The Catch

A Grand Canyon Boatman Tale

In 1982, Dwight Clark made “The Catch.” The catch of a 6 yard touchdown pass from
Joe Montana with less than a minute remaining in the NFC championship game sealing and
stealing a victory from the dominant Cowboys. The catch sent the upstart 49ers to the Super
Bowl and ended a decade of domination by the Cowboys. The catch is also regarded as one of
the greatest plays in NFL history. And the cameras, commentators and fans present at that
defining moment would likely echo that sentiment.

As a 12 year old boy and sports fanatic in 1982, I was likely feeling similarly. Maybe
slightly less inclined toward the greatness of the catch and more toward the elation of the
Cowboys being eliminated from being contenders in yet another Super Bowl. Doubtless, I spent
the next several weeks creating imaginary scripts and videos in my head where I was the one in
helmet and shoulder pads making the leaping, game winning catch in the last few inches of the
end zone with the last few ticks of the clock remaining. I wonder now if Dwight Clark and Joe
Montana had those imaginary visions as boys. I suspect so.

Still a boy, at the approximate age of 28, circa 1998, I was a walk-on still seeking a role
on the team, more of a special teams guy, maybe occasionally available for punt coverage. I
found myself standing shin deep on a cobble bar at the mouth of Havasu Creek, in Arizona’s
Grand Canyon. Standing between my brother, Justin, all-pro wide receiver, and my other
brother, quarterback and trip leader Mike Reyes. Guides in the Grand Canyon on day 10 of a
twelve day oar trip. The three of us giggling with nervous tension and adrenaline waiting for the
last boat, if you can call it boat – more of a barge, to come into view and make the pull in. Justin
asks, “Hey Homie, can you hit the other side with a rock?” “Not anymore,” responds Mike,
Homie. Justin, always playful. Mike typically, resolute, contemplative, had shed the majority of
his ego years ago. Justin clacked a rock against the far wall and while looking for admiration,
Mike clacked a rock against Justin’s knee. “There would be wrestling later,” I thought. There
were 8 crew running 6 boats down the Colorado River. Five boats had already successfully
made the pull-in at the mouth of Havasu. No small feat. This was one of the trickiest pull-ins on
the river and oftentimes, guides woke with a pit in their stomach on Havasu day, seeing
downstream in their mind’s eye the effort it took to make such a maneuver rowing a snout.

The snout was attractive to the proprietors for that very same reason. They could carry a
great deal of weight. That weight translated directly to dollars. Guides weren’t there for the
dollars. Guides were there for the freedom of being in one of the most beautiful and awe
inspiring settings on planet earth, and to share that experience with others. And for the freedom
of being substantially removed from those dollar counters and the stifling rules they applied to
maximize their profit. The one ounce of solace a guide took in rowing a snout was in its stability.

You could put a snout in just about any hole or any wave in Grand Canyon and it would come
out right side up. And we did! And they did. That stability; the weight, the length, the mass,
made the snout considerably less maneuverable. And making the maneuver to get a snout into
the mouth at Havasu was one of the more challenging. Getting it out, often more so.

Snout Rig exiting House Rock Rapid Hole – Photo By Mike Reyes

So the three of us had made the pull in, had tied up our boats, had secured lines to the
shore and had moved to the cobble bar to catch the other boats as they arrived. And the
adrenaline of the pull in did not subside until all of the boats had been retrieved and tied up. In
that space between the arrival of boats time slowed imperceptibly. The three to five minutes
between arrivals felt like an eternity. It seemed as though time had slowed to a similar pace that
had allowed the geology around us to form. In fact my impatience gave me the impression that
the calcium carbonate-heavy water swirling around our ankles was laying down the foundational
layers of travertine there. Between the senseless jokes, and rock throwing, that soothed the
tension of moments like this, Mike huddled us and reminded us to run the spread offense and
be ready for the last snout to come into view.
In addition to quarterback, Mike was the consummate defensive coordinator, always
seeing concerns before anyone else, always working in the silent background to eliminate
threats before anyone could see the danger. Covering sand stakes in camp with highly visible
white buckets before the sun went down to avoid broken toes from passengers. Passengers he
knew would wander aimlessly in the dark trying to reorient to where the toilet was. Or worse, the
buckets were an attempt to avoid foot damage to a mildly inebriated guide who might see the
sand stake but be powerless to get out of its way. Pinning tie lines to the ground to avoid trip
hazards. Tying and re-tying stern lines and safety lines for the impending water fluctuations.
Always busy. At times you would notice his absence in camp for 30 minutes and when he
returned and was asked about his disappearance, he’d silently inform the crew that he was
relocating a rattlesnake, or buzzword as he affectionately called them. He would do it in stealth
for the obvious reason of eliminating the direct life threat to those less aware that they were in
fact about to sleep in snake country. Secondarily, he did it without notice to eliminate the
insomnia-inducing psychological threat for those sleeping on the ground because, yes, snakes
had a fairly healthy population along the banks. The warnings on the first night of the trip were
one thing, but the visual of a writhing and hissing venomous reptile being carried through camp
in welding gloves or a pair of tongs often invoked tremors and paranoia for those unaccustomed
to their presence. Mike prepared for the inescapable mishap that perpetually followed boats
down the Grand Canyon. Any river for that matter. We often joked about Murphy always being
present, lurking. The persistent passenger, the uninvited guest. He was really the scape goat for
anything that ever went wrong on a river trip. Waiting for the most inopportune moment to show
his malevolent presence. No one can be fully prepared for his persistent threat, but Mike was far
more prepared than most. Yet Murphy’s mishap found us frequently.

The three of us stood at the river’s edge awaiting the arrival of the final snout and hoping
it could get close enough for us to make the catch. The rest of the crew tied up and secured the
other 5 boats behind us and worked to get passengers safely off boats and onto the shore. The
last boat, one of the aforementioned snouts, was being courageously rowed by Karen (God
bless her beautiful little soul), Mike’s wife. All 110 pounds of her, filled with life and wit and
spitfire. To say that rowing a snout was an exercise in futility, would be a moderate
understatement. And to say that Karen had done a heroic job of guiding this corpulent craft
down the previous 156 miles from Lee’s Ferry would be an egregious understatement.

A snout takes a wide array of resources just to get downstream, unless of course you
choose to just cut them loose and let them float away. That would take little effort and alleviate
much concern. It was often considered, never executed. Experience is first and foremost, and
one can only truly get snout rowing experience the hard way. Doing it and letting teh mistakes
pile up until you’d learned how to avoid them. Most of them. Once the experience is amassed in
some volume, then comes the advance planning piece. To get a 3 ton boat anywhere on a river,
one would ideally have a motor. But since motors were not widely endorsed on oar trips,
advance planning was helpful. You had to line up and start making your move well upstream.
With a full complement of experience and advance planning capability laying the foundation,
momentum, timing and angle become the requisite components to make the pull in at Havasu.
And with all of those requirements met, you would still prefer to have your crew waiting for
assistance. Hope that your brothers and sisters were there on shore to help pull you in. If you do
not have adequate amounts of each of these skills, strength and perseverance can provide
some small measure of recompense for minor mistakes. Additionally, if there are adequately
agile individuals on your boat that are equally enthusiastic about assisting, you can place one of
them standing at the stern with rope in hand to throw to those welcoming hands on shore. Keep
in mind that there is sufficient room on the top of a snout for a dance party, and to be honest,
many dance parties were had there over the years. Perhaps some of those stories will emerge
in another volume. But it’s only wise to make that request of a willing and capable passenger
when pulling into a beach with deep and calm water. Above a rapid and at a rather hostile
location such as Havasu is no place to have a passenger standing. Unless of course you were
trying to be rid of them. A later story also.

Karen knew what was coming up, and Mike knew what was coming down. We knew that
Karen had rehearsed her game plan when we saw the snout come into view. We had talked
about it that morning in camp. Karen had her bowline neatly coiled behind her where she could
stand and throw to anyone standing on shore. She had all of the pieces in place except the
experience of rowing a snout. She had rowed numerous boats and rowed them well. A snout
was a different beast. At the river flow that we were on at the time, the river trickles over a 10
foot by 10 foot flat bench of Muav Limestone just above the entry to the mouth (the Murphy
rock). The Murphy rock was too shallow to float over at that water level and he, Murphy, created
a boil that deflected the river’s current, pushing back towards the center of the channel. Away
from shore. It’s very difficult to see this boil from upstream and if your angle and your
momentum and your timing are not sufficient to carry the boil, the surging water will change the
angle of your boat, even a 3 ton snout. The change of angle will expose the side of the boat to
the deflected current and put you about 10 feet further from your goal than desired. A goal that
requires timing and a bit of momentum to accomplish. And we watched for the 5 seconds that it
took that very scene to unfold. As Karen’s boat was adjusted to parallel against the shore by
Murphy, the first shouts of, “Dig, woman,” began to erupt from the shore, from the boats, and
from the bleachers. Everyone was tuned in.

But even as those shouts echoed off the far canyon wall like Justin’s rock, the three of
us called an inaudible audible and broke for the downstream bank, a limestone ledge about 4
feet above us. With no time to lace up our cleats, though Mike had donned his slip on basketball
shoes, in his persistent anti-foot-damage, always-wear-shoes-off-the-boat stance. Justin and I
relied on our tried and true Teva flops. Mine were the early version with the ankle strap that I
chose to never fasten, mostly because I refused to bend over because my back hurt from
rowing snouts. Thank goodness their construction had not yet been shipped off shore for cheap
labor. They were still well built and could be trusted, even when wet, for the 200 yard
steeplechase to the bottom of the rapid. We quickly noticed that on the shore it looked like the
defensive line of the Dallas Cowboys had assembled, dazed and confused from the ensuing
commotion. We opted for the jet sweep right, breaking far right up against the river’s edge
where there were more obstacles, but thankfully all of them, inanimate.

As luck, Murphy’s counterpart, would have it, at the river level where the Murphy rock is
covered, so too is a left channel down the shore, opened up. That left channel can require elite
capabilities and/or substantial luck if a snout is to find its way through without being pinned
against the shore or getting perched on one of the many rocks that make up the rapid.

As Karen and her unwieldy snout began bumping over rocks and making the way down
the left shore, the three of us were rolling out to the right, scrambling. Mike had a throw bag in
hand and when I think of it now, he carried it like a football. I have often wondered what it might
have been like to have Vin Scully and Hank Stram in the press box high overhead calling the
play. And what would have happened had this particular play been on national television? I felt
like an elite athlete, but somehow I suspect Vin and Hank and the cameras may not have seen
it that way. More like a rusty old linebacker lumbering after a fumble. We leapt over the first few
obstacles and then broke into a full sprint to make it to the bottom of the rapid, where hopefully
we could put together a catch and get the boat safely to shore. The implications of failure were
significant. If this boat full of passengers couldn’t make it to see the sights and sounds of
Havasu, they would be devastated, possibly even angry. The effect on Karen would have been
worse. Like most of us, Karen was her worst critic.

There exists a small pocket, void of downstream current just below the rapid and at the
last possible place of capture where the bench on which we ran terminates into sheer walls. A
micro-eddy. There is nowhere to pull a snout in for at least a quarter mile below that and the
notion of getting those passengers back up to Havasu, once that eddy is passed, would be
highly risky if at all feasible. Failure was not an option, even as likely as it seemed in those
precious minutes. So we ran. Mostly side by side where the space would permit. The path was
wide open after the initial boulders just downstream from the mouth, but by no means straight forward. In the 200 yard distance there are a dozen or more benches of varying elevation, the
majority of them 2-3 foot drops as the river descends below the creek.

It’s fascinating how sharp the human mind and how dedicated our senses become when
we are truly engaged in something. I could see the details in the rock formation that my eyes
would normally gloss over. I recall seeing the current ripples that had been carved into stone by
eons of Colorado River, laden with silt. And how they had eroded and how the river had
polished the stone’s surface. Some of those ripples honed to a knife’s edge. Seeing
cobblestones wedged in cracks from previous high water floods. The speckled and mottled
makeup of the usually blue-gray stone, and maybe catching a hasty glimpse of a trilobite fossil
or the remnants of an ancient brachiopod. I remember Justin and I bellowing, “You got this,
Karen,” and shouting, “Keep digging, girl!” Karen was rowing upstream to slow her descent,
trying to give us time to arrive and set up a plan. Trying to keep an angle that kept her boat as
close as possible to shore. Mike was hollering the specifics, “Karen, when you get below the
rapid, get one of the passengers to the back to throw the rope.” Karen never looked over her
shoulder at us. She just kept digging, but we knew that she picked up every syllable.

The channel she was bumping down was a mere 15 feet from the bench we were all
running on, but it would have been futile to throw a rope there as the boat’s progress would be
impossible to stop in the current. And the throw would have wasted precious time and one
irretrievable rope.

At the bottom of the small rapid the current slows but it also deflects from shore and
takes boats back towards the center of the river. Also the bottom of the rapid corresponds with
the bottom of the bench. We were all running out of time and territory.

Mike in his always calm and appropriate voice gave Karen her instructions one more
time. And a little woman, we will call her Nancy, short for Dancing Nancy, made one of the most
athletic moves of the episode. When you row a snout, haha, no one rows a snout anymore. But
in the olden days when snouts used to be rowed, the passengers would sit in front of you. And
you had to row a snout backwards if you expected to get any purchase for your oar stroke.
Nancy was the only one in position to get to the rope, but to get to the rope she had to get over
a sweeping oar. Karen knew that she could not afford to stop rowing, even for the few seconds
it would take a passenger to step over the oar. Nancy sprung to her feet, all 90 pounds of her
and at 60 years of age leapt over the sweeping oar like a playful cat. She pounced on the rope,
slid it from under its tie and landed on her feet at the last of the lightweight tubular aluminum
frame.

Karen and Mike Reyes with my brother Justin in the back

The three of us arrived at the last of the limestone ledge where it dropped about 4 feet
into the choppy Colorado. Nancy hesitated even as we shouted at her in unison to throw the
rope. The rope was approximately 50 feet in length and Karen was approximately 40 feet from
us. Nancy’s hesitation was likely for the purpose of calculation. Then she wound up like a spring
and let fly. Somehow ropes always seem to fly slower than the majority of thrown objects. I
recall with vivid clarity watching the half inch Goldbraid coils open and straighten in a perfect
delicate arc. For a brief moment, it was art. Where were the cameras when we needed them?
The slow motion replays. Where were the voices of Hank and Vin? The throw was not as
precise as Joe’s throw to Dwight, but there was not 58 seconds left on the clock either. It was
more like Flutie’s Hail Mary pass in ‘84 when Boston College stunned Miami. The primary
difference between Flutie’s throw and Nancy’s huck being…. ….it didn’t quite make the goal line. The last coil snagged and the end of the rope dropped 3 feet short of the limestone in the
river in front of us.

Mike and I froze momentarily. Justin did not, always the go-getter, he went to go get her.
He dropped into the river without hesitation, grabbed the rope with his right hand and reached
for rock with his left. Justin’s action inspired Mike’s. He immediately dropped to bedrock and
grasped Justin’s wrist with his left hand, extending his right hand to me. The rope went taught
as the current tugged on the big boat. Mike started to slide toward the edge of the bench. I
dropped to the limestone, grabbing Mike’s wrist with my right hand, fully believing we were all
about to go in the water and downstream. I started sliding across the polished stone surface, my
left hand blindly searching for an anchor. I slid about a yard, face down on the rock. We had
become merely another 15 feet of extended bowline. And we were at the end of our rope; dead
weight being dragged downstream with the river’s current. My left hand found a crack and
slipped into it and inside was a rock climbers paradise; a perfectly shaped handhold with just
enough sharpness to create oppositional friction. “Hang on boys,” I shouted. Then we all
shouted while the weight of the boat and its draft felt the current’s pull. We shouted and then we
screamed like powerlifters going for a PR. I was able to get my chin off the deck just enough to
see the strain on Mike’s face, with Justin out of sight hanging off the ledge in the river. And I
was able to get a look at the boat. I watched it inch toward the current line, with lethargic pace.
We screamed. I felt the stress on both shoulders and Mike’s iron grip squeezing the blood out of
my wrist. But the pain began to turn to elation as the snout’s downstream progress was arrested
and it began to pendulum into the slack water and then slowly into the eddy.

With the downstream progress halted, Justin was able to pull and create some slack in
the line. When there was sufficient slack, Mike pulled Justin back to shore and he clambered
over Mike’s shoulders to get his feet on dry land. Mike stood and they both hauled on the rope. I
stood and joined them, still pulling fiercely. Adrenaline pumping through our veins, we hauled
the boat to shore.

Exhausted, we helped the passengers clamber to shore. The elation and the hugs were
intense. At quick glance, I recall a small group of our upstream passengers who had scampered
to a high ledge where they could see the action unfold downstream. They were applauding as
were the passengers from Karen’s boat. Karen was crying, and I might have been but my
memory eludes me.

The Catch & the Victory

We did the long exhausting hike back upstream to the shady cool of the mouth, the
harbor it was affectionately named. The high fives went on for hours, a few of them over the top
of cold beers. We told the story a few more times over the last 2 days of the trip and the
passengers left with a hearty memory. They had experienced the intensity with which we were
all connected. To each other and to the canyon.
If I had been fortunate enough to do a postgame interview I would imagine it going
something like this;
Vin Scully: Mr. Peak, tell the viewers out there what that felt like to be brothers in arms
and make that fingertip grab and pull that boat into shore, saving the trip for all of those scared
passengers.
Mr. Peak: Come on, Vin, we do that shit everyday. Karen, we did not miss you that day. But we sure do now! Rest in Peace.

Much love, brothers.

Jason Peak – The Good Gallivanter