I got asked to answer interview questions by the river company and as they are relevant to my life on the Colorado Plateau here they are.
-
What is your favorite river camp site? (along the stretched we run)
I really like the camp River Right just below Cow Swim (aka "Joe Hutch Rapid") Rapid in Desolation Canyon. You can pull in and make your camp, and then get a hold of your duckie and carry it back up the rapid and run it over and over again. Cow Swim is one of the largest in Desolation Canyon with a nice drop at the begining and some big holes and waves. At high water we usually roll up duckies here for safety reasons, but at low water it is a lot of fun! Oh, and did I mention? There is a beautiful view. You can see the Roan Cliffs dropping off just a few miles down stream, and looking back upstream you're surrounded by towering cliffs whose summits you can't even see.
What rapid do you think is the most fun and why?
Probably "The North Sea" rapids in Cataract Canyon. This rapid is not just one drop or wave but it is quite a long distance of many large waves and a few holes. So you're going up and down over waves of quite a few feet tall. There's not as much of the pressure as in finding "the" correct line as there is, say, at Big Drops 2 and 3. So it's a little less stressful to row, and a little more fun to ride through it.
What is your favorite river game?
I like playing in duckies! At camp if no one else is using one I like to get in there and find some little small riffle with a re circulating current near camp and try to surf it. Sometimes you can surf it better if you put your weight very far forward in the front so you can get in it better, but doing this makes your boat a little less stable, and a little more exciting. When you get tired of that, if there is a nice big eddy near camp that you can float around in, it's fun to see how far forward (or back) you can sit in the duckie before it falls back over and goes upside down. Then you right it. The more times you play with a duckie and get good at flipping it back over when it is upside down the better off you are going to be when you actually flip in a rapid. I flipped my heavily loaded duckie at least 3 times unintentionally last summer, and each time righting it I didn't really think about it, it was just an instinctive thing.
What is something you try to do on each trip you run?
I try to identify some part of the river section that I don't quite understand and then I try to learn about it before the trip. So this summer on the San Juan I really sat down and figured out the stratigraphy. Then the next trip I sat down to figure out some of the prominent geographical features. The river from Bluff to Clay Hills cuts across the Monument Upwerp, but the Monument Upwerp is not as simple of a broad, anticlinal arch as is, say the San Rafael Swell. There are a few different anticlines and synclines within it, and I had to figure out how they were related to the formation of the larger Upwerp. And that's just rocks. There's always something else to learn, whether it's about the uranium mills, the re-introduced Desert Bighorn Sheep, Desert Flora, the impact of the Lake Powell on the lower San Juan.
Do you have a pre or post trip ritual?
Perhaps my pre trip ritual is that I pack everything, big dry bag, little dry bag, whine bag, first aid kit, hiking backpack... all up and have it sitting in the truck so I can just grab it and throw it in a boat the next morning. Post trip it's nice to take a shower. It's usually so hot and dry that you don't even need a towel. You can just take your clothes off, shower, and then put them back on, and you'll dry before you get cold or feel soggy.
What is your favorite river outfit?
I get a pair of quick drying shorts in the spring and I'll wear those all season. As soon as I can I like to throw on a white long sleeved cotton dress shirt. It's good for the sun and lets you use less sun screen, it keeps you cool after you hop in the river and come out with it wet, and then it also dries quick enough which is convenient if a wind or a storm is coming. So I'll wear that and a nice big wide brimmed hat. The straw hats look nice but the wind destroys them. They have some nice felt cowboy hats at Murdocks' in Grand Junction and I like to wear those.
What do you do in the winter?
I get creative. Two winters ago I worked for a building services company in Denver plowing snow, driving loaders, and dump trucks, and pressure washing things clean. Then last winter I lived in a cab over camper outside a friends' house in Durango Colorado and I worked at Purgatory Ski resort. This winter I am finding myself living in an apartment in Salt Lake City (first running water I've lived with since May 2010!) and I'm working a Sundance restaurant in Park City.
More exciting for me than the winter, which is usually dedicated to work and not play, is the fall and spring. Guiding gives you almost 4 months of non-paid vacation a year. So if you are good at budgeting, you can really stretch it. Last spring I did 20 river days before May 1st, doing private trips with friends on the San Juan, the Colorado, the San Miguel and the Dolores. The last two falls I've spent a few months wandering around ghost towns in Utah. I'm about three years into a book on the subject, and during the fall I get to explore and photograph, then in the winter I read, research, and write histories. I recently set up http://utahghosttowns.blogspot.com/ for this project and there will be stories about these places posted there throughout the winter while I work on selling the book.
Who is your favorite river guide or river character?
That's hard to choose, there are so many who are inspiring and that I relate to. After everyone considered, I'd have to probably settle on Huckleberry Finn. He's seen the life and society his times had to offer and he decides it is a better way to spend his time to explore the forests and go down the river and have adventures than it is to try and learn how to be "civilized". He also balances his desire for personally fulfilling adventures with a commitment to help out his fellow man. When he is told that helping Jim escape from Slavery is a sin, and that he is putting his soul in danger by working for his freedom, Huck decides he'd rather go to hell and stand by his convictions and free his friend than he would respect the edicts of a prejudiced society.
There's a dialectic there, when if you are an intelligent, well meaning and compassionate person who values the lives and rights of others, you might find our society is often a difficult one to fit into and be respected for your beliefs in. In such a case you can get a lot of solace and peace and self confidence out of nature that you can't get out of cities with their rents, landlords, traffic jams, employers, bureaucrats, rules, and privatized every square inch of property. Most of South East Utah is BLM land. You can camp anywhere you want for free. You can explore places without people telling you what to do and where you can't go. That's a liberating feeling I have not been able to find in any city, and I've lived in a lot of different cities. Ultimately, however, if you return from nature a more balanced, sane, and capable person, I think it's wrong to keep that feeling and that power to yourself. You need to keep your focus on what society is doing and you need to be part of the debates and movements that are shaping its direction. Because ultimately, if you hide too long in nature, not only do you miss out on a lot that society can offer (like shower curtains, running water, spouses, and electricity), but ultimately a misguided society can consume your favorite places without you noticing in time to stop it. A new nuclear power plant may be built soon in Green River, Utah, which would situate our town between a nuke plant and the Crescent Junction nuclear waste dump. Oil and gas drilling, which has provided us with jobs and cheap energy, has also completely destroyed the wilderness character of amazing places like Nine Mile Canyon and the Southern Uinta Basin. It also isn't a real alternative to burning coal because natural gas still releases quite a bit of carbon into the atmosphere and contributes to global warming. It's no coincidence that river guides are prone to becoming environmentalists and political activists.
How did you become a river guide?
I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia where my mother was a film critic and showed me many old exciting movies about the West. My father took me canoeing and kayaking pretty often on the exciting class 2 and 3 rivers of North Georgia, in addition to hiking, backpacking, and fishing. You'd have to wander pretty far around the Mountains of North Georgia to find a piece or rock outcrop big enough to scramble up. My parents wonder why I am a river guide instead of a law student but I think they had a hand in contributing to my interests in the West and the outdoors, for better or for worse! When I got done with college I was pretty ready to find something better than what Washington, DC had to offer. I saved up for a season at a fancy restaurant and then wandered around America in a car for 9 months. When I found the Colorado Plateau and I knew it was the place for me. The first time I camped along the Colorado River above Moab it was on a whim and a suggestion and it was in late October with no one there. There river otters were playing at the Goose Island campground where normally they're scared away by the large number of campers. It was a pretty magical place and I knew I'd be coming back there.
In 2008 I was the last hired and became the first fired waiter at a very well known and respectable restaurant in Denver. The economy was to blame, not my performance. A bureaucrat deleted my unemployment claim I had spent 45 minutes filling out online and I was feeling pretty frustrated and running out of stuff to sell to pay the rent. That winter in the "etc" section of the Denver Craigslist I found an ad for a canoe company that needed part time guides. I worked for them that summer and I've continued working for them ever since. Going back to a winter in Denver after having an exciting summer on Western Slope rivers and hiking the Colorado Trail I felt it was not quite the right fit. The next year I moved to Moab and guided full time and I started to hear about an outfit called Holiday which was supposed to be the most efficient and best organized one out there. I hit Tim up that winter and talked myself into a job and worked for them the next season. I hope to stick around for many more.
