Woman Of The River: Georgie White Clark, Whitewater Pioneer

20. The Year of the Big Water, 1983

I ake Powell began to form behind Glen Canyon Dam on March .,.L,13, 1963. The lake reached "full pool" at the 3,700-foot spillway level on June 22, 1980.1 Then, heavy precipitation in the Rocky Mountains in the winter of 1982-1983 and rapid snow melt in the spring of 1983 caught the Bureau of Reclamation completely off guard. Therefore, they did not draw down the water level in Lake Powell far enough to take care ofthe heavy runoff. DuringJune water was surging into the reservoir at the rate of 111,480 cfs, and releases from the dam reached 92,000 cfs, the highest amount of water ever released from Glen Canyon Dam.2 In mid-June, as the reservoir neared the spillway level, Reclamation Bureau employees installed four-by-eight-foot sheets of three-quarter-inch plywood bolted to a framework atop the spillway. The water level rose, but miraculously the plywood managed to hold back several feet of Lake Powell. Boaters on the Grand Canyon run were in for high water not experienced since pre-dam days. When releases from Glen Canyon Dam reached sixty-one thousand cfs the dam began to shake. The concrete linings were being ripped out of the spillway tunnels, and the weir flow shook the dam so badly they could only use one spillway. On Wednesday, June 29, Reclamation officials reported the water level at the dam at 3,706.75 feet, an increase of a quarter of a foot from Tuesday's maximum level. They also reported they were releasing 92,000 cfs from the east spillway of the dam. Tom Gamble, chief of Colorado River Storage Project power operations, said a "rumbling" noise reported to be heard near the east 217 WOHtIV{ iffAt J{iwr spillway by engineers descending into the dam had ceased since the releases were increased from 70,000 to 92,000 cfs.3 Beginning June 25, 1983, the Grand Canyon National Park superintendent ordered passengers on both commercial and private river trips to walk around Crystal Rapid, allowing only boatmen and swampers to run through it. The closure was due to several incidents at the rapids, one of which resulted in the death of William Russel Wert, 63, of Carbondale, Colorado. According to the park newspaper, VISitor Information, this closure was due to the extreme hazard of Crystal Rapid. Four motor rigs and numerous oar boats had flipped in that huge rapid, and ninety people had been washed into the water. In addition to the one fatality, there had been fifteen injuries.4 The closure remained in effect from June 25 to July 21. Georgie did not comply with the order as far as her big boat was concerned. Joan De Fato, who was a passenger with Georgie during that time, said she thought Georgie had permission from rangers to do so because her big boat had never upset and she didn't have enough power to get that huge rig into the eddy below Crystal to pick up passengers. Georgie kept right on going down the middle with all her passengers on board. Closure of the rest of the Colorado River was considered unnecessary. Many other rapids on the river had been virtually washed out because of the high water levels. In his 1983 Guide to the Grand Canyon, boatman Larry Stevens tossed in a plus rating to indicate that Crystal Rapid gets more severe when the river moves faster than 35,000 cfs. On a toughness scale of one to ten, Crystal is rated at or near ten at an water levels, with a tenplus at high water. Six People Overboard Georgie embarked on a trip through the Grand Canyon in mid-June on this high water. The river was moving fast and with incredible power. Below Phantom Ranch she did not realize how fast they were going until they were having "egg break" on the boat above Crystal Rapid and reached the rapid far sooner than expected. Daryl Bates was one of Georgie's boatman on the big boat that day, and he was seated on the rear of the right side pontoon. Bates said there were also two kids, one about twelve and the other fourteen, on that side. 218 Bates said that when they arrived at Crystal, Georgie plowed right down the middle as usual. As they hit the big hole they encountered "a huge wave, bigger...