As the Oarlock Turns

Glen Canyon Lives
By Josh Mahan

Sitting in Pat and Steve Larkin’s hot tub, beneath their shade tree, perched on the edge of the massive canyon that holds Wahweap Creek, seems a long way from the 150 reservoir miles of Powell, though we look across the massive body of water in the distance.
Big Water, Utah, is a town where the streets have names like Yankee Doodle Way and the polygamists aren’t Mormon. Big Water is the blue collar Glen Canyon dam-building town, once complete with rowdy saloons and brothels, while Page used to house the white-collar engineers. Pat was principal of the school in more recent times. She says the Mormon school board in Kanab wanted nothing to do with the libertarian enclave.

“This town is polarized,” she says. “There are two types of people. Polygs and non-polygs. They don’t talk to each other. But since I was principal, I conversed with both sides.”

Steve, a retired railroad man and solar electrician, juices up our solar batteries with one of his big panels, and loans us an inverter. After a two days of feeding us, providing their home, Wi-Fi, and loaning us their car for a resupply run, the duo drives us down to Lee’s Ferry for our backhaul up to the base of Glen Canyon Dam.

Here’s the thing: Not all of Glen Canyon is lost. A mere 15 miles survives below the concrete current-killing dam. But they are 15 miles of magic, forgotten by river runners and seen mostly by foreign tourists who travel on bus tours to run the stretch with motorized pontoon boats. These same pontoons will run a craft back upriver. When the boat operators found us at Lee’s Ferry the morning before our Grand Canyon launch, The Significance was fully loaded, ready to go. Usually they haul the boat up on one the boat But we were fully loaded. I was able to talk them into towing the craft and two pontoon boats were lashed together to maximize power.

“We’ve never done this before,” said the lead guide. A Glen Canyon first ascent.

“We’ve heard that before,” I tell him.

With that, The Significance is tied in and up we go, catching spray in the morning cold. I sit, muscles tensed in the shadows of the canyon. A D-ring blows on Siggy; she tenses, but we push on.

Soon we are at the top of the magnificent orange-walled canyon, its weeping walls and lush alcoves a museum to the canyon unknown to America until drowned. Another victim of the Colorado River Storage Project, developed to deliver water to barren desert and promote unsustainable growth in Las Vegas and Phoenix. And to turn dry California valleys to farmland.

Was it worth it? That depends who you talk to. I’m willing to say hell no. It’s a house of cards, and a lot of people are going to hurt when the water runs out. Not mention the ecosystems lost. That means plants and animals killed. Dead. Entire species wiped off the face of the earth, forever. All so we can ride a water-slide through the Shark Tank at the Golden Nugget. As America and the world awaken the finite limits of what we can rob from the planet’s energy cycle, drastic shifts will be made. We were promised a future of flying cars that ran on garbage and super-cities powered by nuclear fission. But in reality, the pinnacle of our civilization was the electric can-opener.

Off the soapbox.

As we descend the final shred of Glen Canyon, it all ties together. The massive canyon system we’ve run upstream flows seamlessly into the Grand Canyon without pause. It makes sense. These canyons are all connected. The Colorado River is more than Lee’s Ferry to Diamond Creek. It was once the wildest corridor in the west, running from the Wind Rivers to the sea, and vice versa.