Woman Of The River: Georgie White Clark, Whitewater Pioneer

6. Branching Out to New Rivers, 1955

6 13raJtcA.i'fj OutttJ J1ew ~iYtr~ 1JSS rI n 1955 Eisenhower was in the VVhite House, Stalin was dead, and V the Korean conflict was over. But things were hectic as ever for Georgie. Her schedule that year was quite ambitious. It called for two trips through Glen Canyon in April, a San Juan River and Glen Canyon trip in May, two Glen Canyon trips inJune, and "The Mighty Grand Canyon" in July, about which she noted, "Only 216 people (as of 1954 figures) have made this trip."I She planned another Glen Canyon trip in August, also runs on the Middle Fork of the Salmon, the Big Salmon River, and Hell's Canyon of the Snake River in August and September. Motion pictures of previous trips were shown on request to groups and individuals to interest potential passengers. This year Georgie also began to experiment further with three ten-man rafts tied together. These rafts were quite maneuverable with oars, but even more so with a small motor; and with the motor pushing the rafts, the trip was speeded up by several days. Linking the three rafts together was a real breakthrough, but was only for the more adventurous souls. She could now run all the rapids without portaging, though there was still the danger of one raft folding over onto the others. She wanted to be able to take families with children and older people. Georgie's trips were not always full. On one trip in Glen Canyon, Marion Smith and her husband, Richard, were the only passengers . The crew was Georgie and VVhitey. If no one else had shown up at all, Georgie would probably have gone anyway. In a letter to friends, Marion reported a most pleasant vacation. She wrote, "We came back with 6 rolls ofmovie films and 6 boxes of colored slides and 6f that is the only way to do it justice."2 A typical day would begin at daylight . Georgie and Whitey would already be up and getting breakfast. By the time the Smiths had their sleeping bags rolled up and their hair combed, breakfast would be ready. As it happened, another party left at the same time as Georgie. Moki Mac Ellingson, another guide whom the Whites knew, had three dentists from Salt Lake City as passengers, and the two parties traveled more or less together. They camped each night near one another, which added considerably to the trip. An outboard motor was used on Georgie's raft since the Smiths only had seven days to make 163 miles. Each day they would visit a side canyon, sometimes two, and points of interest along the river. Each canyon was completely different and utterly fascinating. Marion wrote, "One canyon, called Labyrinth, had been cut so deep and so narrowly that one had to turn sideways in a couple of places to walk up it. Its walls were undulating rock, textured by the erosion done by water." The Whites prepared all the meals for their boat, and after dinner they would join the dentists around a common campfire and sing awhile. Marion said, "The Whites-Georgie, especially, is a fascinating personality-and also Moki Mac-the other guide." One of the special places they visited was Rainbow Bridge. The six-mile hike up the stream was delightful, with ferns, flowering redbud trees, towering, dark-stained rock formations, and all sizes and shapes of pools. Another place that impressed them was "Hole-InThe -Rock," because they could not imagine that wagons could be taken down such a steep and narrow improvised pathway. They marveled at the little more than six-foot-wide crack through which the wagons had to pass. Another place they visited was the Crossing of the Fathers (EI Vado de los Padres). Marion told her friends, "I really think that I saw more scenery in less time and space on this trip than I've seen in many trips all put together before." The Smiths took many more trips with Georgie, and Dick would later become one of her boatmen.3 Georgie~ Big Boat Georgie was inventive and imaginative. She continued to make changes and improvements in her equipment and method of operation until they satisfied her. Several years earlier, she had seen newsreel shots of the Army Corps of Engineers making pontoon bridges out of elongated oval pontoons. She recalls: 62 I discovered several ofthese in a...