Woman Of The River: Georgie White Clark, Whitewater Pioneer

2. Rafting the Rapids, 1946–1947

rror the first few months after her swim with Harry Aleson in V 1945, no one could have talked Georgie into swimming that river again. She and Harry still went hiking in and around the Grand Canyon, checking out old mines and other interesting places. Georgie wrote: I knew there were a lot ofquestions about my relationship with Harry. After all, I was married and spending weeks and months out on the desert with another man. The truth was that after seeing Harry's pictures I became determined to explore the desert and the canyon country for myself. I couldn't hike alone (at least I didn't think I could at the time) and Harry was the only person who would go with me. After awhile I came to admire his determination and drive, but I was never romantically attracted to him, nor was our relationship physical. Harry simply needed someone to hike with him and be on hand in case ofan emergency-so did I.' As time passed Georgie and Harry began to look back and glorify the swim down the Colorado River of the year before. They had a tendency to forget the pain and remember only the good parts. By winter they had decided to tackle the river from farther up and to try a different method. They spent the winter months planning another expedition. In 1867, two years before Major John vVesley Powell's epic voyage ,2 a prospector named James White (no relation to Georgie's husband ) emerged from Grand Canyon on a log raft. He was emaciated, 17 WOJfU(K ojtlv:'Rivtr half starved, and claimed to have floated all the way through the Grand Canyon.3 Georgie and Harry thought it would be exciting to float a portion of the river on a wood raft as James White had done. They wanted to prove that James White had made a longer raft ride than many believed he had done. They also wanted to find out whether a river party could come out safely on a driftwood raft in case of a boat loss or wreck. By 1946 the war was over and defense plants were cutting back sharply. Georgie tried to keep her options open whenever there was a possibility of an adventure with Harry. In March she wrote him: "Have been working at this and that, trying not to get tied down too much . . . " and "Have passed a lot of things by in the business line because it would mean keeping my nose to the grindstone...."4 Harry was guiding regular trips through Glen Canyon by this time. Georgie could not afford to go on any of these trips as a paying passenger, but apparently went along on at least one as a helper. Harry wrote to her in late March saying, "Glad you can make all 3 trips.... You'll earn your river trip by working on the long hike and raft trip."s In a later letter Georgie expresses hurt from some of his criticism . She writes: I did try to do my share of things on trip but at times your remarks made me wonder if I was more in the road than of good use. I really enjoyed the trip but your new ways puzzled me a great deal. Please remember on the raft trip, I have the nerve but no skill at all so I depend on you. I have a lot offaith in you. I do want to learn all things but feel badly when you make me feel silly & helpless if I don't do things (right) the first time. Remember 35 yrs is an old goat to be teaching things to. Just working in an office all my life didn't help any.6 Back into Grand Canyon OnJune 18, 1946, Georgie met Harry in St. George, Utah. Harry had a wide range of publicity contacts through his lectures, and a Mr. Sheridan of Life Magazine telephoned him from Los Angeles about the upcoming trip. Sheridan told Harry that he might send a plane to make pictures of their log raft drift. During the day Harry had longdistance calls from Ruth Lusch of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, from a reporter at the Baltim01-e Sun, and from a reporter at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. In the evening he called Elton Garrett at the Boulder City News. Then he...