The Golden Age of Guiding: Part 1

All the river-running advice in the world cannot adequately prepare a person for his first encounter with truly gigantic whitewater: the ferocity of the noise and turbulence, the mosaic of whorls, the fugues of competing current that follow separate and unpredictable paths—colliding together, snapping like the tail end of a whip, or diving straight to the bottom of the river where they can scour out holes up to ninety feet deep inside the Grand Canyon.