to hike the entire link of the Grand Canyon.
18:18
Speaker 3: And Grew was like, no, you didn't.
18:20
Speaker 2: You hiked the canyon within the National Park System. But buddy,
18:26
Speaker 2: that ain't all of the Grand Canyon.
18:28
Speaker 1: The guy went, what.
18:30
Speaker 3: So I'm going to do it? And he did.
18:33
Speaker 2: He tried a couple of times, he tried the first time,
18:37
Speaker 2: and you know, this is two hundred and seventy seven
18:39
Speaker 2: miles as the crow flies. Yeah, like I mentioned before,
18:42
Speaker 2: when Faderka did it, they hiked seven hundred and fifty miles.
18:45
Speaker 2: Because you can't just walk a straight line, there's things
18:48
Speaker 2: you just can't navigate around, so you're having to hike,
18:51
Speaker 2: you know, three times as much or at least two
18:55
Speaker 2: and a half times as much as the length of
18:58
Speaker 2: the canyon to complete that high.
19:00
Speaker 1: That's a nuts and he did it first time he
19:02
Speaker 1: tried it. Remember I said he liked to run around
19:04
Speaker 1: barefoot and cut off Levi's oh, yeah, well this he
19:07
Speaker 1: realized he was going on a very long hike, so
19:09
Speaker 1: he went to the trouble of buying himself some leather
19:11
Speaker 1: moccasins to hi kid. Those lasted very short time before
19:15
Speaker 1: he started wearing through them and actually cut his foot
19:18
Speaker 1: on a cactus started to get infected. He's like, I
19:20
Speaker 1: should probably stop now.
19:22
Speaker 2: That surprised me that he would. I mean, that's a mistake.
19:27
Speaker 1: Yeah.
19:27
Speaker 3: I think he knew that that wasn't going to work.
19:29
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know that that's true. Like he
19:32
Speaker 1: was capable of making mistakes, for sure. He's also capable
19:35
Speaker 1: of evolving his opinions and understandings about things. And he
19:39
Speaker 1: wasn't so dumb that he kept going until he died, right, Yeah,
19:43
Speaker 1: you know that was nineteen seventy two, I think. Yeah,
19:46
Speaker 1: four years later, he's like, I'm going to do this different.
19:49
Speaker 1: I'm going to not only wear work boots instead of moccasins. Smart,
19:54
Speaker 1: move out of the gate.
19:56
Speaker 3: Yeah.
19:56
Speaker 1: He scouted the whole route in advanced and supply caches
20:02
Speaker 1: along the route, so that he could travel as light
20:04
Speaker 1: as possible, and that's when he set out that second time,
20:08
Speaker 1: and that's when he was successful. Hiking almost six hundred
20:13
Speaker 1: miles is the route that he took.
20:15
Speaker 2: Wow, that is amazing. I think he if you average
20:20
Speaker 2: it out, he was averaging like almost seventeen mile a
20:24
Speaker 2: day clip, which is super fast. I mean, when I've
20:29
Speaker 2: done hikes and I'm really hauling it, if I get
20:32
Speaker 2: ten miles in a day, that's like a really long,
20:35
Speaker 2: hard day. And he was in the Grand Canyon, arduous
20:38
Speaker 2: conditions in the seventies when gear was not like it
20:41
Speaker 2: is now and averaging close to seventeen miles a day,
20:45
Speaker 2: which is nuts. It took him thirty six days to
20:47
Speaker 2: complete the whole thing.
20:48
Speaker 1: I can barely get seventeen miles in a day in
20:50
Speaker 1: a helicopter, let alone hiking. So yeah, thirty six days
20:55
Speaker 1: to hike almost six hundred miles. And this is again
20:58
Speaker 1: it's not a straight line flat like there's up and
21:02
Speaker 1: down and over and it's what he did was very significant,
21:06
Speaker 1: and he became the first person on record at least
21:09
Speaker 1: to have hiked the entire length of the Grand Canyon,
21:12
Speaker 1: not just the National Park, the whole Grand Canyon. And
21:15
Speaker 1: so whenever you're hearing about people boating through the Grand
21:19
Speaker 1: Canyon on the Colorado River, what they're talking about is
21:22
Speaker 1: that same length, the whole geographical Grand Canyon from Lee's
21:28
Speaker 1: Ferry to Grand Wash cliffs.
21:32
Speaker 3: Man.
21:34
Speaker 2: All right, so let's talk a little bit about that
21:36
Speaker 2: river run that you just described. You know, from point
21:40
Speaker 2: to point. The very first expedition down that Colorado River
21:46
Speaker 2: was by a guy, a Civil War veteran with one arm,
21:50
Speaker 2: named John Wesley Powell in eighteen sixty nine. It took
21:54
Speaker 2: ninety eight days at that point and pretty much wrecked
21:58
Speaker 2: the crew. I mean it was by the time they
22:00
Speaker 2: got there, they were starving. Was it was a very
22:02
Speaker 2: very tough ride in eighteen sixty nine.
22:05
Speaker 1: Can I just say one thing about that expedition, Chuck? Sure,
22:09
Speaker 1: Three of them, three members of the expedition said nuts
22:12
Speaker 1: to this, like we're giving up, and set off on
22:16
Speaker 1: foot and we're never heard from again. And they left
22:20
Speaker 1: two days before this expedition finally reached its destination. They
22:24
Speaker 1: just didn't know that they were that close to the end,
22:26
Speaker 1: and they left and died. Isn't that crazy?
22:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's sad.
22:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they were the first Europeans on record to
22:33
Speaker 1: have circumnavigated the Colorado River through the entire Grand Canyon,
22:37
Speaker 1: and it was a big deal.
22:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like the old mine in apocalypse Now. Never
22:43
Speaker 2: never get off the gd.
22:44
Speaker 1: Boat, right, the gosh darn boat.
22:47
Speaker 3: In the case of apocalypse. Now, it's because there might
22:50
Speaker 3: be a tiger in the jungle.
22:51
Speaker 1: Right. So I saw also that this was considered the
22:54
Speaker 1: last voyage of discovery in North America. It was a
22:57
Speaker 1: big deal that John Wesley Powllin is his grew did this.
23:01
Speaker 3: That's right.
23:02
Speaker 2: Then in nineteen forty nine there was a guy named
23:04
Speaker 2: Ed Hudson who was a pharmacist who made a run
23:07
Speaker 2: in a motor boat. So it was obviously the fastest
23:10
Speaker 2: at the time at five days and ten minutes. And
23:14
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, motor boats and regular boats
23:18
Speaker 2: started attempting these speed runs. People are trying to, you know,
23:23
Speaker 2: break previous records. You know, depending on how adventurous you were.
23:28
Speaker 2: I guess it depends on whether or not you want
23:29
Speaker 2: to use some motor But obviously the berets are off
23:34
Speaker 2: to the people who didn't use the motor. Yeah, I'm
23:37
Speaker 2: sure it was still hard but it ain't like paddling,
23:40
Speaker 2: you know.
23:40
Speaker 1: No, Ed Hudson, a pharmacist in nineteen forty nine, he
23:45
Speaker 1: did it in like five days and ten minutes using
23:47
Speaker 1: a motor boat. Jim and Bob Rigg I think two
23:51
Speaker 1: years later, said nuts to the motor boat. We're going
23:55
Speaker 1: to not only go down the same path that John
23:59
Speaker 1: Wesley Powell did in eighteen sixty nine that nearly killed
24:01
Speaker 1: him without a motor we're going to break Ed Hudson's
24:06
Speaker 1: motor based record.
24:07
Speaker 3: And they did actually, yeah, fifty two hours.
24:10
Speaker 2: And this was at a time in the fifties when
24:13
Speaker 2: like a tourist trip, that same tourist trip and a
24:16
Speaker 2: non motorized boat would be about three weeks. And of
24:19
Speaker 2: course they're not trying to break a record, they're trying
24:22
Speaker 2: to show everyone a nice, good time, right exactly, probably
24:25
Speaker 2: fairly relaxing, so it's not yeah, but some people did
24:31
Speaker 2: like the slow train. The longest attempt was in seventy three,
24:37
Speaker 2: and that took one hundred and three days. That's a
24:38
Speaker 2: little more of my speed, I think.
24:40
Speaker 1: So we need to say something about the Colorado River.
24:43
Speaker 1: As Kent and Grua knew it. He came along in
24:46
Speaker 1: what was it, nineteen sixty eight or sixty nine, Yeah,
24:50
Speaker 1: one hundred years exactly after John Wesley Powell Kent and
24:53
Speaker 1: Grewa came along and took up life on the Colorado
24:57
Speaker 1: River through the Grand Canyon. But unfortunately for Kent Grewa,
25:00
Speaker 1: that was six years after the I think the Department
25:03
Speaker 1: of the Interior created the Glen Canyon Dam, yeah, upstream
25:08
Speaker 1: of the Grand Canyon in uh on the Colorado River,
25:12
Speaker 1: and the Colorado River was tamed. That's the best way
25:16
Speaker 1: to put it. It was up to the I think
25:18
Speaker 1: the Army Corps of Engineers or whoever runs the dam
25:21
Speaker 1: there at Glen Canyon to decide how much water the
25:26
Speaker 1: Colorado River had. And before that it had been considered
25:29
Speaker 1: the wildest river in America because the snow melt from
25:34
Speaker 1: the mountains upstream. Depending on how how much it snowed
25:39
Speaker 1: that year, and then how how much, how high the
25:42
Speaker 1: temperatures rose, and how quickly they did that spring, that
25:46
Speaker 1: river could turn wild in an instant because so much
25:50
Speaker 1: water would come down from the mountains and it would
25:52
Speaker 1: just flood the Colorado River, including some of the side canyons,
25:56
Speaker 1: and it would make it nuts. And Kent and Grua
26:00
Speaker 1: he knew this too, came along after that ceased, and
26:03
Speaker 1: so now the Colorado was relatively mild.
26:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, if you're going to go down a river
26:09
Speaker 2: and you want to see how you know, challenging it
26:13
Speaker 2: might be as a rower, You're going to look at
26:16
Speaker 2: what's called the gradient in feet per mile, And obviously
26:21
Speaker 2: the higher the gradient, the more you know, the faster
26:25
Speaker 2: that water's going to be. A pretty wild river can
26:28
Speaker 2: have a gradient between twenty five and sixty feet per mile.
26:33
Speaker 2: The Colorado River has a gradient of eight feet per mile.
26:37
Speaker 2: So the actual you know, the where the river sits
26:40
Speaker 2: and the land beneath that river, that gradient isn't too crazy.
26:45
Speaker 2: It is the steepness of the sides of that canyon
26:49
Speaker 2: is what makes it crazy. Because, like you said, when
26:52
Speaker 2: that stuff flash floods and it hits the Colorado River,
26:56
Speaker 2: it can move boulders, it can create you know, waves,
27:01
Speaker 2: and when that water hits the still water, it can
27:03
Speaker 2: create a wave like twenty to thirty feet high.
27:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure in a river. Yeah. One of the
27:09
Speaker 1: reasons why stuff like that happens is because all that
27:12
Speaker 1: debris and boulder create these natural dams on either side
27:15
Speaker 1: of the river, narrowing the channel, speeding up the water,
27:18
Speaker 1: and once you have fast water running into slow water,
27:21
Speaker 1: all sorts of crazy stuff happens. So speaking, geographically, the
27:25
Speaker 1: Colorado River shouldn't have rapids, but because of its situation
27:29
Speaker 1: in that stretch of the Grand Canyon, it does. It
27:32
Speaker 1: has some pretty cool rapids. And Kent and Gruin knew
27:35
Speaker 1: how to do this, Like his job was to take
27:37
Speaker 1: people through these rapids down this stream. But again the
27:41
Speaker 1: river that he was on was not the same river
27:43
Speaker 1: that John Wesley Powell had been on because of the dam.
27:47
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, So you.
27:50
Speaker 1: Want to talk about the first the first attempt in nineteen.
27:54
Speaker 2: Eighty, Yeah, I mean successful. A tip makes it sounds
27:58
Speaker 2: like he didn't do it. He actually did set a
28:00
Speaker 2: speed record in nineteen eighty I think how fast was
28:06
Speaker 2: that one?
28:06
Speaker 1: He did him forty six hours in fifty six minutes.
28:09
Speaker 1: He beat Jim and Bob Riggs nineteen fifty one record,
28:12
Speaker 1: which it stood for almost thirty years.
28:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he breaks the record and you would think,
28:18
Speaker 2: you know a lot of people would say like, all right,
28:20
Speaker 2: I did what I attempted to do, broke that record,
28:23
Speaker 2: But Kit and grew It was like man that river
28:26
Speaker 2: was was not fast that day, a couple of days,
28:30
Speaker 2: and I can do this a lot faster. And he
28:33
Speaker 2: became sort of I don't know about obsessed, if that's
28:36
Speaker 2: the right word. I don't know if someone who smoked
28:37
Speaker 2: that much weed can then get that obsessed or worked
28:39
Speaker 2: up about anything. But he said, I know I can
28:43
Speaker 2: do this if that like, it doesn't matter how fast
28:45
Speaker 2: I'm rowing. Unless I have a faster river just from
28:49
Speaker 2: the natural conditions, then I can't break that record. So
28:53
Speaker 2: I'm gonna wait until the conditions are right. And that
28:57
Speaker 2: happened in nineteen eighty three because of El Nino. It
29:02
Speaker 2: was at the time, at least the most extreme El
29:04
Speaker 2: Nino that had happened to that point. Caused a ton
29:08
Speaker 2: of snow. All that snow melts at some point, and
29:12
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you're gonna have flooding such that
29:15
Speaker 2: if you're measuring like a river flow, you measure it
29:18
Speaker 2: in cubic feet per second. The Colorado River through the
29:22
Speaker 2: Grand Canyon averages about twelve thousand to fifteen thousand cubic
29:27
Speaker 2: feet per second, and that summer that June specifically, I
29:32
Speaker 2: saw anywhere from between seventy thousand and one hundred thousand
29:36
Speaker 2: cubic feet per second, which is, you know, up seven
29:40
Speaker 2: to ten times as fast.
29:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a lot more water. Number one, it
29:45
Speaker 1: goes a lot faster, and it changes the river. Like
29:49
Speaker 1: the river that he was used to, the rapids, he
29:52
Speaker 1: was used to the features that he had to circumnavigate
29:55
Speaker 1: during a normal boating trip down the Colorado. It was
29:59
Speaker 1: not there. They were different. They were altered by this
30:02
Speaker 1: huge influx of very fast moving water. And so what
30:05
Speaker 1: had happened is Kevin Fudarco points out in the Emerald
30:09
Speaker 1: Mile that for the first time, probably for the only
30:14
Speaker 1: time in his lifetime, Kent and Grua had a chance
30:17
Speaker 1: to take on the Colorado River, the same river that
30:21
Speaker 1: John Wesley Powell took on in eighteen sixty nine. This
30:25
Speaker 1: stuff did not happen. It caught the corp of engineers
30:28
Speaker 1: by surprise, so much so that they to keep the
30:32
Speaker 1: Lake Powell from topping over the Glen Canyon Dam, they
30:35
Speaker 1: were putting up plywood barriers. That's how unprepared they were
30:39
Speaker 1: for this incredibly historic flooding. I think there was like
30:43
Speaker 1: twenty six hundred miles of shoreline in Lake Powell. The
30:48
Speaker 1: reservoir that's behind the dam, and the reservoir was rising
30:52
Speaker 1: a foot a day, that's how much snow melt was
30:55
Speaker 1: coming down, And so they were just releasing. According to
30:58
Speaker 1: Arizona Central, up to a million cubic feet per second
31:02
Speaker 1: in a release at a time. So this was flooding
31:05
Speaker 1: the Colorado downstream. But it's the only option they had
31:08
Speaker 1: to keep the dam from breaking or from being toppled,
31:11
Speaker 1: and you know, the water coming out of control. So
31:16
Speaker 1: it was a wild river again all of a sudden,
31:18
Speaker 1: like it happened before. And Kent and Grew was all
31:20
Speaker 1: about that.
31:22
Speaker 3: He was all about it.
31:23
Speaker 2: So I say, we took a break and then we'll
31:26
Speaker 2: come back and let everyone know what happened on June
31:28
Speaker 2: twenty fifth, nineteen eighty three.
31:52
Speaker 1: Okay, So Kent and Grew says, it's time. Like that
31:56
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty record that I broke that I'm not very
31:58
Speaker 1: happy with, I'm now going to break that record. I'm
32:01
Speaker 1: going to take this river like I know it can
32:03
Speaker 1: be taken. And he went to his friend Rudy Petschek,
32:07
Speaker 1: who was at the time forty nine. Kenton would have
32:10
Speaker 1: been thirty three. Yeah, So Rudy Petchik was like old
32:15
Speaker 1: and then Steve Wren Reynolds was the other guy that
32:21
Speaker 1: they they brought on. So the three of them decided
32:23
Speaker 1: that they were going to take the Emerald Mile out
32:26
Speaker 1: onto the Colorado River. And they was by the way,
32:30
Speaker 1: okay Ren, Yeah, okay. And they went to the Park
32:34
Speaker 1: Service and said, hey, we'd like a permit. We're gonna
32:36
Speaker 1: take the Emerald Mile down the Colorado River. It's nuts
32:39
Speaker 1: right now, isn't it. And the Park Service said, no,
32:42
Speaker 1: you're not going to do that.
32:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to get a permit to do something
32:45
Speaker 2: like that. They said, no, Like you said, they were
32:50
Speaker 2: trying to send people, trying to keep people off the river,
32:56
Speaker 2: and as we'll see you later on. They even had
32:58
Speaker 2: a ranger stationed on the river. I guess it was
33:02
Speaker 2: Benjamin Bratt probably telling people to get out. What you
33:07
Speaker 2: never saw the River wild.
33:09
Speaker 1: No, is that the one with Bruce Willis where he's
33:12
Speaker 1: a cop in a boat.
33:14
Speaker 3: Nope?
33:15
Speaker 1: Okay.
33:16
Speaker 2: River Wilde was Meryl Streep and David Stratham, Kevin Bacon
33:22
Speaker 2: and John c Riley.
33:24
Speaker 1: Isn't Kevin Bacon like a crazy homicidal serial killer is
33:27
Speaker 1: stalking these guys?
33:29
Speaker 3: Not a serial killer. He's a bad guy. Though. Okay,
33:32
Speaker 3: it's a really good movie. I highly recommend it.
33:34
Speaker 2: But Benjamin Bratt is a ranger that literally does what
33:37
Speaker 2: this other ranger did is like stationed down before the
33:40
Speaker 2: bad rapid saying get out.
33:41
Speaker 3: You shouldn't be here.
33:42
Speaker 1: I just want to shout out my favorite Benjamin Bratt
33:46
Speaker 1: fact that he was born on Alcatraz during the American
33:50
Speaker 1: Indian Movement's occupation of Alcatraz.
33:53
Speaker 3: Did we talk about that?
33:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, in our Alcatraz episode?
33:58
Speaker 3: And did not remember that?
33:59
Speaker 1: Well? Also talk about it in our forthcoming Benjamin Bratt episode.
34:04
Speaker 3: We haven't done one on Alcatraz, have we?
34:05
Speaker 1: Yes? Dude, you sure? I believe we did one on
34:09
Speaker 1: Alcatraz itself. And the escape from.
34:11
Speaker 3: Alcatraz, Yeah, I do remember escape from Alcatress.
34:14
Speaker 1: That escape from Alcatraz one, by the way, was a
34:17
Speaker 1: good one, all right.
34:18
Speaker 2: So he doesn't get the permit, so he goes back
34:21
Speaker 2: to Martin Litton, his mentor, and he says, hey, man,
34:26
Speaker 2: you got a lot of pull around here. I'm wondering
34:28
Speaker 2: if you could help me out, And Linton said, sure,
34:31
Speaker 2: I'll call up the Grand Canyon National Park superintendent himself,
34:36
Speaker 2: Richard Marx ks not X. Did we gonna make it
34:41
Speaker 2: Richard Marx to it?
34:42
Speaker 1: No, I just thought it would if it had been
34:45
Speaker 1: b Richard Marx, like in his life, right before he.
34:48
Speaker 2: Hit it big, right, and he said, he said, you
34:51
Speaker 2: know what, it don't mean nothing. And he went, hey,
34:53
Speaker 2: that's got a nice ring to it.
34:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, sign on the dotted line.
34:58
Speaker 3: That's a good song, it is. And so Mark said,
35:01
Speaker 3: all right, here's what I'll do.
35:03
Speaker 2: I will call up the rangers out there on the
35:05
Speaker 2: river tomorrow and I'll get back to you. He didn't
35:09
Speaker 2: get back to them, and so Litton and Grewubo said,
35:13
Speaker 2: I guess that means we have permission, right, right, And
35:16
Speaker 2: so they took off on June twenty fifth, nineteen eighty three.
35:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, eleven pm they took off. I guess under the
35:23
Speaker 1: cover of darkness. Maybe that's the only reason I can
35:26
Speaker 1: think of that they took off so late.
35:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, Or maybe they just timed it so they've finished
35:32
Speaker 2: at a certain time, or I don't know.
35:34
Speaker 1: I don't know either, but they did take off just
35:36
Speaker 1: before midnight.
35:38
Speaker 3: That to heat.
35:39
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe that's a great one. Yeah, maybe, I don't know. Anyway,
35:44
Speaker 1: the fact is this, they were paddling for hours in
35:49
Speaker 1: pitch darkness because the canyons, the canyon walls of the
35:54
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon can prevent the sunlight from hitting inside the
35:58
Speaker 1: canyon at the river level during the day. This was nighttime,
36:03
Speaker 1: and so the canyon walls were preventing any moonlight from
36:06
Speaker 1: even getting down. So they were rafting on a river
36:09
Speaker 1: that was flowing at about ten times its normal rate,
36:13
Speaker 1: if not more, in the dark without the benefit of
36:18
Speaker 1: using their eyes. So they were having to like literally
36:21
Speaker 1: feel the vibrations in the oars to tell what was
36:24
Speaker 1: coming up in which way they should go during this
36:27
Speaker 1: nighttime paddling event that they did.
36:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean to be sure, these were some
36:32
Speaker 2: of the most experienced people to undertake something like this,
36:36
Speaker 2: but that is still like it just can't be overstated
36:40
Speaker 2: what a accomplishment this was.
36:42
Speaker 3: Just to make it through that first night.
36:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially doing it stoned wearing nothing but cut off levs.
36:49
Speaker 3: So they would paddle.
36:51
Speaker 2: There were, like I said, three of them, so they
36:53
Speaker 2: would paddle for about fifteen to twenty minutes at a
36:56
Speaker 2: time because it's really rigorous, tough stuff that they're doing.
37:00
Speaker 2: I grew up, went up first and paddled first, and
37:03
Speaker 2: they would switch off when they would get tired. They
37:06
Speaker 2: would rest take little cat naps when they could when
37:09
Speaker 2: they weren't paddling, obviously, and things were going pretty good
37:13
Speaker 2: for the first few hours, and then they reached a
37:16
Speaker 2: series of rapids called the Roaring twenties. That is really
37:20
Speaker 2: tough in particular with all this water, because there's something
37:24
Speaker 2: in rivers called I would assume people know what and
37:26
Speaker 2: eddie is, but you might not. Eddie is like a
37:29
Speaker 2: very calm part of a river, usually off to the
37:31
Speaker 2: side where the water is flowing back upstream and like
37:36
Speaker 2: avoid in the current. Usually it's like blocked by a
37:38
Speaker 2: big rock or something, and it's a good place. Usually
37:41
Speaker 2: that's where if you want to pull off and you
37:44
Speaker 2: get out of the boat and get on land, you'll
37:46
Speaker 2: pull off to a nice little calm eddie. But you
37:49
Speaker 2: can also have an area where the eddie meets the rapids,
37:54
Speaker 2: and that's called an eddie fence. I saw it described
37:57
Speaker 2: as confused water. It doesn't really know which way to go,
38:01
Speaker 2: so it's going everywhere at once, and it's just really
38:04
Speaker 2: really unstable water. And these eddy fences were all over
38:08
Speaker 2: the place, just like not crushing literally but just like
38:12
Speaker 2: wreaking havoc on their boat in this trip they were taking.
38:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the water, the boat's going the direction of
38:19
Speaker 1: the water, and if the water all of a sudden
38:21
Speaker 1: is going multiple directions, that gets telegraphed to the boat
38:24
Speaker 1: and it makes it very difficult to move around, right.
38:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, But they did get through that part, obviously they did.
38:30
Speaker 1: And again they're going through the roaring twenties at night
38:34
Speaker 1: in pitch darkness. JUSTI I just really want to make
38:37
Speaker 1: sure everybody keeps this in mind. The other thing is
38:40
Speaker 1: is they were taking these rapids wide open. They weren't
38:43
Speaker 1: stopping to scout what was ahead and then getting back
38:46
Speaker 1: in the boat and then taking it with full knowledge
38:49
Speaker 1: of what was coming up. They just took it as
38:51
Speaker 1: it came, essentially, Yeah, which is again really nuts considering
38:55
Speaker 1: that this was not the river that they were used to.
38:58
Speaker 1: It was the wild, raging version of the river that
39:03
Speaker 1: they were used. It was like the Colorado on bath salts. Basically,
39:09
Speaker 1: that's what they were taking on in the dark without
39:12
Speaker 1: the benefit of eyesight.
39:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think steroids is ever used bath salts.
39:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you really want to drive the point home,
39:19
Speaker 1: use bath salts. No, don't actually use basalts. I meant
39:23
Speaker 1: in your analogy.
39:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, they get through this on you know, experience, on instinct,
39:30
Speaker 2: like you said, feeling their way. The sun finally comes up.
39:34
Speaker 2: They're flying down this river. They're going through, you know,
39:37
Speaker 2: all kinds of crazy rapids, the huge whirlpools, these big
39:41
Speaker 2: standing waves that talked about that you know, got up
39:44
Speaker 2: to twenty feet. I think one of the guys even
39:46
Speaker 2: said pet Chick said some of them were like three
39:49
Speaker 2: stories high. Yeah, at times. And they finally get to
39:54
Speaker 2: Crystal Rapid, which is at mile ninety eight, and they
39:58
Speaker 2: were worn out, like super super tired obviously. And that
40:02
Speaker 2: is where Benjamin Bratt was stationed. Yeah, park ranger Benjamin Bratt,
40:07
Speaker 2: and he said, hey, you shouldn't be paddling through here.
40:10
Speaker 2: And also I was born on Alcatraz.
40:13
Speaker 1: That's a great Benjamin Bratt in person.
40:15
Speaker 2: Uh No, he was stationed there to get if there
40:17
Speaker 2: were any tourist boats that you know, had somehow already
40:21
Speaker 2: been on the water, which they shouldn't have been to
40:23
Speaker 2: begin with, because they were denying permits.
40:24
Speaker 1: Yeah. I didn't understand that part, you know.
40:27
Speaker 2: I guess they were just there were some already out there,
40:30
Speaker 2: maybe because especially if some of them were taking three weeks.
40:33
Speaker 1: Oh got, they didn't want to ruin people's vacation.
40:36
Speaker 2: Maybe, but they were Basically he was there basically to say, hey,
40:39
Speaker 2: pull over, all of you tourists, get out and hike
40:43
Speaker 2: out and boat captain and whoever else you're gonna have
40:47
Speaker 2: to take this thing down the rest of the way,
40:49
Speaker 2: like by yourself.
40:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope you don't like company because ts for you.
40:54
Speaker 3: Uh, that's right. But what happened with this group.
40:57
Speaker 1: So they didn't what. One of the things that caused
41:01
Speaker 1: Benjamin Bratt to be stationed there was that a commercial
41:04
Speaker 1: rafting outfit had gotten overturned. One of the boats had
41:07
Speaker 1: been overturned at this under normal circumstances, very tough rapid
41:14
Speaker 1: called crystal rapids, and one person had died. I believe
41:18
Speaker 1: a passenger had died. This happened like eleven hours before
41:23
Speaker 1: the Kent and Grew and his group came along in
41:26
Speaker 1: the Emerald Mile. They were totally out of contact with everybody,
41:29
Speaker 1: so they had no idea this happened. And so the
41:32
Speaker 1: reason Benjamin Bratt was there was because it was so
41:35
Speaker 1: dangerous what they were coming up on that. Literally, their
41:40
Speaker 1: lives were in danger. So when they came upon the
41:43
Speaker 1: park ranger, Benjamin Bratt, they pretended they didn't see him.
41:48
Speaker 1: What was cool is.
41:49
Speaker 3: Look over there on the right, guys.
41:50
Speaker 1: Exactly what was cool about it is that this park
41:56
Speaker 1: ranger had been a river guide himself. He immediately recognized
42:00
Speaker 1: two was in this boat, and he pretended he didn't
42:02
Speaker 1: see them. Yeah, so that everybody could just kind of
42:06
Speaker 1: go their own way and just pretend like they hadn't
42:07
Speaker 1: seen one another, and these guys could continue on because
42:10
Speaker 1: he said he knew immediately what they were doing because
42:12
Speaker 1: of the river conditions, so he just let him go
42:14
Speaker 1: their way. He kept an eye on them as they
42:16
Speaker 1: went further along, though, and hit that crystal rapid and
42:21
Speaker 1: he witnessed their boat being overturned very violently.
42:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is when they hit one of those the
42:27
Speaker 2: one that Petchick said was two to three stories high,
42:31
Speaker 2: fliped that thing at the top. Everyone ends up in
42:34
Speaker 2: the water. Kent and Greua was pretty okay and Petchick
42:39
Speaker 2: was pretty okay. The boat got banged up a little bit.
42:43
Speaker 2: I think it lost some of its bowel post, a
42:46
Speaker 2: chunk out of the stern but it was still very
42:49
Speaker 2: much operational, and Reynolds was injured. I think there was
42:53
Speaker 2: a head injury, and as a result, he did not
42:56
Speaker 2: do a lot of at least tough rowing after that,
43:00
Speaker 2: he did anything at all. I figure he'd be like
43:02
Speaker 2: Burt Reynolds in Deliverance at that point, just sort of
43:04
Speaker 2: laying down in the middle of the canoe. But he
43:08
Speaker 2: apparently would row some calmer parts. And I guess take
43:13
Speaker 2: that with a grain of salts, because I don't think
43:14
Speaker 2: any of it was very calm and grew and Petchick said,
43:18
Speaker 2: all right, it's the two of us basically doing the tough,
43:21
Speaker 2: tough rowing in one hundred degree heat, and it was.
43:26
Speaker 2: It was real tough stuff from that point on. It
43:29
Speaker 2: was already tough, but it was really really tough. But
43:31
Speaker 2: they decided not to quit.
43:33
Speaker 1: No, they didn't, and that's really significant because again their
43:36
Speaker 1: boat overturned. They Reynolds was injured, they were thrown out
43:40
Speaker 1: of the boat violently into a whirlpool, got sucked under.
43:43
Speaker 1: All three of them miraculously got free and then they
43:48
Speaker 1: had to turn the boat back over upright again get
43:50
Speaker 1: back in it. Totally exhausted at this point and decided
43:54
Speaker 1: to continue on. They did that was just absolutely nuts.
43:59
Speaker 1: Problem is is they knew the park ranger had seen them,
44:02
Speaker 1: and so they were kind of all worried about possibly
44:05
Speaker 1: losing their river guide licenses because again, this was a
44:08
Speaker 1: wildcat river run. It was not sanctioned, it was technically illegal.
44:13
Speaker 1: But they continued on. They said, we've made it this far,
44:15
Speaker 1: and they kept going and gave themselves I guess a
44:19
Speaker 1: period where they're like, okay, this is not working anymore.
44:23
Speaker 1: We're all too exhausted. We need to take some rest.
44:25
Speaker 1: Let's just take an hour and we'll all get some sleep,
44:28
Speaker 1: and then we'll wake up and be refreshed and it'll
44:31
Speaker 1: be like starting over again and new.
44:33
Speaker 3: Yeah.
44:34
Speaker 2: And of course what happens is they sleep for three hours,
44:38
Speaker 2: almost woke up in a panic because they had just
44:42
Speaker 2: you know, almost killed themselves. They're exhausted, and now they're
44:45
Speaker 2: thinking like, now we've jeopardized this record that we're trying
44:48
Speaker 2: to get. We don't know if the river will ever
44:50
Speaker 2: be this fast again, right, and here we slept for
44:53
Speaker 2: three hours. So instead of taking their ball and going home,
44:58
Speaker 2: taking their ore and going home, they said, now we
45:01
Speaker 2: got to go extra fast. So at mile two thirty nine,
45:05
Speaker 2: they get out another set of ores and someone said,
45:09
Speaker 2: where did those even come from? And Grewa said, they
45:13
Speaker 2: were at our feet the whole time. Dumb, dumb, And
45:16
Speaker 2: they started rowing two at a time, so they were
45:19
Speaker 2: hauling but rowing together, which obviously, you know, I don't
45:23
Speaker 2: know if that probably doesn't double your speed, but you're
45:25
Speaker 2: you're going much faster at that point.
45:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was They woke up at I guess
45:30
Speaker 1: about one, because they took that rest at ten and
45:33
Speaker 1: accidentally slept for three hours, so actually, yeah one, I
45:38
Speaker 1: had to count it out on my fingers for a second.
45:41
Speaker 1: And then they kept rowing and they another ten hours
45:46
Speaker 1: later they finally reached the end, so that like they
45:50
Speaker 1: had just been exerting themselves almost constantly for thirty six
45:54
Speaker 1: hours and thirty eight minutes. That's what their final time
45:57
Speaker 1: ended up being. So they just destroy Grewa's previous record
46:02
Speaker 1: setting run thanks to the river being so nuts.
46:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, he did it. The three of them did it
46:09
Speaker 2: rather and he did not lose his license. He was
46:12
Speaker 2: worried about that, so that's the good news. Apparently he
46:15
Speaker 2: got a five hundred dollars fine, which he couldn't even pay,
46:18
Speaker 2: so his lawyer negotiated community service, which he may or
46:23
Speaker 2: may not have even done. And like you said, at
46:26
Speaker 2: the very beginning of this, he wasn't a big braggart
46:28
Speaker 2: about his own accomplishments. They kind of spoke for themselves
46:31
Speaker 2: to him. Yeah, for sure, So he didn't really you know,
46:34
Speaker 2: it's not like he started making the talk show circuit
46:36
Speaker 2: or anything like that. But of course word was going
46:39
Speaker 2: to get out people talk, and he you know, he
46:43
Speaker 2: will always remain a legend of the Grand Canyon and
46:46
Speaker 2: the Colorado River because of the speed run.
46:48
Speaker 1: Yeah. He died at fifty two in two thousand and two,
46:51
Speaker 1: and he died while he was riding his mountain bike.
46:55
Speaker 1: And I couldn't find out how. It's like that sounds
46:57
Speaker 1: like he went over a cliff or something. Apparently he
46:59
Speaker 1: had torn aorta somehow. They're not sure how, but he
47:02
Speaker 1: was found laying beside his mountain bike dead and his
47:07
Speaker 1: wife at his I believe his third wife, Michelle Grewa,
47:12
Speaker 1: said this is exactly how he would have wanted to go.
47:15
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, if you're going to be like
47:17
Speaker 1: a rugged outdoorsman and you die on your mountain bike,
47:20
Speaker 1: that's not the worst way you could go.
47:23
Speaker 2: No, they you know, it seemed like he was he
47:27
Speaker 2: was just sort of laying there on his side, and
47:29
Speaker 2: they said it looked like sort of a peaceful position.
47:32
Speaker 2: So there there is speculation that he may have sort
47:35
Speaker 2: of known what was going on and just sort of
47:38
Speaker 2: laid down and you know, to be with the woods.
47:40
Speaker 1: Right, to be with the woods. That's the new euphemism
47:44
Speaker 1: for it, isn't it.
47:46
Speaker 3: I guess so.
47:47
Speaker 1: Michelle Grew also wrote in a memorial Boatman's Quarterly, I
47:51
Speaker 1: think that he had mellowed out some a lot actually
47:56
Speaker 1: in his later years. Still lived the life that he lived,
47:59
Speaker 1: but he became focused on being a dad. I think
48:01
Speaker 1: he had three or has three kids, and it was just,
48:06
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, an all round interesting neat dude.
48:10
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean he started a conservation group, didn't he.
48:13
Speaker 1: He did called the Grand Canyon River Guides, that's right,
48:17
Speaker 1: which is still around today, and that Grand Canyon Dories
48:22
Speaker 1: was sold to an existing outfit called Oars, which gives
48:28
Speaker 1: dory tours down the Grand Canyon still today.
48:33
Speaker 3: Tempting.
48:34
Speaker 1: It tempted me too, and then I was like, again,
48:36
Speaker 1: seventeen days is a little much and also do I
48:39
Speaker 1: want to perish in the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River?
48:43
Speaker 1: And I decided, now I don't.
48:45
Speaker 3: He could just be with the woods.
48:46
Speaker 1: I'd just rather stay locked inside my house. Right, You
48:52
Speaker 1: got anything else?
48:53
Speaker 3: No, I got nothing else.
48:54
Speaker 2: I just know that that's one place you will not
48:56
Speaker 2: crash a dory into a boulder is in your house.
48:59
Speaker 1: It's definitely not.
49:00
Speaker 3: Yeah.
49:00
Speaker 1: Well, since I said definitely not, that means it's time
49:03
Speaker 1: for listener mail.
49:06
Speaker 3: Uh oh, this is cool.
49:09
Speaker 2: This is from someone who whose grandmother had a nice
49:14
Speaker 2: little what do you call them?
49:16
Speaker 3: A mnemonic device?
49:17
Speaker 1: Yeah?
49:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, for when you want to remember.
49:20
Speaker 1: Something mnemonic you're thinking's a pneumatic no nomonic.
49:26
Speaker 2: Hey, guys, stuff you should know as a staple of
49:28
Speaker 2: my daily commute. Truly enjoy learning about common and obscure stuff.
49:32
Speaker 2: And you've helped our trivia team, the Meerkats, claim victory
49:36
Speaker 2: on more than one occasion.
49:38
Speaker 3: Go Meerkats for sure.
49:41
Speaker 2: Anyway, just finished the episode on the Wreck of the
49:43
Speaker 2: Coast to Concordia and thought i'd share the way that
49:45
Speaker 2: my grandmother taught me how to remember which direction was
49:49
Speaker 2: port versus starboard. She would say, there's not much port
49:54
Speaker 2: left in the glass like port whye y port side
49:58
Speaker 2: being left port left in the glass. Interestingly, she was
50:02
Speaker 2: not a seafaring woman nor a.
50:04
Speaker 3: Lover of port.
50:05
Speaker 2: I wish I could recall the context of her telling
50:07
Speaker 2: me this even but it's always stuck with me. And
50:10
Speaker 2: I thought you might get a kick out of that.
50:13
Speaker 2: Thanks for all the information and laughs. And that is
50:15
Speaker 2: from Aaron. And I wrote Aeron back to see if
50:18
Speaker 2: I could get report No grandma's name, but I didn't
50:23
Speaker 2: hear back. So let's just let's just say grandmother to Aaron,
50:27
Speaker 2: okay inntribute?
50:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's it. Okay. Is that Aaron with the
50:36
Speaker 1: A A or Aaron with the E E R? I am, oh,
50:40
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Aaron. That's a good one. It's at
50:43
Speaker 1: least as good as mine that I came up with.
50:45
Speaker 3: But what was yours?
50:47
Speaker 1: There's four letters in both port and left.
50:49
Speaker 3: I think, Oh, think that's what it's good too.
50:52
Speaker 1: That's how that's what I remember. So apparently the system works.
50:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
50:56
Speaker 1: Well, if you want to be like Aaron and improve
50:58
Speaker 1: or try to improve upon our devices, we love that
51:01
Speaker 1: kind of thing. You can send it in an email
51:03
Speaker 1: to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
51:10
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
51:13
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51:16
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