- [Narrator] The Grand Canyon is our planet's greatest geological wonder and is interwoven with a cultural, historical and social context that highlights The Colorado River that carved it.

that carved it.

The only way to see the canyon and know the river is by boat and the journey through the canyon is complicated by dozens of rapids.

is complicated by dozens of rapids.

Every rapid has a name and a story.

Every rapid has a name and a story.

- [Host] Funding for "In the Americas with David Yetman" was provided by Agnes Haury.

was provided by Agnes Haury.

Funding for "In the Americas with David Yetman" was also provided by the Guilford Fund.

was also provided by the Guilford Fund.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - By international standards, The Colorado is really a puny river.

It's like 1/25th of the size of The Mississippi.

And yet in only about 5 million years it was able to carve through more than a mile of rock and create The Grand Canyon.

of rock and create The Grand Canyon.

- The Grand Canyon as a whole gets over six and a half million visitors a year.

And to put that in perspective on the river 20,000 people go down each year.

Once we launch on the river we're completely self-sufficient.

There's no electricity, there's no cell service, no internet.

We'll pack everything in and pack everything out.

We'll pack everything in and pack everything out.

- [David] Tillie Walton is a hydrologist who learned firsthand the effects of water by her many trips down the canyon as a river guide.

My other companions on this boat are all connected with organizations that study the river and seek ways to protect it and the canyon.

and seek ways to protect it and the canyon.

Most of those who feel strongly about guarding the canyon believe that construction of new dams is no longer a threat.

Much more serious are proposed uranium mines and planned resorts and amusement facilities that would invade the canyon, threaten the river and compromise the canyon's integrity.

threaten the river and compromise the canyon's integrity.

- For this section of the trip, we're starting 15 miles below Glen Canyon dam which is where Lake Powell is, and we'll float down about 89 miles to Phantom ranch.

and we'll float down about 89 miles to Phantom ranch.

You can already feel a sense of immensity as the canyon walls are starting to rise up.

as the canyon walls are starting to rise up.

We're going through one of the seven wonders of the world, and so this is the largest geologic classroom in anywhere in the world.

in anywhere in the world.

So around the corner here, Dave we're going to see the Navajo bridge.

This is the last of civilization that will be seen.

This is the last of civilization that will be seen.

- All right.

Let's be holding on for Patrick Creek rapid.

Whoo!

Whoo!

I've been rafting down in The Grand Canyon I think since 2004 and first time I showed up I was just going to check it out and I haven't left since.

That was about 75 trips ago and 14 years.

So, I guess I'm just stuck now and I love it.

This is home.

It's one of the greatest river trips in the world.

To go this far without having to portage or run into towns or other structures.

or run into towns or other structures.

- As we go along the rapids will get larger and larger and larger.

So we kind of build up in difficulty for the rapids.

As we get to Hance rapid, that's when the big rapids start and we'll go into Inner Granite Gorge, which is some of the oldest exposed rock and some of the biggest whitewater in North America.

We'll be dropping through the layers of time as we go deeper and deeper and deeper.

As John Wesley Powell said... As John Wesley Powell said... - Without this river the 40 million people that depend on it wouldn't exist.

This is the most harshest landscapes on the planet.

And without water nothing survives.

- This stretch is this mysterious stretch that people talk about and mystical ways but very few people get the privilege of going down.

but very few people get the privilege of going down.

- We're here to think about the importance of the rivers in America and how important water is for all of our life and how sacred it is.

Really honored to be in the homeland of some of the local tribes here from The Colorado, as well as be with some great people who are working on river restoration.

Our food comes from the river, our sustenance comes from the river and our spirituality comes from the river.

- Sometimes it's easy to get disconnected.

I live in an urban area, far away from where my water comes from.

It's imported long distances.

And so it's just important to really reconnect and remember where things came from and how important water is and how it's connected to everything we do.

The west in particular is growing very rapidly, it has been.

We have limited amount of water resources.

We have limited amount of water resources.

- This is a 10 mile rock and my understanding is it's a piece of the Torah Weep of the Torah Weep and Marble Canyon goes from Lees Ferry down to The Little Colorado River, at which point Powell changed from Marble Canyon to The Great Canyon and then later Grand Canyon.

and then later Grand Canyon.

- We are entering Soap Creek rapid.

John Wesley Powell when he came down here was one of the first people to run the river.

He portaged this, so they spent a number of days carrying their boats around this rapid.

Yes, here we go.

You can see how it drops and there's a lot of rocks underneath the water that are making all these waves.

underneath the water that are making all these waves.

And this is where we're going to pull over at this side canyon coming in and we'll do a short little hike.

and we'll do a short little hike.

- The Grand Canyon is noted for its layers of rock, sometimes over a mile deep.

And if they're not all created equal, some of them are horrible to make trails through.

Others of them like the one I'm standing on are ideal.

And native peoples long before Europeans arrived here knew this was a good way to get down to the river along the esplanade.

And it's is perfectly well-named, it's as if it's a corridor leading down to the river.

leading down to the river.

- Most of the rocks come through these side canyons on debris flows.

So you can see a small canyon coming in here, a small one on the left and a small one on the right.

And as they come in they tumble rocks into the river.

So the combination of the drop, the constriction and the rocks make for waves.

the constriction and the rocks make for waves.

- [David] Since the mid 1960s and the completion of Glen Canyon dam just upstream from our put in point floods have ceased as have very low flows.

The river is highly regulated.

The river is highly regulated.

- Well, high flow right now is 30,000 CFS, cubic feet per second.

cubic feet per second.

But in the past it would have been 300,000 cubic feet per second.

So the river used to be able to transport the rocks and the rapids and clear them out much more easily.

And so now the rapids in The Grand Canyon are actually getting more difficult as time goes on because we don't have these huge massive floods to move the debris through.

to move the debris through.

This is Shear Wall rapid that we're coming to and what's really beautiful here is the cut through the sea by sandstone.

Naturally it would be a very warm river.

This would be about 70 degrees but since it's coming out of the bottom of the dam, it's really cold.

it's really cold.

The native fish have mostly gone extinct.

So, they need warm and muddy water.

So, they need warm and muddy water.

- [David] When the Powell expedition came to The Grand Canyon it was in the 1870s, there were sandbars everywhere.

The river was called The Colorado which means read in Spanish because it was so muddy.

It would rise and fall and leave different bars depending on the time of the season.

The river rose and fall sand here, sand there.

Now, because of Glen Canyon dam there were far fewer and they are fixed in position.

And those sandbars are very important because they are the only places we can stay.

because they are the only places we can stay.

The river itself is in trouble, not just because of Glen Canyon dam which has changed forever the character and the dynamics of the water in The Grand Canyon but also because of the decreased flow, the demands by human beings but also the climate change which has produced lower flows and threatened to bring The Colorado River almost to a dead halt.

almost to a dead halt.

40 million people require that water and there is only enough for far fewer than that.

We know the rivers in trouble.

We know the rivers in trouble.

(upbeat music) Hold on tight and breathe deep.

Hold on tight and breathe deep.

(cheering) (cheering) - [Tillie] I think it's actually about 45 degrees.

- [Tillie] I think it's actually about 45 degrees.

Well, this is a side canyon coming in.

It's only accessible by boat.

There's no other way you can get in here.

Cliff's out.

We're starting to get into the layers and once we get into the red wall the canyon becomes even more inaccessible.

And the only ways in and out are through faults in the rocks and hiking trails.

So all of this right here is from a flash flood.

So the water would have had to be fairly high because it would fill up this drainage here.

So, if I were here and this flood was coming down it'd be about chest high on me.

- That'd be pretty noisy, too?

- Very noisy and it would come down all at once.

I've been here when it's had a flash flood and just a muddy torrent of water comes down all at once from the rim.

comes down all at once from the rim.

- Tree frog.

- Yeah, he's hiding in the very back, back there.

- Waiting for the rain.

- Yes, waiting for rain.

- Yes, waiting for rain.

- We're in the middle of August in The Grand Canyon and it should be raining every day.

This is a very tough year and maybe so tough that a young big horn sheep didn't make it.

Big horns have it tough and in years of drought, even tougher.

and in years of drought, even tougher.

- We're coming up to 24 mile rapid which was named Georgie's rapid.

And Georgie White was one of the first women river runners and she basically invented motorboating.

She took pontoons from World War Two bridge crossings and strung them together to become a motorized boat trip.

and strung them together to become a motorized boat trip.

- If we're not able to protect our wilderness for the generations to come that'll be how we're judged.

Once it's gone it's gone.

To lose the original aspect of the wilderness is terrifying to me.

is terrifying to me.

- One nice thing about the canyon is it's this laboratory for research.

- This stretch of The Colorado River is one of the most studied rivers in the world.

And so there's a ton of research that goes on.

And so there's a ton of research that goes on.

Most of the fish down here, the native fish are endangered or extinct and so much of the science revolves around the fish.

A lot of it revolves around the flows and the sediment because with 20,000 people that come down here each year the beaches are washing away.

And so, these high experimental flows are designed to deposit sand along the river so there's places to camp and stay.

We didn't know when we built the dam that it would kill all the native fish.

We didn't know that it would take away all the native habitat and the beaches.

We didn't know that it would help invasive species come in.

We just didn't know any of these things.

And now we do and the science is helping us.

The issue with a lot of dams is now the sediment has collected a lot of toxic metals and things like that.

So, there's actually a lot of toxins built up in the sediment behind dams now as well.

built up in the sediment behind dams now as well.

As we come around the bend here we're going to come to a place called Redwall cavern and it's a pretty spectacular place that was carved out by the river at high water flows.

- From the river you can't really appreciate how big this is.

- And what's really amazing about this place is this is what the river used to be like with these big sandy beaches.

with these big sandy beaches.

- The river used to move around a bend - The river used to move around a bend and because it had a slightly acid action against the basic carbonate of the limestone it could dissolve it and over the hundreds of thousands, probably millions of years it carved out this particular cavern, which is enormous.

it carved out this particular cavern, which is enormous.

- What we have here is the site of what they wanted to put was Marble Canyon dam.

And this huge hole that we have in the wall here and across the river is where they were drilling into the wall to test the strength of the canyon.

Everything we would have gone through would have been flooded.

Thankfully, thanks to a guy named David Brower he launched a huge campaign when he found out that this was going to be flooded and he ran ads in The New York Times that said, "Would you flood the Sistine Chapel to get a better view of the ceiling?"

- [David] And that was his response.

It was ingenious.

- And what happened is there was such public outcry that they would think to dam and destroy The Grand Canyon that they had to call off the project.

Yeah, and if we were here this would have been the dam spanning the river- - [David] Would have gone another almost 300 feet high.

- Yes, 400 feet high from here up to the top of that layer.

up to the top of that layer.

- About a decade ago, there was a proposal to build a aerial tramway to build a aerial tramway that would descend about 1.4 miles into the canyon and end right at the Little Colorado River.

So if you can imagine where you would begin to see the tram is at the top of that pointy bude up there.

So we would see numerous tram stanchions coming all the way down the canyon then we would see a series of elevated walkways that are about 1,400 feet long that would go all the way out and extend basically right over the confluence of The Little Colorado River.

of The Little Colorado River.

- Fortunately, The Navajo council defeated that proposal by a large majority.

So it would bring 10,000 people a day to this spot that we are standing right now.

What's on the docks next is a potential helicopter pad and corridor bringing hundreds of helicopters here every day.

every day.

- If we look over here we can see part of the flow of The Colorado River meeting the flow of The Little Colorado and they will mix as they move down stream.

This area for very good reasons has been sacred to native peoples, especially the Navajos and the Hopis.

The Hopis found it to be their birthplace.

The Hopis found it to be their birthplace.

This river unless there is a huge flood above is a result of massive amounts of water passing through the huge limestone structures of The Grand Canyon.

That water dissolves calcium carbonate and the effect of light when it hits water rich in calcium carbonate, is to give a milky blue color for which this part of The Grand Canyon is famous.

of The Grand Canyon is famous.

It's become a major tourist attraction.

So most of the 20,000 people coming down the river each year, want to hike up here and see The Little Colorado in it's full glory.

and see The Little Colorado in it's full glory.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - We're at a place called Nankoweap - We're at a place called Nankoweap and this is a site where the Native Americans used to live.

And you can see from where we are that there's pretty amazing farm land for- - [David] Yeah, one of the few places in the canyon where they could actually farm.

- [Tillie] Yeah, this is one of the few places where it opens up enough to have where the river could come up and deposit the silt and then they could plant seeds and grow squash and corn and mesquite.

- [David] Plenty of mesquite beans and cactus fruits too.

- And there's an incredible view as well.

And up where that cave is, there are four greeneries there and that's where, when they would work so hard to harvest all the corn and grain they would store them up there.

In some spots that's where a lot of the homes were built and some of the caves were used for ceremonial purposes.

This was probably a winter home and during the hot summer months there's a trail that goes up to the north rim they would have been more of a hunter gatherer society up top.

- Apparently they were here for 400 years, 800 to 1200.

And like so many peoples in the southwest at the end of that time, they're gone elsewhere.

at the end of that time, they're gone elsewhere.

- In 1903, Teddy Roosevelt stood at the rim of The Grand Canyon and overlooked the whole thing and asked to be a national park.

And he said... And he said... - [David] I have heard via various unreliable sources there's going to be a lot of rapids today.

- Today is going to be huge.

We get to run some of the biggest white water in North America.

We're going down into the center of the earth.

The Inner Granite Gorge is what it's called but you really feel like you're in the middle of earth.

You're almost in the middle of time.

We'll be in rocks that are 1.7 billion years old.

We'll be in rocks that are 1.7 billion years old.

The combination of that and this kind of mighty river going through it is makes for huge rapids.

through it is makes for huge rapids.

- [David] We're in Grand Canyon now.

- Yeah, and this whole area because it's a softer sandstone, this dock it was able to erode away.

this dock it was able to erode away.

This is Tanner rapid we're coming in to the D here.

There's a couple of a good size waves There's a couple of a good size waves kind of holds down here.

We're going to get wet We're going to get wet and here we go, we'll get wet.

and here we go, we'll get wet.

They all have secondary rapids.

So we'll have Hance and then we'll have son of Hance and we'll have lava falls and then son of lava.

You can see where we start to go into The Granite Gorge.

Yeah, it's starting to close up.

So this is the last of the open sky for a while.

So this is the last of the open sky for a while.

- The other part though, The Grand Canyon that part that is known famously through the photographs, the colors and the layers is behind us.

We are entering into a very different part of the canyon which is dark and broody.

In it, we pass through some of the oldest rock in the United States, certainly the oldest rock in the Southwest, 1.7 billion year old Vishnu Schist.

in the Southwest, 1.7 billion year old Vishnu Schist.

It is worn smooth by the action of the river as it cut through in the last 5 million years or so.

Below here is a very different place with some of the finest or most scary rapids anywhere.

- All right, or this is Sockdolager rapid and when John Wesley Powell came down here this was the first rapid he came to that he couldn't portage and so he spent time running up about a thousand feet looking for a way around this rapid and couldn't find one so he had to run it.

And I believe this is Swedish for knockout punch.

(cheering) (cheering) - The Grand Canyon supergroup gives us close to the complete story.

We miss about 200 million years from the youngest Grand Canyon supergroup that pre-Cambrian, the youngest pre-Cambrian up to the topek's and then we're missing a little bit from the bath limestone which is about 1.2 billion years old down to the shifts.

which is about 1.2 billion years old down to the shifts.

- This new shifts is dark and endurable.

It was formed over more than a billion and a half years from the grains of sand like these that were ever so slowly varied under thousands of feet of rock and subjected to unimaginable pressure that either the sand's so hot that it melted and was transformed into this platy, guttery, hard stuff.

guttery, hard stuff.

- It started as sedimentary rock, volcanic eruptions all this ash is being laid down.

There were four to 600 foot tides throughout the day.

There were four to 600 foot tides throughout the day.

And so you just had all these volcanoes, just moving all over the planet, depositing ash.

And with that heat, that pressure, that's where we turn that into this metamorphic shifts.

We're now over a mile deep.

We're now over a mile deep.

- As we look up that's 7,000 feet above us and the south rim is now 5,000 feet almost a vertical mile above us, 5,200 feet above us.

almost a vertical mile above us, 5,200 feet above us.

And as we go down here, we're going to get to Phantom ranch and this is where the South Kaibab comes out, crosses the river and goes up to the North Kaibab.

And this is one of the few places in the canyon where you see any signs of civilization in the canyon where you see any signs of civilization - Before this bridge was constructed in 1928 there was no way to get across The Colorado River between Utah and what is now Lake Mead.

That's about 350 miles.

Then Navajo bridge was constructed in 1930's which cut that to about 280 miles and this one, about 250 miles.

But this one is confined to human beings and beasts of burden so we can enjoy it but vehicles no.

and beasts of burden so we can enjoy it but vehicles no.

The Grand Canyon is still a major barrier to transportation.

The Grand Canyon is still a major barrier to transportation.

It is a place like nowhere else in the world as a matter of fact, The Grand Canyon is the greatest geological and visual wonder anywhere in the world.

It is ours and we will see what we do to protect it, to maintain it, to celebrate it and to honor it.

to celebrate it and to honor it.

Join us next time "In The Americas" with me, David Yetman.

The lower Grand Canyon is a rather narrow gorge.

From time to time side canyons, many of them excruciatingly narrow, empty into the canyon from both sides.

With names like Elves Chasm, Deer Creek and Havasu Canyon.

Each has a remarkable story to tell and leaves its mark on the river.

and leaves its mark on the river.

We're located at a place called Nankoweap Canyon, one of the major side drainage's that comes in from the North side of the river.

It was a major crossing for pre-Columbian peoples who wanted to go in and out of the canyon.

There's also the location of a trail really constructed for modern people by my hero, John Wesley Powell.

for modern people by my hero, John Wesley Powell.

- [Host] Funding for "In The Americas with David Yetman" was provided by Agnes Haury.

with David Yetman" was provided by Agnes Haury.

Funding for "In The Americas with David Yetman" was also provided by the Guilford Fund.

was also provided by the Guilford Fund.

Copies of this and other episodes of "In The Americas with David Yetman" are available from the Southwest center.

To order call 1-800-937-8632.

Please mention the episode number and program title.

Please mention the episode number and program title.

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or intheamericas.org.