Oral history interview with Buzz Belknap (part 2) [with transcript], March 28, 2009.

              William "Buzz" Belknap III- Part 2
Interviewed by Richard Quartaroli
Camera by Sam Jansen
March 28, 2009

BELKNAP:  ... on one camera boat.  And then we had the three Smith Crafts too.  So there were quite a few boats on that trip.
QUARTAROLI:  So Dock was driving again?
BELKNAP:  Yes, he was.
QUARTAROLI:  He didn’t appear as one of the characters in the movie, he was probably a little too old for....
BELKNAP:  True, true.  They did dress him up down at the end, to take some pictures of him, and stuff like that, just kind of record shots.  Oh, let’s see....  (looking at photos/notes)
QUARTAROLI:  Oh, here’s your measurements for the clothing.
BELKNAP:  Yeah.
QUARTAROLI:  So this was a Jim Algar, Walt Disney Productions.
BELKNAP:  Right, he was the producer-director on the trip.
QUARTAROLI:  Oh, this is good, "Please forego the luxury of a haircut between now and the river trip, as you are being considered as a candidate for the role of Powell."  So they wanted you a little shaggy.
BELKNAP:  Yeah.  That was the Andy Hall outfit.  I noticed one of those jackets I was wearing, the label on the inside said "Burt Lancaster."  I guess he’d worn it in some movie or something.  So I was driving one of the Smith Crafts too, and helping with that, when I was with Dock.  But when we got down to Hance, that was probably the first time I’d driven a really big rapid.  So he got [associate producer] Jim Algar in the boat, and it was Dock and myself.  I was up in front, Dock was sitting right behind me, kind of coaching me.  We had the director in the boat with us, too.  We started down, and somehow Dock and I got our signals crossed, and I went into what seemed like the largest hole in the world.  Everything turned black.  We did pop up on the other side, we came out.  That was quite a little happening for all of us.
QUARTAROLI:  Were they doing any filming, too, besides the movie production?
BELKNAP:  No, they weren’t.
QUARTAROLI:  Such as you droppin’ into the hole in Hance?
BELKNAP:  No, that never happened.
QUARTAROLI:  That’d be fun to see.
BELKNAP:  Yeah, really.  So then the next year was the jet trip, up the Grand Canyon.  Of course I think they started working on that in May.  They were gonna make the trip down, first, to cache the gas all the way through the Grand Canyon.  My father was on that May trip.  They had some problems.  I don’t know if it was low water, but they didn’t get down-maybe down to Soap or somewhere down there, and decided they would turn around.  So then in June they did do the trip down.  They had the two large cathedral hull boats, and then the two eighteen-foot boats.  But the larger boats were designed to carry the gas and food that we cached through the canyon.  We saw 'em off there at Lee’s Ferry on this down trip, and then [I] was with the rim party while we were just kind of keeping an eye on 'em.  Then word came up that I could-Margie Mannering and myself could come down at Phantom and join the trip there.
QUARTAROLI:  Where did you go on the rim for the rim runners?
BELKNAP:  Oh, we went to the Watchtower, along that side.  We spotted 'em a couple of times there.
QUARTAROLI:  So they thought things were going well enough on the trip that Margie and you could come in and it’d be all right.
BELKNAP:  Yeah.
QUARTAROLI:  Because at that time you’re sixteen.
BELKNAP:  I was sixteen, yeah.
QUARTAROLI:  I guess Margie, they probably didn’t have any ladies until that point.  Was she the first one [unclear]?
BELKNAP:  Actually Joyce was on the trip.  So we hiked down and joined the trip.  The big thing on that part of the trip was when we got down to Lava Falls.  I don’t think I drove any on that down trip.  But we got down to Lava Falls and Vulcan and Bill Austin and Dock were the first boat to go down, and Bill was driving, and they were in one of those twenty-four-foot giant cathedral hull boats.  Bill Austin was just carrying way too much power and he went off that first wave, and the boat went airborne, and when it came down, he came down so hard that he got a compound fracture of his leg.  We couldn’t tell until a little later exactly what happened.  But Dock then grabbed the wheel and brought the boat into the lower beach down there.  Then it was a compound fracture, the bone was sticking out through his skin.  Fortunately, Chuck Richey, who was the superintendent of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, was coming in at Whitmore.  And so we were able to run down and pick him up, and one of the rangers who had brought him out, Chuck Richey, to the rim, was still up there, and they were able to radio up and say that there was an emergency.  They sent a chopper in the next morning.  That came from Luke Air Force Base.
QUARTAROLI:  What was goin’ on then with Bill Austin down there?  I know your dad had some pictures of some shade tarps set up, and people monitoring Bill.
BELKNAP:  Right.  I guess the first aid kit had some morphine that helped him somewhat with the pain and whatever.  When they put him up on the beach, they thought he was far enough away, and then they built kind of a tarp tent-structure over him.  But then the river started rising, so I spent a lot of time later that afternoon and into the evening, kind of building a dike around, just to keep the water away from him.
QUARTAROLI:  That was early July, so the river wasn’t....
BELKNAP:  Actually, that would have been, I think, in late June.
QUARTAROLI:  So is that spring runoff, or was that early monsoon-why the river was coming up?  Or just another little peak of some sort?
BELKNAP:  Probably another, just a small fluctuation, but it was enough to make a difference where we were there.  So then the next morning that helicopter came in and took Bill out.  Then we went on down to Boulder City.  I had not driven any of the jet boats at that point.  I had made myself very useful on the trip, just helping around the camp.
QUARTAROLI:  Who took over the driving for Bill Austin at that point?
BELKNAP:  I’m not sure.
QUARTAROLI:  Probably Joyce [unclear].
BELKNAP:  Maybe.  Guy Mannering, it could have been.  So when we got down to Boulder City, then I just....  There was a week when they wanted to....  They decided to not use those large boats at all.  Those were just too unwieldy for the up-run.  So they were able to get two additional eighteen-foot fiberglass, you know, the Turbocraft boats, and get those out very quickly to Boulder City.  So there was a lot of time, just beefing up with a lot of extra fiberglass.  They had the four boats at that point, and just beefing them up quite a bit.  And I, once again, just made myself very useful in helping with all of that.  One day I guess Dock asked me if I wanted to drive one of the boats.  That was quite a moment.  And I said, "Sure!"
QUARTAROLI:  Which boat did you [unclear].
BELKNAP:  I drove the Dock.
QUARTAROLI:  One of the newer ones, the replacement ones?
BELKNAP:  Yes, it was.
QUARTAROLI:  Had just come in.
BELKNAP:  Right, yeah.
QUARTAROLI:  And so what was that experience like?
BELKNAP:  Well, it was funny, because I had been asked to drive, and we still had maybe another three or four days of beefing up the boats with fiberglass and everything.  That was all being done at Boulder City, out at a boat shop.  I was driving out one morning in my parents’ station wagon, and I had some tools in the back.  Drove around behind the boat shop and went around this corner, and one of the tool boxes fell over, and I turned around to look, and I ran into a tree.  (laughter)  So it was quite something to be asked to drive one of the boats, and then have this little thing happen.
QUARTAROLI:  You probably had been drivin’ a boat longer than you’d been drivin’ a car, at that point.
BELKNAP:  Oh of course, yeah.  Everybody laughed about that.  So we just finally left Boulder City and we got the boats all together and drove on up.  I just remember just always having butterflies.  I felt good about driving, but it was always just ... a little anxious about never having driven one of the boats.  But the boats were easy to drive, compared to other boats.  And actually driving up through the rapids there gave you time to pause, look around, so you could decide where you were gonna go next.
QUARTAROLI:  What was the feeling?  [Mile] 232 was a pretty good starter for you, to challenge that one and get up.  Do you remember details about specific rapids and how you approached them?
BELKNAP:  I really don’t.  Actually, some of the really larger rapids, Jon Hamilton drove the boat up for me.  Of course he drove all four boats up through Vulcan, and probably 205 I didn’t drive.  Horn Creek I didn’t drive.  There were probably a couple of others.  But I remember some of the rapids you’d just get up and stop at one point and look around, decide what you were gonna do, and go on up.
QUARTAROLI:  Did you have any close calls when you thought maybe you were gonna hit a rock?  The film at Vulcan, there’s that one rock over on the right that just about every boat would always hit.
BELKNAP:  Sucked every boat over there.
QUARTAROLI:  Or a possible flip or something?
BELKNAP:  It’s interesting, I just didn’t have any feelings [like that].  I did, a couple of times, got kind of got pushed off to one side or another, kind of nosing into a wave.  My copilot was Ed I’Anson, and he’d been on a lot of trips with Dock.  He would kind of point out what he thought, directions and things too, in driving.  But we did lose one of the boats in Grapevine.  That was the boat that had been driven by Fireball Young.  He was a driver from the Turbocraft Company.  Seems like every rock in the river was a magnet to him.  But we got up to Grapevine and he was the third boat to go up, and I was at the bottom of the rapid, and he started up and he nosed into a wave.  At that point I guess he’d hit enough rocks that the deck was loose.  Just nosing into a wave, just like opening a car hood.  So then they started just drifting down.  He obviously was sinking pretty fast.  So Jim Bechtel and Fireball, they floated out and I picked 'em up, and then the other two boats came down.  And then we went back down to Phantom and reorganized for a day, and then left and went on up.  I think we probably ended on July fourth, I believe, at Lee’s Ferry.  That was quite an experience.
QUARTAROLI:  Yeah, the only successful up-run.  Pretty amazing.
BELKNAP:  Uh-huh.
QUARTAROLI:  Jon Hamilton was through a few years ago, and it was good to hear some of his stories about workin’ on the jet, the three stages of filing the edges down to get up through Vulcan.
BELKNAP:  Yeah, just every little....
QUARTAROLI:  Every little advantage he could get.
BELKNAP:  Exactly.  Of course the boats were just totally empty there at Vulcan, just to make 'em as light as possible.  And then they had that canvas tarp over 'em, and space just for the driver, basically.  That was quite a remarkable trip.  So I guess that was 1960.
QUARTAROLI:  You said they’re easy to drive.  What’s the difference between drivin’ a jet boat and drivin’ those Smith Crafts that Dock had?
BELKNAP:  One thing, the steering is all based on the jet unit, and deflecting the jet unit on those boats.  So if you did lose power, you had no control of the steering.  So that was the big difference.  And they would, of course, turn on a dime, you know.  You could flip 'em around very quickly.
QUARTAROLI:  Did you lose power in the run?
BELKNAP:  No, never did.  And then the Turbocraft Company, after that, they said, "Okay, you can just keep the boat down in Boulder City."  So we did.  Used it to water ski behind for a couple of years in the summer time.
QUARTAROLI:  And then what happened to it?  Now it’s back at the Park.
BELKNAP:  Yeah, it is.  It’s over there at the South Rim-that and the Wee Red.
QUARTAROLI:  But the Dock, they called it "the lake boat," I think, because they had it down on Lake Mead, and it didn’t have the name the Dock and they didn’t associate it with being from that trip, until recently.
BELKNAP:  Yeah, it’s interesting.  We had it for several years there.  Then the Park Service there at Lake Mead, I think at one point they thought maybe they would have a museum or something, so it did go into the Park Service warehouse there at Lake Mead.  Somehow, it disappeared for a number of years.  I’m not quite sure where it showed up, if it was at the South Rim or....  Wee Red was discovered up at Lake Powell, I believe.
QUARTAROLI:  Yeah, Glen Canyon NRA [National Recreation Area].  Well that’s interesting, I wasn’t aware that you guys had that boat for a while.  So it makes sense that it was there, and if it was gonna go in the museum, that’s how they ended up using it down on Lake Mead, lower Grand Canyon.  
BELKNAP:  So then I guess the next trip was the low-water trip in 1963.  That was when they closed off the gates of Glen Canyon to start filling Lake Powell.  In the early summer we had gone up into the lower end of the canyon.  We didn’t have any idea of doing any kind of boating trip at that point down in the Grand Canyon, but went up in our Smith Craft, and some other people went up with us, just for a weekend.  It was so beautiful up there, 1,000 second feet of water coming down, crystal clear, and we went up to Gneiss Canyon, just below the rapid there on the beach.  It was just so beautiful, that small little stream almost at that point.  That’s where I think the inspiration came, just looking at that.  Wouldn’t that be neat to come down the river under those conditions? So I guess my dad and I had seen just one of these Sportyaks at the Lake Mead Marina that was used as just a little tender to get out to the bigger boats and stuff like that.  So my father contacted, I guess it was Jerry Buening, I believe.  He was the owner and manufacturer of it-the Sportyak-and asked if he could borrow one, just to take it up in the lower end, and we’d test it out and see if it would hold up.  So we did get one, went back up to Gneiss Canyon, and spent a day trying to destroy the boat.  (chuckles)  It held up really well.  So then my father got in touch and asked Jerry Buening if he could get-let’s see, what did we get?  I think we got six boats total, from the company.  My father also-I guess he contacted the Park Service to see about taking comparison shots, low-water shots, and got a contract to do that.  But we had the Segerbloms-Cliff Segerblom and then his son and daughter, Tick and Robin, who were on the trip.  And Mack Miller and Dock and myself.  We got to Lee’s Ferry, and I think it was the next day, the Paria River had just started flooding, just this massive amount of mud coming in.  So we never saw any clear water that whole trip.  This beautiful stream and river that we’d seen, thought it would be so great, and it was just thick.  The water just sounded different, you know, with that much mud in it, heavy.  So we went ahead and pushed off.  I think we figured the trip would probably take us a couple of weeks, but got down there, and each of the rapids, there were so many more rapids in that low water.  Each of those rapids acted like dams, and you had these long lakes behind 'em, with lots of rowing.  You’ve got an up-canyon wind, and these....  So it was really slow going.  But we got down to Phantom Ranch and the Segerbloms, because the trip was taking a lot longer than anticipated, they decided that they would have to leave.  So they left, and their Sportyaks were taken out on mules. The water, of course, for drinking water, in the evening we’d pull one of the boats up and just bail it full of water, and the next morning there’d be a couple inches of pure water at the top that we’d take off and store that for a day basically.  The mud, I can just remember it caking on your legs and it getting-you’d have to keep using lotion or something to keep your skin from drying out so much. We lined quite a few of the rapids.  We tried portaging.  We did one portage.  I think that was either Badger or Soap Creek.  After that one portage, we never did another one again.
QUARTAROLI:  It was too much work?
BELKNAP:  Oh boy!  So we ended up lining a lot of the rapids.  That was also a little hard because of so much silt along the banks and everything.  The rocks were really slippery.  I remember John Riffey.  He was the Park ranger out there at Toroweap, and he was going to keep an eye out for us.  We’d gotten farther and farther behind, and he could not find us.  I think it was three or four days that he was looking for us with his plane.  He was flying at 10,000 feet, so high up that nobody could see us.  We finally found this one pile of driftwood that just was the size of a house.  We lit that, and smoke went halfway up the canyon, up thousands of feet, you know.  He did finally spot us after that. My father spent a lot of time, because he had pictures from the earlier trips.
QUARTAROLI:  These historical photos?
BELKNAP:  Right.
QUARTAROLI:  From Powell and things like that?
BELKNAP:  Well, it was more from Dock’s trip, probably the 1950 trip.  ’54 was the low-water trip.  Quite a few things from the 1950 high-water stuff.  So we’d find those same locations and then he’d take comparison shots.
QUARTAROLI:  How do you think the Sportyaks worked out for that type of trip?
BELKNAP:  It seemed really good.  At that point we were spending an awful lot of time double and triple bagging things in these large waterproof bags.  We spent a lot of time lashing everything in.  Later on, my father developed the Yakpaks that were just a container that had a lid and they were fastened into the boat.  But we didn’t have those.  So we spent a lot of time lashing everything together in the boats.  Later on my father developed the splash shields on those Sportyaks, too, which we didn’t have on that trip.  And so we were bailing a lot.
QUARTAROLI:  So did your dad work with, what was the name, Jerry?
BELKNAP:  Jerry Buening.
QUARTAROLI:  Did he work with him on adding some, so that he incorporated some changes into the Sportyaks?
BELKNAP:  Not into the basic Sportyak.  These were just accessories.  He found somebody, I think in Utah or Las Vegas, to manufacture the Yakpaks.  They were molded and could fit into the Sportyak.
QUARTAROLI:  Where would those fit-up in the front, in the bow portion?
BELKNAP:  Yeah, that’s correct, right.  And then just had one big circular lid to pull off and put all your gear in there.  The splash shields-that helped a lot.  And one of the other things, the compartments were just air-filled before-I mean the original Sportyaks.  Get a hole, and then you start getting water inside the compartment there.  That was a problem.  So another thing my father later did was to blast the Sportyaks full of foam, so if you got a hole in the Sportyak you weren’t going to fill the inner compartment [with water]. So that trip I think ended up close to a month.  It was a long trip.
QUARTAROLI:  So food for that long, what were you usin’?
BELKNAP:  We had a lot of freeze dried food and Cliff Segerblom had organized all the food.  I guess we had food brought down at Phantom.  That was it.  I think we were kind of rationing out our meals, since the trip was running longer.  I just don’t remember that there was ever any real problem with not having enough food. I remember Argosy magazine did an article.  My dad did the photographs, and I guess he probably wrote it too.  But I guess in that year there were only, I think, seven people that went down the Grand Canyon.
QUARTAROLI:  And you were four of 'em?
BELKNAP:  Right, that’s correct.