Nature Noir (25 page)

The American's South Fork, an easier run that soon became the most heavily used whitewater river in California, lured people to try the more challenging North and Middle Forks. In 1982 rangers issued the first six permits for guide services to operate in Auburn State Recreation Area. Three years later, fifty-seven companies were offering whitewater trips on our rivers. A 1985 study showed that paddlers spent nineteen thousand person-days annually beneath the waterline of the Auburn Reservoir. Now rangers were called on to handle whitewater raft accidents and rescues. Hostilities flared when the rafters got out of their boats in places the miners saw as their own, or when incensed boaters cut ropes stretched across the river at neck level, which the miners used to tether their dredges. By 1986 Ranger Sherm Jeffries was writing a management plan for whitewater boating on the American, and over the following couple of years some of us rangers enrolled in guide schools and white-water rescue courses. Eventually we got our own raft.

Will Reich had come to work for us in the nineties as a seasonal boatman. He'd previously worked as a guide and was better at running a boat in swift water than any of the rest of us. Eventually he went to our academy and came back as our river patrol ranger.

***

On another patrol that summer, Will and I stopped for lunch downstream at Dardanelles Creek. There we munched our sandwiches reflectively, seated on steep, warm sheets of polished bedrock plunging into a deep pool where our boat bobbed, tied off at the riverbank beneath us. When we finished eating I checked the bowline and splashed some cold water on the chambers so the air expanding in the hot sun wouldn't pop our raft. Then Will and I climbed up the canyon wall, following Dardanelles Creek into a slot canyon so narrow you could touch both sides at the same time. The dark stone was water-polished into sensuous curves. The air was cool. We waded through a series of potholes to the base of a small waterfall.

Two hundred and fifty feet beneath the waterline of the Auburn Dam, we stopped and looked up. Tufts of fern growing from the walls and overhanging branches of trees on either side of the slot above were silhouetted against a thin slice of sky. A thread of water splashed down next to us, throwing cool droplets on our faces. Then, on a little ledge just above head level, we caught sight of a green orb the size and shape of a large cantaloupe, intricately woven from moss. One side featured a small round doorway. It was the nest of a water ouzel, a bird we often saw darting beneath the rapids in search of aquatic invertebrates and fingerling fish. Like the canyon wren the ouzel was a creature of moving water, not reservoir lakeshores. It was the first time I'd ever seen one of their nests, which are usually well hidden.

In the practice of wildlife management there is a theory, called mitigation, for dealing with the loss of wildlife habitat when reservoirs are built. Mitigation means you do what you can to improve habitat on the land surrounding the inundated place, to make up for the loss. The mitigation package for Auburn Dam included the periodic burning of mature brush fields to spur the growth of new, tender shoots, which make good forage for deer.

But there was nothing in the package for water ouzels.

***

When our lunch stop was over, Will and I got back into the boat.

That morning most of the bright-colored flotillas of commercial rafts had been ahead of us, but, rowing vigorously, we'd passed many of them before lunch.

As we set off again, the first odd thing we noticed was a growing line of wet rock above the water's surface.

"Does it look to you like the flow's dropping off?" I asked Will.

"I was thinking the same thing—but it's way too early," he replied, pulling at the oars.

The next series of rapids, known collectively as Ruck-a-Chucky, were still a ways downriver. But for several miles now you could tell the river was up to something—hoarding altitude, its rapids nothing more than fast little riffles between long pools where the water was so sluggish you had to row against an afternoon headwind or you'd float back upstream. At Ruck-a-Chucky, the unstable walls of the canyon had been calving off into the river for tens of thousands of years, forming a natural dam and a series of waterfalls through huge boulders. Ruck-a-Chucky announced its presence at the end of a long reflecting pool where Canyon Creek tumbled down the left canyon wall through dense stands of fir. At the end of this pool the canyon narrowed and bent sharply to the right. From around the bend came an ominous rumble.

I was rowing across this pool when I noticed I had to thread my way through the sandbars or run aground. On a beach to my right I saw a line of wet sand above the present waterline. Will put his helmet back on and took the oars while I strapped on mine. Just ahead of us was what boaters call a "horizon line"—a place where the visible surface of the water ends abruptly, which means there's a waterfall. Will lined the boat up just right and we dropped over the edge as usual. But at the bottom of the falls our bow struck hard against an unfamiliar rock sticking out of the water, stopping us dead for a few seconds, perched at a steep angle. Then the impatient water picked up the boat and lifted us past the obstacle.

"That was different!" I yelled to Will above the foam.

"No question about it—the flow's really decreasing now!" he yelled back. He looked worried.

Will stroked over to the right wall, where we tied up to a boulder to ready ourselves for the process of getting our boat through the main rapid. We'd never learn exactly what happened at the power plant; perhaps somewhere on the grid a circuit breaker had popped or a turbine bearing had gotten hot, or someone had just thrown the wrong switch by mistake. But for whatever reason, our river had been turned down at the power plant to just over a third of its normal flow. With the water stretched out through miles of canyon, it took a while for the effects of this to reach us, but that was now happening.

At the main Ruck-a-Chucky rapid, the water ran over, through, and under a pile of house-sized gray-green boulders. This waterfall was only occasionally run by the certifiably insane. The formula here was simple: If you swim, you die.

Over the years a variety of approaches had been employed to get boats and gear around Ruck-a-Chucky. In 1986, when I first worked on the American, people unloaded their gear and lowered the empty rafts down the rocks next to the falls with ropes. Later State Parks constructed a portage trail and boats were carried around. Finally, we all learned to "ghost boat" the falls.

Ghost boating was at minimum a two-person operation. It worked like this: I'd hike around the falls with a single paddle in my hand. Below the falls I'd wade into a deep green pool and swim across a narrow channel to the steeply inclined downstream face of a massive boulder in midstream. I'd climb that until I stood on its top, facing upstream, ten or twelve feet above the rapids. In front of me there was only one refuge from the fast water: an eddy on the downstream side of another boulder. I had to leap far enough out into the current to land perfectly in that patch of protected water while holding on to my paddle. When I surfaced I'd grab for the boulder, then climb its downstream face until I stood on top of it, six feet or so off the rapids. Once in position there, I'd blow a whistle clipped to my life vest and tap my helmet with one hand to signal Will, who watched my progress from the top of the falls upstream.

Will would then disappear, remove some of our gear from the boat to be carried around, and push the unmanned boat out into the current above the falls. Within a couple of minutes the underside of the boat's bow would appear at the brink, hesitate for an instant as if in fear, and plunge over the falls. At the bottom, the self-bailing boat—it had an inflatable floor with little scuppers around its perimeter for water to drain out—would bob from the froth and follow the main current through a boulder garden upstream of me, hidden by the rocks. Suddenly the craft would reappear where it now had to pass between my boulder and the canyon wall, a space only inches wider than the boat itself. My job was to leap into it as it passed underneath me, paddle feverishly to bring it under control, and maneuver it into a quiet inlet between the towering boulders to my right, where we'd reload the gear Will was carrying around. If I missed this cove I could look forward to running the next rapid alone with a single paddle and no oars.

But on this day we never got that far. I set up, signaled Will, and waited as usual. He disappeared, the minutes passed—and no boat. Eventually he reappeared at the top of the falls, and I heard his whistle above the roar and saw him signaling me to come back upstream. The only way back was to jump into the rapids and swim for shore. I did so.

Once I rejoined Will at the top of the falls, I saw our boat hung up sideways on a boulder at the brink. There was no reaching it.

It didn't seem dignified to abandon our vessel to be salvaged by some lucky river rat downstream when the water came back up. State and federal budgets being what they were, we might never get another. And of course we'd become famous in a way a ranger doesn't want to—like two rangers I knew whose handcuffed suspect somehow slipped his cuffs, climbed into the front seat of their patrol car, and drove away. The pursuit that ensued involved several other rangers and a number of sheriff's cars.

So we decided on a belayed swim. Was it really a good plan? Only if we survived it. I tied one end of our rescue rope to the D-ring on the back of Will's rescue vest. As a last resort, if he got pinned by the current and I was unable to pull him back, he could release his belt, but he'd be unlikely to survive the falls if he did. In order for it all to work I just had to be a really great belayer and he had to be a really great swimmer. Ranger work brings out the best in people.

Holding a loop I'd tied in the other end of the rope, I swam out to a flat-topped boulder in the pool upstream of the falls and set up my belay on top, where a prominence gave me a good foothold. When I was ready, I pulled up slack and Will let the current and the taut rope pendulum him out into midstream. Then he began to float toward the falls, as I paid out a little rope at a time. When he got close to the boat on the verge of the falls, I felt the current begin to tug him harder. Will signaled for more rope. I wasn't sure whether his wife would appreciate it if I gave it to him. But I wanted our raft back, so I did.

A yard or two more and Will caught hold of the raft. He signaled urgently. I started pulling him and the boat back upstream. To do this I stood facing him downstream and leaned backward against the rope around my waist with my legs bent. Then, straining against Will, the boat, and the current, I straightened my legs. When I had stood all the way up, I squatted quickly, catching up the slack I'd created before the river could take it back. After a few minutes of grunting and sweating, I had dragged Will far enough from the falls that he could swim the boat safely over to shore. I swam back in.

While we had been intent on retrieving our raft, the whole Ruck-a-Chucky rapids had stopped working for whitewater boating. One group had hung up in the first rapid where we'd struck a rock but washed through. Water poured through the craft's interior and its passengers clung to surrounding rocks as their guides tried frantically to rescue them. With that rapid blocked other parties couldn't get through at all. Meanwhile, I thought, somewhere deep in the control rooms of dams and electric grids, men and women were sitting in front of angled panels on which little LEDs blinked on in orderly branched schematics and blue computer monitors showed nothing was wrong. They were probably listening to Rush Limbaugh and on their desks cups of coffee were turning cool in mugs with inscriptions like "Western Power Administration Conference 1997" and "World's Greatest Dad." Could they have any idea what the flip of a switch could do to us here? Probably not. The world was not founded upon such empathy and imagination.

Although it is counterintuitive, a rapid can be far more dangerous at low flows than at higher ones. At low water, rocks you'd normally wash over stick out and try to grab you. The water runs through them like mouthwash through the gaps of your teeth, straining out boats and the boaters who fall out of them, to be pinned underwater and drowned.

We hiked up to warn the guides for the parties stuck upstream that it had become too dangerous to run Ruck-a-Chucky under these conditions. Luckily, they had managed to pull all of their clients from the river. At this bend in the canyon our radios began working again. An old jeep road ran up the canyon wall above the rapids. We radioed Will's seasonal helpers, who had picked up our truck and driven it around to wait for us, to make arrangements with the outfitters' van drivers—also waiting there—to evacuate their clients by van on this road. Then, with our seasonals stuck directing traffic and darkness coming, Will and I decided to try to run the rest of the river. We set out, lining the boat over the falls like the old days. Then we got in.

A quarter mile downstream from the main rapids we hung up in another drop. Once firmly lodged, our boat became an obstacle to the current, which then flowed over and through it. We were up to our waists in foam. We clung to the boat, trying not to get washed out. I started laughing, giggling. Will looked at me questioningly, then his sunburned face broke into a grin. I fought my way upstream through the froth to where the boat's stern protruded from the water. Once there I began to jump up and down on it like an ape. The boat groaned; a dull scraping noise resounded through it; we felt it budge and then hold fast again. I jumped some more; Will caught an oar in the current and we were off, with me still laughing and jumping like a madman and Will chuckling as he pulled on the oars.

It was evening. Downstream from the Ruck-a-Chucky rapids we floated through a series of long, deep pools. In a canyon it grows dark from the bottom up, and close in now, the water and the cliffs on either side of us were wrapped in indigo. Framed in this dark V, a portion of the canyon wall upstream was still lit brilliant orange by the last rays of the setting sun. Then the sky dimmed, the pool beneath us went inky, and the first star reflected off it. The call of a canyon wren echoed down the cliffs.