Well, if I learned nothing else this trip, I now know why a rescue team is called a rescue “party”. 

The second rule of boating alone in the Lower Canyons is not to put yourself in a position where you need someone’s help.  Not only are you very unlikely to encounter anyone to come to your aid, but even in the unlikely event that you do, the very fact that you need help signals that you have failed.  All your critics who cautioned you against boating solo now have plenty of ammunition to support their argument.

Of course, the first rule of boating alone is to have a boat which functions.

When I arrived at Heath Canyon on Dec. 13, the trip was already off to a bad start, though I did have a healthy raft.  Andy Kurie’s security man, Fred, had driven to Langtry to pick up me and all my gear earlier that day, but we didn’t even make Sanderson before his Bronco started spewing smoke and transmission oil.  Fred added more fluid, but a little more than halfway from Sanderson to Marathon, we broke down.  He had blown the front seal on his transmission, and luckily the vehicle hadn’t burst into flames.   As fate would have it, we broke down directly across from the Stumberg Ranch, the most impressive ranch house on that stretch of highway, and despite that the gate sign reads, “All trespassers will be shot,” Fred urged me to talk to the rancher because “you’re clean shaven.”  Gee, thanks for wanting me to have a pretty corpse, Fred.

And as it turned out, by the time I saw Bruno and his wife again the following morning, I knew with certainty that I wasn’t even going to make Dryden.  When I prepared to launch that morning, the boat was losing air as fast as it took on water.  The quick repair I had attempted in camp had been a dismal failure.  When Bruno arrived as I was draining the boat at Mile 34, I asked him for a favor. 

My plan was to boat to the stone house above the river Texas side at Mile 44 just before the Bullis Fold.  The last time I had walked up to the house six or seven years ago I had found a canoe up there.   In the summer of 99, I saw that same canoe across the river, tied to a tree on the Mexican side, so I knew that it would float.  I would have to ‘borrow’ the canoe, and then return it to the owners when I reached Langtry along with a substantial rental fee I was willing to pay.  What I required of Bruno was that he wait for me there so that he would know whether or not I found the canoe, and if I didn’t and had to walk out from there, I would wait until he had finished his trip before starting my hike, and he would call back to Heath Canyon to tell Andy Kurie where I was.

It was my only viable option, despite that I could be charged with stealing the canoe.  Only one problem which I didn’t foresee when Bruno agreed to camp at Cañon Caballo Blanco and meet me there in the morning: what if I couldn’t even make it that far in the raft.  And that’s exactly what happened.

By the time I reached Hot Springs, two of the three pontoons on my boat were not holding any air, and my “trick” of filling the damaged pontoons with water was not working.  I portaged the first drop at Hot Springs (which has reformed thanks to inflows from San Rosendo Canyon, presumably in the October floods) and then tried to get air in the right side of the raft before attempting the lesser second drop.  It would hold none.  So leaving the gear at the bottom of the first drop, I attempted a trial run in an empty boat through the second.  As soon as I began the descent, a simple Class 1, I was washed out by water flowing over the deflated right side.  Before I could wrestle the raft to shore, I banged my right knee on a submerged rock in the rapid, a more painful than debilitating injury, and knew I had better quit right there.  The raft was finished and I was going to have to rely on my legs to get out of there.

Those of you who know the Lower Canyons may be a little suspicious how fate would have it that I just happened to be stranded at Hot Springs, but I was looking at it from a different perspective.  Hot Springs is probably the only place on the river where a guy has any chance of getting a ride out.  Mexicans do drive in there periodically via the very rough road up San Rosendo Canyon.  In the last 11 years of boating through there around Christmas time, I had seen them drive in twice, both times the day after Christmas.  Furthermore, a ranch hand lives only 12 miles up that same canyon on the Mexican side so I could walk up there if need be.  And I wasn’t ruling out the possibility that American boaters might be planning on spending Christmas at the Hot Springs.  In short, I set up what I expected to be a long camp.  It was Dec. 21st, and my only goal was to get out of there before Bruno finished his trip on Jan. 1st and alerted the National Park Service that I had simply disappeared.  The one thing I wanted to avoid, and I was willing to do almost anything to avoid it, was an air search on my behalf.  After all, I was well supplied and I was at Hot Springs and I still had a full two weeks before I was expected to return to work.  I determined I was going to make the best of it, and after my struggle to make it that far, I needed a long rest.


So for three days I did little but cook, think, and write.  Each evening I would wander further and further up San Rosendo Canyon to check for tire tracks and to scout the best path to the top of Dagger Mountain on the Texas side if I elected to walk out on the U.S. side.  My exploratory walks up the Mexican canyon were not encouraging.  The floods from the summer and October had made a poor road worse, and I wistfully noted that no one had come down to repair the water line that follows the road all the way to the ranch.  I did find evidence of tire tracks a couple miles away from the river, but they appeared to be at least a month old.  By the time I returned to camp on my third evening there, I had discounted the possibility I was going to be rescued by Mexican fishermen, and I was now looking at a choice between walking inland on one side of the river or the other.  I was leaning toward going via Mexico because I’ve always found the Mexicans to be among the friendliest people on the planet, and of course, the ranch at San Rosendo is manned.  The one problem I could see with that route is I could walk up there only to be told by the ranch hand that I would have to continue who knows how many more miles to another ranch, where I could likely be told to continue walking to yet another, and then another.  There could be many links on that chain.   I do have a detailed map of the state of Coahuila on my office wall, and I know that San Rosendo is the single most remote ranch in the entire large state.


Just as I had returned from my walk on the third evening, my fortunes changed, and thinking about this now, two weeks later as I write in my office, it seems as unlikely as it did then. 

At 5:10 p.m. on Dec. 23, two canoes appeared at the bottom of the first drop of Hot Springs.   I was camped on the beach at the top of the second drop a hundred yards later, and I could barely contain my glee as they paddled past me and descended the second drop, disappearing below where the hot springs flow into the river.  I tried to calm myself and give them time to pull in to camp, but despite my attempted restraint, I rushed 200 plus yards down to their beach before they had pulled in to camp. 
 
I heard them speaking French as they talked among themselves trying to decide where to pull in.  Frankly, my heart sank at the sound of the language.  I feel almost as comfortable speaking Spanish as I do English, but despite living in Canada for five years, my entire French vocabulary was 37 words, about half of which were to explain that I couldn’t speak or understand the language.  As they landed their boats, I asked hopefully if any of them spoke English or Spanish, and the girl in the front of the lead canoe said they did indeed speak some English.   I quickly began to explain that I was going to need them to make a telephone call for me when they finished their trip (at this point my number one concern was still to head off an air search and more than anything I was worried Bruno would get to a phone before they would), and the girl in the front said in the most beautiful French accent I will ever hear, “you want a telephone?  We have a telephone satellite.”

I don’t know how I restrained myself from leaping right into the water to hug her.  It turns out that this girl’s aunt had disappeared while canoeing on her honeymoon in northern Quebec years before and was never heard from again.  Search parties located only an overturned canoe.  And her sister had been trapped in an avalanche while skiing in the backcountry of British Columbia with her boyfriend, and the pair were rescued by air but not before sustaining injuries that will limit them the remainder of their lives.  In order to do this Lower Canyons canoe trip, the girl’s mother had insisted her party carry a satellite phone. 

My mind then began to race with ideas about how I could best use the phone.  I didn’t want to send out an alert to all of southern Brewster County by saying the wrong thing to Andy Kurie once I called him.  On the other hand, this was clearly going to be an important phone call, and I would have to get it right on the first try.

And then an odd thing happened.  The two young guys stepped out of the canoes and despite the maelstrom in my mind, the first thing I though upon seeing them is, ‘these guys are dead ringers for younger versions of Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt,” an uncanny similarity which made me laugh and forget for a moment the exigency of the situation.

I left them alone to set up their camp and I hustled back to mine to try to figure out what I would tell Andy when I reached him.  I wasn’t alone long when the youngest and most English proficient member of the French Canadian group of students, Tina, wandered into my camp to invite me for supper.  I declined supper because I had eaten before my canyon walk but I did lead her back down in the descending darkness to their camp, and there I explained to them exactly what had happened to cause the situation I was facing.  I could see during this exchange that not all of the group was very comfortable speaking English, and not wanting to force them to do so on my behalf, I left them alone to enjoy their supper and promised to return later to try the phone.

Well, we tried the phone numerous times that night but all we could get was a recording in Spanish saying that the number we were dialing was unavailable or a different recording saying we had to enter the US country code for the call we were attempting.  My heart sank.  I would have to come up with a different plan.  But then the girls told me not to worry, that they had decided to take a layover day the next day and wouldn’t leave until Christmas morning.  I had time to formulate a new plan, and this time I decided to use them to deliver a handwritten letter back to Andy.  They had left a vehicle at Heath Canyon and would have to return to get it once they took out at Dryden on Dec. 28th.  This way I could continue to camp at Hot Springs until the 29th and then begin walking out right about the time Andy received my letter.  The only problem was how to get to the stone house 4 miles down river where a rough road leads from the canyon rim almost to the river.  So that next day I tested the boat and found that it would float.  If I took no gear with me except the essentials for surviving 3 days in the desert, I could float the 4 miles, particularly if I was willing to line all the riffles.  Once I tested the boat, I then spent an emotional hour composing a 2 page letter to Andy, detailing my plan and giving him suggestions about various people to call who might assist in making sure I didn’t have to walk for 3 days.  Then Tina and I went for a long walk up San Rosendo Canyon.

That night, Christmas Eve, Tina over to what I was now calling Camp Anglais (in contrast to their Camp Francais) to invite me again for supper, and when I didn’t go over right away, ‘Harrison Ford’ came over to tell me the satellite phone was now working.  Sure enough, the first time I dialed, I heard a ring and there was Andy on the other end of the line.  Under the pressure of having to talk at a price of $4 per minute, I quickly outlined to him the situation I was facing.  I told him I was fine, but my biggest concern was that when I began walking out in 5 days was that I wouldn’t be able to carry enough water to reach the highway.  More than anything I needed to know if I would find water en route, and I suggested that he might phone Forrest Stumberg to get the names of the ranchers and phone the Border Patrol in case any of the officers would be patrolling that country.  I tried to reassure him often that I was fine, and there was certainly no cause for concern. 

Almost the very minute I hung up, I heard the group of four have an exchange of words in French, which concluded by Isabelle saying, “we want that you go with us in the canoes.”  At first, I very much resisted the idea.  I noted that they didn’t ask until after I had already contacted Andy and perhaps caused alarm not only for Andy but also for everyone he would contact.  I figured the group was just asking to be polite, and I didn’t want to be an interloper on their trip. 

Christmas morning Tina was back over at my camp early to make their case.  She said all four of them wanted me to go with them because “we think you are an interesting man and we like your stories.”  I told her my concerns about ruining their trip, which she dismissed as nonsense.  So I relented, telling Tina that when I’m faced with two choices in the Lower Canyons, I always choose the more adventurous.  Going with them seemed like the less adventurous choice but it was the right one.  I didn’t need to be a hard-ass to prove any points.  Plus, I genuinely liked them.  I’ve seen a lot of boating parties pass through the Lower Canyons over the years, but I’ve never seen one quite as happy as this one.  They loved everything about the trip.

Before we left, they all came over to camp and looked through my mountain of gear and supplies to decide what they wanted to take.  I noticed that the cooler, the Tecate beer, and the limes drew a lot of enthusiasm, but they were speaking entirely in French.  In the end, I didn’t leave much stashed in the black brush above camp.

At noon Christmas day, they put me in the bow of the Mad River Explorer canoe, my first time in a canoe in the Lower Canyons in exactly 24 river trips.  I had only one stipulation:  I wanted to walk around all the rapids because I didn’t want my extra weight causing them to smash the canoe.

We had a delightful day paddling down river.  I was in the boat with Harrison Ford and his girlfriend, Isabelle, who sat in the middle.  I saw right away that these two were very competent canoeists, despite their young age.  They had in fact made a 450-mile trip on the Yukon River the summer before.  Our only difficulty was communication.  Both spoke English very clearly but they didn’t always understand, and I had to be very careful to speak clearly and loudly.  Of course, right away they started teaching me French, and fittingly, the first word I learned was “roche” for rock.  After all, I was the bowman and the river was very low.

The kids did well at Las Palmas and at Rodeo so by the time we reached Upper Madison Falls late in the afternoon, I was pretty confident I could ride with them through the first stage of the rapid, but as we paused above it, Harrison Ford said he wanted to scout.  They ended up running a different path than I would have, starting mid-river, then cutting to the Texas shore, but both boats made it through well, and I waded along the Texas side shore to meet them in an eddy below to be ferried to the base of the portage trail.  While Harrison, Brad, and Isabelle lined the boats through the Mexican side, Tina and I did the fastest portage in the history of that rapid.  I was so grateful to be hitching a ride with them that I veritably sprinted at times as I took the heaviest of their gear down to the bottom of the falls. 

We made camp that night on the rock ledge Mexican side, and I was able to amass a night’s supply of firewood by scouring the slopes up the canyon there at camp.  We had a fine supper and plenty of Tecate around the fire, and before we retired, they said they wanted me to lead them up to the top of Burro Bluff in the morning, a favor I was happy to grant.  I was so indebted to them that I would have piggybacked each of them up that long steep trail if they had so asked.

The following morning we weren’t one-third of the way up the trail which ends at the top of Burro Bluff when we heard the dull roar of a helicopter flying low in the canyon, approaching from upriver, flying substantially below the height we had already reached on our ascent.  I tried to convince myself this was a routine patrol, but even in my most optimistic assessment, I couldn’t find any reason the Border Patrol would be searching for Mexican nationals this deep in the canyon.  The pilot spotted us immediately and then did three circles over our heads.  We stopped our hiking to wave and watch, and I had a sinking feeling that my phone call to Andy two nights before had led to this.  And even if it hadn’t, I didn’t especially like the idea of the copter making a landing to investigate what could have looked from the air like a gringo leading four Mexican Nationals up the talus slope.  There was nothing to do but proceed to the top

We were just about there when I saw a uniformed man descending in our direction, and I hurried ahead of my new friends to meet him.  The moment I saw him, I recognized him as Mike Ryan, the NPS river ranger for the Lower Canyons.  He confirmed exactly what I didn’t want to hear, that he and the Border Patrol pilot were out there “to make sure you’re all right.”

It turns out Andy had been a little confused by my phone call because I had woken him from a deep nap.  Even though he had diligently written down all the information I had given him including the date of Dec. 29th, he suspected I was in more trouble than I was letting on.  After a series of phone calls, he contacted Mike, and Mike agreed to arrange a flyover to look for me at Mile 44 and up the rough ranch road leading out from there.  When they didn’t find me there, they continued down the canyon.

It would be difficult for me to express just how humiliated I felt.  The very thing I most wanted to prevent was the very thing I had caused.  Fortunately, both Mike and the Border Patrol pilot, Mike Turk, had a sense of humor about the incident and seemed relieved rather than angry that they had found in me well.  I pushed my luck by asking them to pose for pictures at the helicopter, and they allowed Tina to fulfill a longtime dream she has had to sit in one.  The rest of the group appeared to like the attention, and the one redeeming thing about the experience for me is that it added to the river experience of the four students. Otherwise, I was deeply embarrassed.  And I felt even worse when Mike Ryan said I would have done fine walking out at Mile 44.  It turns out the Bullis Gap ranch is only a couple hours walk up from the river, and it is a working ranch.  When I asked Mike if they would have given me water, he smiled and said, “Shoot, they’d have made you breakfast.”

I tried to look at the positive side of it.  It’s not often you get a chance to climb up to the top of Burro Bluff and have a Border Patrol helicopter land for a photo opportunity.  Also, Mike was gracious enough to say he would pick up whatever gear I had left at Hot Springs when he began his canoe patrol down the river the following week.

Once we descended my French Canadian friends were positively buoyant, and after a quick lunch with icy cold Tecate and limes, we paddled down to Lower Madison to line it.  Actually, Isabel wanted to run the rapid so Harrison and Brad helped her to try it by each manning a line rope and guiding through the beginning.  Still she lodged the canoe on the island side of the Texas channel and her boyfriend had to wade through the worst of the channel to free the boat.  They were expert in their lining of the second boat and we had a wonderful hour paddling down to our camp at Panther Canyon, where I was eager to exorcise the demon of my summer misadventure by sawing the black brush stump which had impaled my leg, causing a 2 inch in diameter hole right to the shin bone.  But that is old news now, just another in a continuing series of misadventures I’ve been piling up over the last 12 years to the amusement of nearly all the male residents of Langtry and the horror of the rest of them.

The camp mood was high.  We were through the most dangerous water of the trip and, even better, we were forming a very close bond.  Granted it was the most unlikely of river marriages, the most private boater on the Rio Grande with four of the most social, but I can’t overstate how close I felt to them.  I hustled far up Panther Canyon to gather firewood, and Tina helped me on the second trip.  The rest of the group made us soup, and in the evening Isabelle read aloud from a book about global warming.  I was starting to understand French, and they would translate when they felt I missed an important point.

Sadly, we had only two more days on the river, but these days served to confirm what I had seen from the very moment I met them.  These were the happiest, singing-est, joking-est, laughing-est group of college students I had ever met in my life.  They loved every part of their trip, and not one ever complained about a single thing.  They were open to every idea for exploring, hiking, eating, and learning.  Max (the Brad Pitt look-alike) kept us entertained nearly round the clock, and though I could understand little of what he said, he made me laugh often and hard.  Alexi (the Harrison Ford look-alike), the group leader, may be the single nicest person I’ve ever met in my 47 years on this planet.  And the girls were absolute sweethearts, at once nurturing and warrior-like.  They would welcome any challenge, whether it be to bushwhack a trail through thick stands of river cane (or bamboo as I came to think of it from their French), ascend a canyon wall, or run the rapids. 

By the time we reached Dryden on the 28th, we had already decided to spend some time together off the river before they began their long drive back to Montreal.  First, we had to take care of the business of getting all the gear and people off the river to a hot shower in a Sanderson motel.  Then we had to go back to Heath Canyon to retrieve their other vehicle.  We did this by loading the two canoes atop the compact car they had at Dryden and driving it to my car in Langtry while Alexi and Tina stayed behind with most of the gear.  Mike Gavlik allowed us to unload the canoes behind his store on Hwy. 90 and then I drove my car back down to John’s Marina to pick up the other two while Max and Isabelle drove ahead to Sanderson to book us rooms.  Then the following day I drove Alexi down to Heath Canyon to retrieve their other car while the other three went back to Langtry to begin the long process of sorting and packing the gear.

At Heath Canyon I had to endure a fair amount of good-natured ribbing from Fred, Georgia, and Javier, one of the Black Gap managers, but it was all in good fun.  And it was nothing compared to the teasing I would receive later that afternoon in Langtry, where Mike, Steve Norman, Jim Bob Hargrove, and Rusty took their turns taking their best verbal shots at my continuing series of Lower Canyons misadventures.  All I can say is thank God Clay Dingler wasn’t present, so I was at least spared the worst of it.

That night I treated the group to a festive supper and after-supper bar tour of Acuña in appreciation for all they had done to rescue me.  But I felt a lot more for them than simple gratitude for the rescue.  These four had turned what could have been a nightmarish episode into one of the most beautiful weeks in my life.  I had grown very attached to them, and I suspect they were going to be at least fractionally as sorry to see me go, as I would be to lose them.  We spent much of the last part of our time in Acuña having a tri-lingual conversation with the barmaid in Bar Texas.  I think she summed it up better than I could, telling me in Spanish that these were “brave kids, and God blessed you to meet them.”

There would be one final adventure when we walked back across the bridge to Del Rio at about 1:30 the morning of Dec. 30th.  US Customs & Immigration wasn’t accepting our story about our unlikely meeting, and we were detained in the somber waiting room for further interrogation, a process which lasted an hour or more.  Despite that all four of them had Canadian passports, the agent in charge of the interrogation seemed determined to detain us as long as possible.  However, I don’t think he anticipated the joie de vivre these kids would exhibit.  They quickly turned that sterile environment into their own private stage, and within moments were laughing, singing, and joking.  The agent tried twice to silence them, but they were too fun loving to be squelched by a spoilsport bureaucrat.  Finally, I think the young official just gave up and by the time we were released, my new friends had him laughing too.

When we bid our final good byes at noon that morning, Alexi summed up what I think best represents this remarkable experience.  Taking a cue from watching the ribbing I took at the hands of the Langtry crowd the day before, Alexi said in his French accent, “the next time you go on the river, you tell us, and we go one week later to get you.”

That’s the best plan I’ve heard in years.  I wonder if they’ll be free at Spring Break