As the Oarlock Turns

Night Swells
By Josh Mahan

It started out as a calm, glassy night on Mead reservoir. The wind kicked in as we rowed past Sentinel Island, my marker for Painter Cove and our Mead extraction site. Desert Adventures would be shuttling us around Hoover Dam at 7 a.m. sharp. It was 2 a.m. I had rowed more than 20 reservoir miles. Things were getting bleary.

We were in one of the biggest bays we had experienced yet, Boulder Basin. When the wind picked up another notch, the waves rolling in turned to white-capping swells. Not quite ocean-sized, but certainly larger than anything we had seen since the Canyon Explorer nearly capsized us in Lake Powell.

As I worked for shore, a strong tailwind continued to push me toward the lights of Boulder Beach, which started out as a blip on the horizon, but were now forming into a discernable row of lights. The bright lights of Vegas shone strong over the thin mountain ridge separating us for the sprawling metropolis. The Luxor’s controversial vertical beam was distinct amongst the golden glow.

Jen grabbed the chart, maps are for land lubbers.
“Is that an island?” Jen asked.

The shore had faded into a black mass with no relief. Key navigational points were obscured in the midnight.

“I think that’s Promontory Point,” she said.

“That’s not Promontory,” I said, figuring it further.

We sat quiet for a moment in the wind that was starting to howl, being pushed closer and closer to the dam.

“Well, you’re usually right,” she said in a way that I knew she damn well didn’t mean.

Knowing that she was right, I had to go check it out. The wind continued to grow.

I pulled along the rock cliff in question. The maps had all been marked when water still filled these canyon walls. How optimistic of the USGS to think that these bodies of water were stable enough to mark for eternity. With the reservoir at record lows, former islands now towered a hundred feet high in the sky, some connected to land, all displaying the white bathtub ring.

The wind tossed our craft around. I kept pulling, fatigue setting in.

“I think we’re almost in our cove,” I said, wishing for the best, doubt setting in thick.

We round the point in question and there it loomed – the massive Hoover Dam, lit up ominously for the night. I had blown past our cove in the dark. Jen had been right – that massive rock was Promontory Point.
Did I mention the breeze? It now approached gale force and we were wind-tunneled and locked in for a course to be blown straight into the dam.

“Where the hell is the Homeland Security strike team,” I think. Maybe they can give us a ride back up to our cove. They don’t show.

A surface current has formed against us and large gusts are throwing up sheets of water. I work the oars and move the boat near one of the canyon walls, tacking a bit and seeking a small pocket of wind relief behind one of the small juts of rock.

“I’m not sure I can get us back up there,” I yell at Jen over the noise, growing anxious.

“We can tie off to the wall and let the wind die down,” she says.

“I don’t like that, either.”

Suddenly the taxing oar strokes I had been pulling in my fatigue earlier seemed like gimmes. Low on fuel, game time was happening right now. There was no choice but to pull the hardest strokes I had in me, one after the next, nonstop.

“Don’t stop, never stop, you’ve got this,” I keep telling myself, battling the wind. Really, there is no other choice than to make it.

A red light flashes methodically up on the side of the cliff wall. I fixate on the beacon in the darkness. The point I must get around to make it into Painter’s Cove looms, seemingly unattainable in current conditions. I keep pulling, losing a half-stroke’s distance for every pull.

We take reprieve behind a rock outcrop. We’re both scared by the seas.

“Well, I guess we’ve retraced Buzz Holmstrom now,” I say to lighten the mood.

I get a laugh from the tense Jen.

That legendary boatman was the first to run many of the rapids we had been through. He rowed his boat across Lake Mead after descending the Grand Canyon and thunked his boat against Hoover Dam, making a point about what he thought of the massive hunk of cement holding the river back.

I fish through some gear for a blanket and throw it to Jen. She throws it over her head and goes to sleep, leaving me with the dark problem. Waves are coming into the walls, bouncing us around. I hold our bow or stern into the coming sets and we rock with their force. I feel like a surfer waiting for my opening.

I push out of our cove only to be thrust back down the canyon by the surface current. I wait. I push out again. Again, I’m pushed down. Each time I eddy out of the current like it’s a river. Finally, the wind lets up slightly. This is my window. I build up some steam in the eddy and explode out into the current, roaring up the cliff, watching steady movement against the wall. The wind comes back. I keep going, one stroke at a time, up and around the point into Painter’s. The cove does its job and blocks the majority of the wind. The sailing is smooth on into the beach at Kingman Wash. I’m not really tired anymore, the adrenaline working out of my system. The strokes are easy again. We touch land at 3:30 in the morning, happy to camp in the still steady breeze.

We unload our boat for coming shuttle around the dam – a mass of cement, bigger than the largest Egyptian pyramid and collapsed on the spit of sand. We awake to a flock of coots in the cove and a heron hunting for breakfast in the water at our feet.

Izzy shows up promptly, we load the gear in the van.
“The road is pretty bad,” says the owner of Desert Adventures, a young river runner herself. The constantly lowering reservoir has left behind depths of sand with a hunger for tires. Soon, Hoover dam will be unable to produce power, the source of Vegas’ lights. And soon we are stuck in the sand.