Oral history interview with Kenton Grua [includes transcript], December 2, 1997.

              Grand Canyon River Guides Oral History Collection
Kenton Grua Interview
Interview number: 53.23B

[BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE A] 
This is the River Runners Oral History Project, and it's December 2, 1997, and we're in Flagstaff, at the house of Kenton Grua, going for the third in a series of interviews that we've done with him: one was at Georgie White's birthday party about [1990], and another one was on the old timers' trip, or the Legends Trip, [September 18-19, 1994]. 
Steiger: Did we get enough about your childhood in Vernal, do you think? Did you even look at [the previous transcripts]? Is there anything [you want to add]? You were a kid in Vernal.... 
Grua: A long time ago. 
Steiger: But high school, early sixties and all that, what did you do, run around in a crew cut? (laughter) 
Grua: I had more hair back then. I'd like to think I wasn't nearly as smart. (chuckles) Did the usual things kids do, ran around, drank before it was time, and drank too much, and learned a few lessons, and just survived somehow. But [I] did do a lot of river runnin', a lot of boatin', luckily, fortunately, up on the Green and Yampa mostly, a little bit from Flaming Gorge, down. 
Steiger: That's right, 'cause you had already started when you were like fourteen, doin' that stuff. 
Grua: Yeah, twelve was my first trip, but that is one, that other tape. 
Steiger: And then rowin' at about fourteen? 
Grua: And really, that is my childhood, once we moved from Salt Lake City where I was born to Vernal, in, I believe it was 1962. That was one of the first things I did after we moved there, was go on that trip with Shorty, and that was really a life-changing experience, Hatch River Expeditions. And before that, I guess my passion was skiing, 'cause my dad was really into skiing, and we'd go up to Alta and/or Brighton or Solitude -one of those -or Park City, about every weekend and ski, so that's what I thought I was gonna do when I grew up, was ski a lot. As it turned out, there wasn't much skiin' in Vernal. (chuckles) Just Grizzly Red, or a long trip to Salt Lake or Steamboat Springs to get good skiing. So skiing kind of fell into the background. I did a little bit in high school, as I was growin' up, but mostly rivers in the summertime. 
Steiger: So what was it like bein' a Hatch boatman in Vernal? 
Grua: Well, I wasn't a Hatch boatman in Vernal much. I mean, when I first got hired on, my first trip was in March in the Canyon. That was a training trip. I came up and did like one or two trips, maybe three trips, up on the Green, just to fill in some holes. We used to actually come back up to Vernal between trips sometimes to pack food and get the trip ready to go, because there wasn't much in terms of facilities in Marble, and Page was kind of not a great place to pack a trip out from either, but of course it was better than going clear back to Vernal. But Ted liked to save money and buy food and supplies in Vernal as much as he could, so we'd regularly drive back to Vernal to get things ready. But most of the time, actually, even in that first year I worked for Hatch, we'd go buy all the food in Page. It'd be just a shopping spree: we'd just get a whole bunch of shopping carts and attack the supermarket there in Page and just fill it up with everything -including all the cigarettes we needed to smoke. (chuckles) 
Steiger: Which you guys were doin'. 
Grua: We couldn't get away with beer. (laughter) Oh, yeah, everybody smoked cigarettes. 
Steiger: You too?! 
Grua: Yeah, I did my first year. Actually, I quit that first year, because it was just too much. I don't know what it was about smoking, but I guess with Ted buying the cigarettes -of course, he never knew he did -he probably knew he did. 
Steiger: But he wasn't sweatin' it. 
Grua: You could smoke all you wanted and pass 'em out to the folks. Smokin' was a lot different back then, there was a lot more people doin' it, I think. 
Steiger: Now that's 1968? 
Grua: Sixty-nine [1969]. That was my first year in the Canyon, March of '69. And all the old timers, let's see, there's Jack Reynolds and Dennis Massey and Steve and Dave Bledsoe, they'd been there a year. I think Dave had been there a couple of years, and Steve a year. And Jimmy Hall started about the same time. Oh, there was Bill Bernt [Lew's spelling] Burnt [Kenton's spelling]. There was quite -I'm even havin' a hard time rememberin' all the names. 
Steiger: We should take an aside here and spell these. 
Grua: And Rick Petrillo and Chuck Carpenter. 
Steiger: P E T R I L L O. 
Grua: Yeah, I think that's right. And they're still around. 
Steiger: I love that story. 
Grua: Dean Agee. 
Steiger: A G E E. 
Grua: Yeah, he was a character. He was the "hippie-est" of the Hatch boatmen. (laughs) I'd say we were more cowboys in those days, than hippies. I mean, I was kind of on the edge there, maybe, between cowboy and hippie -dressed like a cowboy but had fairly long hair, off and on. Early Hatch days I cut it pretty short, just to get on. 
Steiger: Well, when you say "dressed like a cowboy".... 
Grua: Oh, we'd wear Levis and cowboy boots on the river. Actually, they still do. I don't know about cowboy boots, I don't think so. But they'll wear Levis in the winter and the spring -just kinda standard. Then we'd wear these cutoff Levis in the summertime. They're even comin' back into style nowadays, I think. 
Steiger: Oh, they're so good when you get 'em wet. (laughter) 
Grua: Oh yeah, take about a week to dry, even in the middle of the summer. Yeah, it was interesting back in those days, running the old tail-draggers, full-length floors. We wouldn't even run down the middle of Hermit. We'd try to keep as dry as you could, because if you got one of those things full of water, you'd be bailin' for two hours with a five-gallon bucket, to empty it out. 
Steiger: And that's with a lot of five-gallon buckets. 
Grua: Yeah, one or two. It's hard to get people too interested in doin' it for two hours. 
Steiger: So the swamper would have to do it. 
Grua: Oh, it'd be everybody -you know, back then, people were pretty able-bodied, our folks, and they'd generally do it. But you tried not to fill 'em up. A good boatman didn't fill his up more than once or twice a year. 
Steiger: So you're runnin' thirty-threes with floors in 'em, tail-draggers. 
Grua: Some twenty-sevens, but mostly thirty-threes. 
Steiger: A tail-dragger is where the frame hangs off the back of the boat, the very back, and the motor was, there was this sort of travois kind of "A" frame kinda, and these boards stuck off the back, and then the motor went down. 
Grua: Uh-huh, they had two boards, kinda one off the back -they didn't meet -and stuck out about three feet off the back, and the transom was bolted to the underside of those boards, and they had a cross-board across the front of 'em that was about maybe six or eight feet up onto the tubes of the boat. You'd have to deflate the rear end quite a bit to even get your motor in the water, 'cause the thirty-threes would stick up a little bit on either end. They were old bridge pontoons that were World War II war surplus bridge pontoons. You'd have to deflate the rear end quite a bit even to get your motor in the water, and then of course that'd make you like you were sittin' on a slingshot -especially if you ran anything really big, like Hermit -it could throw ya' halfway across the boat. 
Steiger: So a pretty wild ride. 
Grua: Yeah, for the boatman, he had the wildest ride. I think I mentioned in another interview, we had a couple of lines goin' that we'd put over one leg and under the other leg, and kind of scissor ourselves in there, and tuck our toes under some of the load in the front of the frame. And then we'd have a line that we'd hang onto, just to hang on, as well as pull the motor, if we had to pull the motor out for obvious rock reasons. 
Steiger: So it was kind of a cowboy deal. 
Grua: Yeah, it was a way cowboy deal. And in those days, in '69, late sixties and early seventies, the water was really low a lot of the time, and really fluctuating up and down. I mean, they didn't have any qualms about dropping it down to 1,000 [cfs] in the evenings, and then it might go up as high as 20,000 or even 28,000 -rarely, very rarely -in the daytime. But at that time they were still trying to fill up Lake Powell, so they were being pretty stingy with the water they let out, so we ran a fair amount of low water. 
Steiger: So you guys had to be pretty good to not get your boats stuck. 
Grua: Yeah. I mean (chuckles) we thought we were pretty good, back in those days. We all had pretty high opinions of ourselves. And every once in a while we'd get one stuck, or we'd go over a rock and do a thirty-three-foot-long tear in the bottom that you'd have to pull the boat out, de-rig it and sew it up and patch it. 
Steiger: Now, when you talk about fillin' the boat up, you'd actually fill those things up, full with water? 
Grua: Oh yeah, sure. 
Steiger: So then they wouldn't handle at all, huh? 
Grua: They'd be pretty sluggish. (laughter) It probably only held about 4,000-5,000 pounds of water, (chuckles) conservatively speaking. So, yeah, you would try not to. I mean, we'd cut everything. You'd never go for the big ride back in those days, even Lava we'd take the motors off and we'd row it down the left. And Hance a lot of times we'd row as far left as we could get it, just kind of cruisin' down, sloppin' over the rocks. And they actually did pretty well -unless you really hit a sharp rock, you're pretty unlikely to tear the floor. Even though they were old cotton fabric rubber.... 
Steiger: The floors were tough. 
Grua: The floors were pretty tough. I mean, it depended upon the make of the boat. They were made by several different companies: General Rubber and Tire, and Firestone, and Dunlop. Those are the three main brands of boat that we had, and they each had their peculiarities. The faster ones were usually the more fragile ones. The Firestones and the Dunlops were pretty fast, but they were more likely to rip a floor full length, than a General. And the Generals were heavier, they were quite a bit slower in the water, but they were usually quite a bit tougher. 
Steiger: Yeah, I remember. 
Grua: But I think probably by about the early seventies -it was after I left, but not more than a year or two after I left -they started cuttin' the floors out and puttin' the side tubes on. 
Steiger: Well, what was the typical.... You did the training trip, and then I remember you talked about those big Sierra Club trips -eight boats, ten boats, and all these people. But what was a typical Hatch trip like in '69? Or was that it? They were big -or were they? 
Grua: Well, we did our share of big ones. I mean, they were way bigger than they'd even allow nowadays, a lot of 'em. But most of 'em were probably two boats, three boats. We didn't like to go single-boat trips in those days, because it wasn't nearly as much traffic on the river, so you didn't have.... 
Steiger: Probably couldn't carry as big of a load, either. 
Grua: And you didn't carry as big a load, no. A full boat would be six or seven people. You didn't like too many more than that, especially without the side tubes. 
Steiger: And who were your passengers? You were saying they were pretty robust. 
Grua: Yeah, everybody in those days that went down the Canyon, I think they were out for an adventure, an expedition. They weren't out to get coddled or served -and we sure didn't coddle 'em (laughs) back in those days. We got the food out and everything, and we got 'em down the river, but.... 
Steiger: Was there much hiking? 
Grua: Yeah, we'd hike quite a bit, really. Ten days was the standard trip, and we'd go clear through the Canyon, on out to Temple Bar, was where we'd take out trips in those days, because you really couldn't even get in. Lake Mead was so low that you couldn't get in at Pearce's [Ferry]. I don't know why we never took out at South Cove. That was the other takeout, and there was a boat ramp there. But I think mostly we went to Temple Bar because that's where the bar was. (laughter) Then the road ended there, it was quite a bit better. 
Steiger: Paved road, yeah. 
Grua: It was a shorter, paved road. It took at least two hours longer, though, to get from South Cove to Temple Bar. It was a fair drive, you had to drive clear through Virgin Canyon. We'd gone through Iceberg. 
Steiger: So it was like a day-and-a-half to get across the lake? 
Grua: Pretty much. Nah, a day-and-a-half. You'd get down to the lake and motor all day, hard, and get clear to, I think we called it Sandy Point, or across from Sandy Point, which is about opposite of South Cove, takeout, too, and there were some camps over there on the right shore that were pretty scummy old lake camps, but they worked. 
Steiger: So essentially you were passing Diamond Creek on Day 9 or something like that? The afternoon of Day 8? 
Grua: Probably Day 9, or late Day 8, maybe camp down around Separation, in that area, [Mile] 242, and then do the lake the next day, and we'd be at the takeout by pretty early in the morning, Temple Bar. 
Steiger: I wonder how come they started with that length of a trip? 
Grua: Well, it was just kind of standard back in those days. I mean, there weren't that many other motors goin'. When I first started, it was like, I believe it was less than four thousand people that first year. 
Steiger: In 1969, that went down the river. 
Grua: Yeah. There might have been slightly over. 
Steiger: So who did you see down there? What other companies did you run into? Or would you even see [anyone else]? 
Grua: Once in a while we'd see Georgie [White]. I remember seeing Martin [Litton] in '69 when he was doin' his thing. And Gaylord [Stavely] too, when they were doin' that Powell Centennial trip. And that was probably the only rowing trip I saw -or those two trips were the only rowing trips I saw in '69. There just wasn't anybody rowin' down there -it was unheard of. I mean, it had been done, it certainly had been done a lot by Martin and actually most of the whole commercial trips -but you just didn't see 'em. It was pretty much motors and commercial companies. And there was Sandersons and Grand Canyon Expeditions, and Harris -you'd see them. Ken Sleight would be down there, motoring his triple.... What were they in those days? They were just triple ten-mans, I think. In those days they hadn't even come out with Green Rivers yet. They weren't far from comin' out, but they weren't until like '71 or '2, when Smith started makin' those. It was pretty rudimentary, and everybody's frames were old two-by-sixes, or two-by-eights cobbled together. Our rowing frames, where we had like two stations, so they were 3 two-by-eights -I think they were two-by-eights, they might have been two-by-tens -across the boat, and a long two-by-ten connecting the three of 'em together. That was our rowing frame, which sat in the center of the thirty-three. And from that we'd hang floorboards on chains, so everything was wood. We had pipes, probably three-quarter-inch pipe, coming up out of rowing blocks with old pieces of tired tick cushion. The oar was attached [to the oar lock] essentially with a bull pin -we just called 'em rowing pins -with a piece of tire material, a strip of tire material about two inches thick, about six or eight inches long, and it was hose-clamped onto the oar, with a little loop in it so the oar would slide down over the pin. That's how we rowed 'em, that's how Hatch rowed 'em up in the Green and the Yampa when I was on my first trip. So that was sort of the industry standard for years and years. 
Steiger: Just a loop and a tire that was hose-clamped onto the oar. 
Grua: Yeah. And you just rowed the oar against the pin. In those days, if you used it much -up on the Green they'd use it a lot more than we would in the Canyon, we'd just use 'em for rowin' two or three rapids, whatever looked bad, if the water was low and we didn't want to risk our motors. We'd either tie the motor up, or even take it off for Lava and those. We'd hit 'em, even if they were pulled up, so we'd take 'em off and just slide down over the rocks on the left, rowing with those little pins. I think they were twelve-foot ash oars. 
Steiger: Were they very maneuverable, those boats, when you were rowing them? 
Grua: Well, yes and no. I mean, we had some pretty funky-lookin' runs. (laughs) We wouldn't have called 'em great runs, or really maneuverable boats by today's standards, but you could move 'em around. I've rowed a thirty-three by myself all the way through Lodore and Split Mountain through Dinosaur, and down the Alpha. 
Steiger: And you could move 'em? 
Grua: Yeah, you could move 'em, if you didn't load 'em too heavy. And of course on those trips, those were just a four-day trip, so you didn't have a whole lot of camp gear, and we'd usually put, oh, five to seven people in one, including the boatman. 
Steiger: So who did you run with most of the time, and how did that work? Like you started out, did this training trip, crashed and burned. Next trip you're in your own boat, you're the second boatman. Who's on that trip, who are you runnin' with, and who did you usually go with for those next couple of years? 
Grua: Oh, Massey was often the trip leader, Dennis Massey, or Dave Bledsoe, or Steve Bledsoe. The other boatmen, I don't think Dean Agee ever led, but I ran quite a few trips with him. Great guy, and a real character. I mean, it was amazing that Ted hired him. Well, he hired him because he was the son of one of the Sierra Club principals out in California. He came from San Jose, but really a great guy. I saw him, he came through town I guess about five years ago on his bike, and he had a couple of kids, and kind of a fairly normal life, except he was still riding an old Harley. (laughs) 
Steiger: What was he like? 
Grua: He hadn't changed a bit, he still had long hair. 
Steiger: What was he like, what were all those guys like? You say he was wild -what would he do? Or could you even say on tape? (laughter) 
Grua: Nowadays it would not be acceptable -let's put it that way -behavior for river guides. But we didn't ever kill anybody! And we gave a lot of people a pretty good trip -in fact, probably too many, 'cause that's why we've got the problems we've got now. (chuckles) Too many people lovin' the Canyon. 
Steiger: Well, as far as "not acceptable," you mean he would party it up and be whoopin' and hollerin' and not lookin' after the people too good? I guess nobody really.... Seems like it was a different assumption then, like the people could look after themselves, or somethin'. 
Grua: Yeah, they probably did, and looked after us. You look back on it, and you wonder what they must have thought! (laughter) Nowadays, if I was behavin' like that, I wouldn't be foolin' me. (laughs) We thought we were pretty much pullin' the wool over their eyes, for sure. I doubt if we were, but people still loved it. There was even one or two people that I'm still in touch with from those early days. So it was, in a way it was a lot more fun, because it was a lot less controlled, a lot more of a wilderness experience than it is now. 
Steiger: Was there ever any doubt that you would get through? 
Grua: Oh, heavens no. (chuckles) 
Steiger: Not in your minds. 
Grua: Not in our minds. And we always did make it. I mean, you know, in those days the motors weren't nearly as dependable. Heck, half the time you'd be makin' motors by Phantom, or even by Badger. You'd be stealin' parts off one to keep another one runnin'. 
Steiger: What was Massey like? 
Grua: He was a wild man, in a different sort of way. he was kind of troubled, I think. (phone rings, tape paused) 
Steiger: Let's see, what the hell were we talking about? The old Hatch days and nine-day trips, and -oh, what those guys were like, that's it. You were talking about Massey, you said he was a little disturbed. (laughs) I don't know if we should spend much time, but his name keeps croppin' up. I've heard a lot of people talk about him. 
Grua: Well, he was a wonderful guy. I mean, he was like a big brother to me. He taught me a lot. Even before I was workin' for Hatch, as I was growin' up I knew him, 'cause he was quite a drinker around Vernal. And when I was like sixteen and seventeen, I was kinda quite a drinker. (laughter) I couldn't hold a candle to Mace, but I definitely drank more than I probably should have. We were sort of a partyin' bunch, us sort of cowboys -cowboys, slash, hippies [cowboys/hippies]. 
Steiger: They called him Mace? 
Grua: Yeah, that was his nickname, Mace. 
Steiger: And he was a wrestler, too, or something? Maybe that's Don [Neff?] I'm thinking of. 
Grua: Yeah, I don't think he ever -he might have wrestled a little bit in high school. He probably did, because everybody did in Vernal. That was Vernal's big sport and big claim to fame when I was goin' to high school there, as well as for several years after. I don't think they're much.... Well, maybe they've come back, but they had a really good coach. 
Steiger: For the wrestling team? 
Grua: For the wrestling team. We took State, and I guess it was Class "B," you know, the small high schools, just pretty much every year for a good ten years runnin' there. I don't know, I couldn't wrestle. I gave it a try, and I hated it. (laughs) Scrappin' around on the ground with some guy, wasn't my idea.... (laughter) 
Steiger: If it was a co-ed kind of thing, maybe! 
Grua: Yeah, maybe if it was co-ed. I tried to do a little of that, as much as I could, which was a lot less than I would have liked to have claimed. 
Steiger: Well, as far as big brother kind of thing, what did you get out of [Massey]? What would he tell you that was big brotherly? 
Grua: Oh, just the stuff that you talk about, you know, when you're real stupid but like to think you know everything, in those days. But I don't know, I just really liked him. 
Steiger: He could do it, huh? 
Grua: And he'd take care of you, too. I mean, I was a pretty little guy, and he actually wasn't any taller than me, but he was one of these little guys who liked to fancy himself as being pretty tough, and he looks pretty tough. I don't know if anybody that I ever saw got the best of him, and he'd take on big guys. I mean, he's like one of these scrappy little guys. 
Steiger: You mean "take on," like you actually saw him fight with people? 
Grua: Oh, all the time! 
Steiger: He was kind of a drinker. 
Grua: Yeah, he liked to get drunk, go to a bar, and pick a fight. I mean, he wouldn't necessarily pick a fight, but he'd never run away from a fight, and he didn't often lose a fight. And I was just the opposite, I'd run away. (chuckles) I lost a couple. 
Steiger: That was in Vernal? 
Grua: Yeah, in Vernal, and early Hatch days. Yeah, he was ____tion. 
Steiger: He was a good boatman. 
Grua: He was a real good boatman. He was a little hard on the women (chuckles) because he fancied himself as quite a ladies' man. I don't think the ladies saw him that way -at least not too many of them -and he had quite a few problems with them, and actually more than drinking. That was what got him fired from Hatch, got fired like a year after I quit and went to work for Grand Canyon Expeditions. And it wasn't too long after that, that he took his life. Pretty sad. 
Steiger: Fred talked about him a lot. Dennis would screw around with Fred. He'd say, "Follow me," and then he'd go over and line up somewhere -not the place to be -and then all of a sudden change direction (laughter) just to play with Fred. 
Grua: Yeah, Dennis was hard on Fred. I remember. I think I only did one trip that Fred was on. Of course he was quite a bit older than Dennis. He was five or he might have even been closer to ten years older than me. He was quite a bit older than I was. But Dennis was not impressed. Fred was kind of one of these guys who came along, and he'd run a trip with Hatch way back when, and just wanted another trip, and wasn't gonna stick with it and be a boatman. If anything, he was gonna be an outfitter, which is what he turned out to be. But Mase liked to.... (chuckles) 
Steiger: Yank him around. 
Grua: I know he did that. I mean, Fred was not dreamin'. I watch him. We talked about doin' that. (laughter) Poor Fred did have a couple of rough runs around there. 
Steiger: ___________. 
Grua: Tryin' to follow Dennis around. I mean, in those days, none of us knew that much, and Dennis was an old timer, but he would have been a new guy, really, by today's standards of boatmanship. So he knew his way better than we did, but not one whole heck of a lot better than we did down there. 
Steiger: How about Bledsoe? Was he just kind of startin' out with you guys, or was he an old timer too? 
Grua: Which? 
Steiger: Either one. 
Grua: I think Dave started the year before Steve, and Steve started the year before I did, so Dave would have started in '67, and Steve in '68. They were both great. I mean, they were like old timers when I started, both of 'em. Of course in those years you'd get a lot of experience in a year. You could, you know, do -'cause the year ran clear into Thanksgiving, sometimes -so you'd do conceivably fifteen, sixteen, seventeen trips in a year. 
Steiger: Wow. And that's kind of the numbers you guys were puttin' up. 
Grua: Yeah. 
Steiger: Just trip after trip after trip. 
Grua: Yup. 
Steiger: And this is nine-day trips and ten-day trips? 
Grua: Uh-huh. 
Steiger: Wow. 
Grua: Well, we'd take out at Diamond, too, occasionally. In fact, we loved takin' out at Diamond, compared to goin' on to T-Bar. Diamond wasn't nearly as good a road then as it is now -not even close. I mean, at its best it was as rough as it gets after a pretty good flood nowadays, because they didn't maintain it hardly at all. It was just kind of figure your way up out of the creek, from where the creek comes in and meets Peach Springs Wash, it'd be really rough sometimes. And then even goin' up Peach Springs Wash would be rough and slow. 
Steiger: [What was the income bracket of the passengers?] What kind of people were coming? 
Grua: Well, probably the same as nowadays. I mean, back then the ten-day trip was around $300, but thirty years later, I don't know. I mean, yeah, the same trip, a ten-day motor trip, would probably be around $2,000, maybe $2,500. And back then you could buy a car for a thousand bucks, a brand new car, and now a brand new car is about $20,000 or $30,000. 
Steiger: Twelve to thirty, yeah. 
Grua: So it really hasn't changed a lot. I'd question that the trip prices are much higher than they were then. And the costs have escalated, too, in terms of insurance and stuff like that. I don't even know if we had insurance back in those days. (chuckles) I imagine there was some sort of insurance, but it was nothing compared to what they need to have now to be an outfitter. 
Steiger: Yeah. I wonder what else we should get into, as far as the Hatch days. What do you think? What's noteworthy? 
Grua: Well, we could go on and on, but in deference to [the poor transcriber].... [Hey, if you guys keep talking, I'll make lots of bucks, and I won't be poor anymore. So yack it up, boys! (Tr.)] 
Steiger: That's what I'm thinkin'. So why did you make the jump to GCE [Grand Canyon Expeditions]? 
Grua: Well, that was pretty dumb! -in a way. I mean, Ted treated us pretty darned well. You know, I'd have to go on record saying he treated us really well. He'd buy the food, we'd go out to eat at restaurants and stay in a motel, the Pageboy Motel in Page, between trips. And every once in a while we'd camp out in the bat caves -which were these sort of defunct motel rooms that were storage and rat nests out in back of Marble Canyon, that Ted used to store equipment in during the summer when he was runnin' his trips. But mostly he'd treat us pretty well. We'd come off the river and quite often fly home. If not, if we were drivin', he'd buy all the meals. We'd just charge 'em at the restaurants. And he'd take really good care of us, and that wasn't the case with Smith -still isn't. (laughs) You know, we'd ride in the back of the truck on the way back from a Grand Canyon Expeditions [trip]. And a Hatch trip, we were either flown back, or had a seat inside, anyway, and all the meals paid for. He'd buy us cigarettes. The only thing he wouldn't buy for us was alcohol -at least knowingly he would definitely not buy any alcohol for us, we had to buy our own. And he didn't furnish beer on the trips then, and still doesn't, as far as I know. 
Steiger: People have to bring their own. 
Grua: Yeah, everybody'd bring their own alcoholic beverages. 
Steiger: I guess that's going to be everybody anyway, now. 
Grua: In the future, it's lookin' like that, yeah. 
Steiger: [Do you not want to say why you wanted to switch?] If you don't want to say.... 
Grua: Well, we were runnin' motors pretty hard in those days, and I'd started out rowing up in Utah, and kind of grew up rowing. We were starting to see a few rowing trips down there, and I guess I just kind of wanted to row, rather than motor. Again, smaller trips, fewer people per guide type thing. And Ron Smith had circulated a petition the last year I worked with Hatch, to ban motors from the Canyon. And a lot of people signed-on to it. Ted, of course, was fairly opposed to it. (chuckles) Actually, a lot of us that worked for Ted thought, "That's a great idea, let's do it, let's start rowin' and do smaller and longer trips down here." So I just thought, in good conscience, if I wanted to row, I should probably work for a company that might row. So I went and asked Ron Smith if he needed anybody to work for him that next year, and he said, "Sure." And he said, "I don't know if I can get you on any rowin' trips next year, but [we] definitely need some motor guides, and you might get a rowin' trip down there. In those days, his idea of a rowin' trip was three Green Rivers -which he'd just sort of developed with rubber fabricators with a boat-building company that was building motor rigs for him, and he was like the sole distributor for rubber fabricators to the river industry. And they were starting to make nylon fabric thirty-threes and thirty-seven-foot pontoons, as well as Green River rafts, which Smith had kind of designed, which were a little bit bigger than the old ten-man, and kicked up on both ends, and were a great rowing design, as well as a couple of other designs. 
Steiger: A lot stronger. 
Grua: And they were much, much, much tougher. And of course all the motor outfitters figured that Ron Smith wanted to sell these rowing boats that he'd developed, and they were the only rowing boats goin' in those days. And that was his motive for banning motors, that everybody already had plenty of motor rigs, but if he could ban motors and everybody had to go to rowing, then he could sell a bunch of Green River rafts and make a bunch of money. And it probably was a lot of Ron's motive for wanting to go to rowing, because though they're starting to now a little bit, they never really did much rowing. There was like one rowing trip that first year, and I didn't get to go on it, that I worked for Smith, so I ran all motor rigs for him. I think I did nine or ten -can't remember exactly -motor trips for Ron that first year. And another ten or eleven motor trips the next year -and didn't get to touch an oar the whole time I worked for Smith. I only worked for him those two years, 1971 and '72, and more or less got canned and got on with Martin and startin' rowin' from there. But I had to switch companies again to get to row, and ended up makin'.... 
Steiger: A pretty good trade. 
Grua: Well, no, a pretty good enemy of Ted for a long time. Ted was.... 
Steiger: Mad at you. 
Grua: Yeah, I think he still is, to some extent, kind of. 
Steiger: Because he had started you? 
Grua: Yeah, he took me on my first trip -not Ted himself, but Hatch River did -and kind of raised me up to where I was. That just wasn't what you did. Looking back on it, I've wished many, many, many times that I hadn't made that switch. 
Steiger: From Ted to Ron? 
Grua: From Ted to Ron. Or maybe even from Ted at all, because he was, overall, a pretty darned-good person to work for. Ron was pretty good and treated me pretty fair, but it was a whole different atmosphere -way, way different atmosphere. His equipment was state of the art, he had inside motors, aluminum basket frames they'd just developed, I think maybe the year before I started working for him. Dean Waterman was his manager, more or less, and he was a pretty darned-good aluminum welder, and of course went into business for himself in 1973, which was the year that he and I and Reagan and several other people didn't get hired back -we didn't necessarily get fired, but we just didn't get hired back in '73. 
Steiger: We probably don't need to get into that on tape. 
Grua: No. I mean, it was largely a personality thing, and ... it was what they've since come to call the Kanab Military Academy Syndrome, that persisted, really, until Ron sold the company. And I think things have gotten a lot better now. But there was quite a few personalities in there that didn't jibe very well. The same people are still around and we get along really well now, so people grow up and change, and what's in the past is in the past. But it was definitely a different atmosphere than working for Hatch. Like I say, the equipment was state of the art, the trips were a lot more tightly run. The guides probably prided themselves a lot more on offering a more plush, more catered trip -way more catered trip than Hatch ran, or wanted to run. And a Hatch trip was more of an adventure, an expedition. And Grand Canyon Expeditions, though that's what its name was, was more of a, you know, took the gourmet meals and had the plush equipment, and everybody got a sleeping bag rental kit, even in those days. That was part of the trip. 
Steiger: You mean he charged extra for it? 
Grua: No, it was just part of the trip. Everything was included. Of course we still didn't have tents for them, per se, but we put up tarps to keep 'em dry if it rained. Of course it never rained in the Grand Canyon in those days. (chuckles) 
Steiger: You're being sarcastic. 
Grua: Yeah. It rained a lot, or about the same as it is now, which isn't much. But it was definitely a different trip. A bunch of great guys, though, once again -really neat guys. 
Steiger: So that was, you said, Reagan, Dale.... 
Grua: Reagan came on line. O'Connor was there when I started. Of course a great guy, O'Connor, Dale -and he's still with the company, and managing it now. John Soroway [phonetic spelling], Rick Petrillo had actually moved the year before I did from Hatch to GCE, and he was part of the reason I switched over too, because Rick was kind of one of my "heroes." I ran a lot of trips with him, and really enjoyed runnin' with him. Oh, and Skip Jones, too. He was with Hatch. He didn't work for GCE, but I should have mentioned him, because he was a great guy and was one of the old early Hatch guys. 
Steiger: He had a lot to do with teaching me -Skipper and Ross and Moody and Resnick. 
Grua: Skip was great. I saw him just last year. Did you see him? 
Steiger: No. Came through? I would have loved to have seen him. 
Grua: He was through Flag last.... In fact, it was even this spring, I think -it was not that long ago. Lookin' great. 
Steiger: About the same, probably, doesn't look much different, I imagine. 
Grua: He looks a little older, just like all of us. A lot more hair than I do. 
Steiger: Me too, probably. 
Grua: Has a wife and a couple of kids. Kinda gone the family way, but really nice guy. 
Steiger: Oh, what a great guy. 
Grua: Mainly, he stayed workin' for Hatch. He never made the switch to GCE. And then he ended up in Idaho not long after -in the early seventies, and has been up there ever since. A lot of the old Hatch guys ended up, up in Idaho. 
Steiger: Yeah, workin' for Jerry Hughes. 
Grua: Yeah, Jerry Hughes. That was another I should have mentioned -Snake was one of the early Hatch guys -wild. Wild and crazy. And Rick O'Neill. Pete Resnick, Rich Bangs. Yeah, all those guys. It was quite an all-star crew, really. 
Steiger: Jimmy Hall. 
Grua: And they're all still around. 
Steiger: I guess Jimmy was a swamper. He was junior to you guys, huh? Or was he? 
Grua: Yeah, it took Jimmy a long time to figure out how to run a boat. (laughter) He was a good pool player, and pretty good B.S.'er. He could talk your arm off and not say much. But it took him a long time to become a good boatman, but after he did, he was one of the all-time great, good Hatch boatmen. I'd say the early Hatch guys, more than any other crew, have kind of like fed on through, you know, continued to weave into the fabric of Grand Canyon history. There's not too many of the old GCE guys that are still around. Of course, O'connor. Yeah, there's bits and pieces from everywhere, I guess. Moody, you.... 
Steiger: I was an ARR guy. 
Grua: Yeah. 
Steiger: So the motor/rowing thing. What do we have to say about that? You went to work for Ron. Ron circulated the petition, and maybe in the back of his mind he was thinking of selling rowing boats to all of these people. 
Grua: Well, that's what all the outfitters thought for sure, and I think that there was definitely something to that. 
Steiger: And we're talking like '72. You worked for Hatch '69 and '70, and then switched '71 to GCE. 
Grua: Uh-huh, and worked '71 and '72, and then switched to Martin in '73. 
Steiger: And that was just about when the whole thing was really heatin' up. 
Grua: Actually, by '73, it'd cooled off. 
Steiger: The motor thing? 
Grua: Yeah, the motor/oar controversy was most heated, really, in '70 and '71, when that petition was goin' around. That was the first heat, and then the Park tried to come in and do it in the late seventies. 
Steiger: Yeah, that's what I remember. 
Grua: So it kind of like continued. It was polarized -let's put it that way. 
Steiger: (laughs) Putting it mildly! 
Grua: And '70, I would say, is when it started to really become polarized, because nobody'd really thought of it much until Smith circulated that petition. And there were hardly any rowing companies down there in those days. I mean, I guess that ARDA, which is now AZRA, ran a rowing trip or two, but I can't think of any companies other than that, that ran trips. Martin at that time wasn't a company. He did a trip.... (aside about equipment) 
Steiger: Do you even remember private trips? Even see any? 
Grua: We'd never see 'em. Martin was a private trip in those days, so I saw that. Really, I think ARDA was the only company that did any rowing, and they mostly motored too. I mean, they were a motor company in Grand Canyon -everybody was -you didn't think you could really row down there, not commercially. That was what the old timers did, and that's what Mexican Hat did. You know, the only Mexican Hat trip I ever saw was that Stavely centennial trip. 
Steiger: So the idea hit '70, '71, and '72 -is when Ron Smith started with that. Or '71? 
Grua: Yeah, really '70 and '71. That's when Ron was trying to do it. You know, Ken Sleight would motor and row, but mostly motor. Of course Georgie had her thrill rigs which would have a little ten-horse motor on the back of three ten-mans tied together, and then she went to Green Rivers when Green Rivers came out. But three ten-mans tied together, and she'd have these firemen drivin' it down the river. And in rapids, they'd pull the motor up, and they'd row it with an oar off either end of the boat, so they'd run it sideways -three boats tied together sideways -down the river. The idea was if one flipped, you'd still have two right-side up. So they were pretty stable. And then Smith copied that idea, 'cause his first trip was with Georgie, for sure. So he was kind of a "Georgie trained" boatman, so to speak, and triple rigs were considered the safest rowing rig there was, although they were pretty squirrely, pretty dangerous. 
Steiger: That was Smith and McCallum partnered up. 
Grua: Uh-huh. 
Steiger: Which is little known. Mack talks about that. 
Grua: Yeah, and by the time I started, actually ... 
Steiger: Mack was out the door. 
Grua: ... with Smith, Mack had branched off on his own and started Grand Canyon Youth Expeditions, which he later changed to just Expeditions. And they were rowing and taking ... mostly kids is what he wanted to do -Boy Scout types and maybe disadvantaged kids, down the river, rowin' these essentially what should have been motor rigs. They were snouts that were three snout tubes tied together with four oars on 'em. 
Steiger: And a guy runnin' the sweep. I remember seein' those on my first trip. 
Grua: And they were wild rigs. That's where the Dierkers got started, as kids, really, I think, doin' the Youth Expeditions with Dick McCallum. They were like Flagstaff locals, and that's where McCallum ended up to start his business, and he's been here ever since. 
Steiger: When I got on the scene, which was like '72, there was Wilderness World, and the OARS. Those guys must have just started. 
Grua: Yeah, they'd just started up. What happened was the Park.... 
Steiger: ... said, "We gotta have some more rowing trips." 
Grua: No, they didn't say that. They didn't know anything. They didn't know motors from oars in those days, the Park. The Park didn't know anything, and they were just comin' in on the scene. What was happening was, the Canyon was getting trashed, because we were all cookin' over fires in the sand. Everybody was poopin' in the sand -you know, "goin' high and far, and burn your toilet paper." That was the ecological thing to do, bury your poop a little bit, six inches deep, and burn your toilet paper. That's what our toilet facility was, was just a small shovel -you know, a folding Army shovel -and a roll of toilet paper. And you went off and dug yourself a little hole and left it there and burned the toilet paper in the hole, and then you'd cover it up. That was just gettin' to be pretty intolerable -especially in a lot of places like Redwall, where it never rains. That was one of the most popular camps down there. There were three huge fire pits there -huge fire pits. And the sand in the whole cavern was just black, charcoal. And so we, on our own, had started shovelling fire pits, by '71 when I started workin' for Smith. I remember we were startin' to.... We'd have our fire in the sand, and then we'd shovel the sand and the charcoal into the river to keep the pits from mounding up. And before that, it'd been like you'd throw some sand on it. And it was gettin' to be where there'd be a huge mound, and then to set up your campfire or your cook fire for the evening, you'd come in and dig the sand out of the mound, along with all the big chunks of charcoal that hadn't burned up completely. And then that'd get tracked out. So the area around a fire pit, for like twenty, thirty, forty feet in diameter, would just be black, and just full of charcoal. So it was just starting to get intolerable, and we started, on our own, the guides, goin', "Hey, this is really lookin' bad, smellin' bad, and everything else." Of course, we'd also just throw scraps and stuff like that in the fire, and of course they wouldn't all burn down. So then you'd be spreadin' greasy charcoal and what not, out when you started your next fire. So we started bringing screens down and sifting the sand, and throwin' that charcoal in the river. If you were real conscientious, you'd throw it in a bucket and take it out and put it in the current, so it wouldn't, like, wash up in a big band right along the shore where you put it in. We started just throwin' it in, and then going, "Oh, man, this looks bad, these bands of charcoal." And so then we started carryin' it out in the middle of the river.
But the use was increasing, it was doubling every year, and had gotten up to a little over 10,000 people a year, and it was gettin' to be where you'd see people all the time, and we were startin' to feel crowded -everybody was. So it was really the guides that started saying, "Hey, you guys up there on the rim, we gotta do somethin' about this, or it's gonna be intolerable. Just more and more people all the time." 
Steiger: I remember, didn't Joe Townsmeyer [phonetic spelling] and somebody else go in there and sit down in some big meeting with the Park and say, "You've gotta put a cap on it," and then....
[END TAPE 1, SIDE A; BEGIN SIDE B] 
Grua: We all did. 
Steiger: Do you remember that? Everybody did? 
Grua: I don't know if Townsmeyer actually got fired, he might have. I mean, he was part of it, but, you know.... 
Steiger: Everybody was right there with him. 
Grua: A lot -not everybody, but I was meeting with those guys and tryin' to get them to do that. And it was resisted by the outfitters, but it was actually the best move that the outfitters ever made, to make it an exclusive deal with the limited use, because that guaranteed that they'd sell their trips. 
Steiger: But the idea of "we gotta put a cap on this," you think that came from the guides first, huh? 
Grua: Yeah. For sure. Definitely not from the outfitters -definitely not. Although, they weren't even outfitters then. I mean, they were just runnin' trips. And that was kinda when everybody became outfitters, and that's when Martin and Vlado -you know Vladimir Kovalik.... 
Steiger: V.K. 
Grua: "Vlado" for short, or "V.K." And ARR, they got their start then. Fort Lee Company. 
Steiger: Right there, boom, 1971. 
Grua: Right there, 1971, because the Park put out this sort of inside memo that "Hey, this is gettin' too crowded, so as of next year" -and I believe it was '71 -"we're gonna designate outfitters. So those of you who are running trips will become outfitters." And they didn't quite say it then, but basically what was implied was "the number of people you're takin' that year is gonna be the number of people you're gonna get to take, and we're gonna close it up. We're gonna make you outfitters, and that's who's gonna be runnin' commercial trips down the Canyon." So all these guys that had been runnin' ______, George Wendt, OARS, they all started takin' as many people down as they could -even some people they didn't take. That was the year to go. You could easily get some free trips that year. 
Steiger: I remember. Gleckler and Bruce were saying Henry and those guys just went ape shit -stow everybody they could possibly get. 
Grua: Everybody. Hatch. So the big guys got much, much bigger that year, and the little guys were struggling to get as big as they could, and really, basically, giving trips away. Then that was it, that was who the companies were, and there were twenty-one of 'em, I think, and that was how much use you had, was how many people you took down. And then against Martin's and several other people's -at least far-thinking rowing outfitters -suggestions, they allocated the use as user days, so that they could quantify the impact. That was their rationale. 
Steiger: Oh, there were guys even then that said, "Don't do that."? 
Grua: Oh, sure. 
Steiger: Because why? 
Grua: Yeah, Martin did. I was arguing against it. 
Steiger: What was the theory on that, why where you arguing against it? 
Grua: Because it'd make trips shorter. If everybody has "X" user days, then the only way to make more money and grow out of that, is to run shorter trips and charge more per day, plus they were easier to sell. 
Steiger: So before the user day concept, what were the average trips? 
Grua: Well, a motor trip would be ten days, pretty standard, to Temple Bar. Eight days, at least, to Diamond Creek. But some were longer. You could do ten days to Diamond Creek real easily, just depending on what people wanted to buy. And a typical rowing trip would be -well, of course dories weren't that typical, and that's who I rowed for -but we were doing eighteen days was our shortest trip in those days, and twenty-two days in the spring and fall was our standard issue trip. And I think other companies were doing at least fourteen, but I think even more like sixteen-day trips. It was kind of what you could sell. It's a lot harder to sell a longer trip, no doubt about it. 
Steiger: There were probably some twelves, huh? But maybe not. 
Grua: Not that I know of. Maybe, maybe OU [Outdoors Unlimited] went to twelve right away. They've always been the shortest trip. And he also got his start -John Vail -got his start that same year. So there's all these people [who] came in and jumped on the band wagon, and that's when rowing started, really. These were all the guys who'd privately come down and done rowing trips, but did like one trip a year. 
Steiger: A few trips, but not.... 
Grua: But the most a few [huh? (Tr.)], and just had a few people that they were takin' down, and they went, "Hey, I gotta get in on this!" 
Steiger: So off they went. 
Grua: Borrowed some money, bought some boats, and essentially gave away as many trips as they could, and started up their companies. So, you know, it went from sort of the standard old motor companies which were Sanderson, and Hatch, and Grand Canyon Expeditions, and Georgie [White], and Western. Who else am I leaving out? 
Steiger: I think Fred might have started. 
Grua: Fred was a Hatch boatman in '69. 
Steiger: Right, but didn't he start in '70? 
Grua: He probably started in '70. See, there were rumors, even the end of '69, "Hey, it's gettin' too crowded down here. We gotta start puttin' a cap on it." And then it took a couple of years to do that, which actually is amazing. (chuckles) By today's standards, we'd have to study it to death! It'd take ten years to put a cap on it, and there'd be 50,000 people goin' down the river. 
Steiger: Yeah, at a cost of millions. 
Grua: And actually, in 1973, they gave everybody an unprecedented -it's the only time it ever happened -across the board -it was kind of voluntary -10 percent cutback. 
Steiger: Which was then later rescinded in the late seventies, huh? 
Grua: Yeah, in the late seventies everybody got that and quite a bit more back when the Park Service tried to do the no more motors and launch-based allocation. 
Steiger: But how'd the voluntary thing happen? How did that work? 
Grua: Well, everybody, just across the board cut back 10 percent. I mean, it wasn't that voluntary. It was, you know, mandated by the Park Service. 
Steiger: But they got it done. 
Grua: But they got it done. And that was part of Ron Smith's rationale for not hiring Dean Waterman and Reagan and myself back to his crew. 
Steiger: Probably that's what it amounted to. 
Grua: Well, you know, it was more of a personality thing, I think, and a few little other odds and ends in there. It wasn't that I didn't get along with Ron, but he had some people.... 
Steiger: What scares me about now.... I don't know if we should talk about it or not. What I remember about the motor/rowing thing, I mean, I worked for Fred, I was working for a motor company, and I remember it being the mid to late seventies where I seriously -I mean, we were like totally second-class citizens to the rowing guys, and I remember things were really tense for a while there. We weren't really talking. 
Grua: Well, that was essentially the second go-around. Ron Smith did the petition, and this was to Western River Guides Association, WRGA. 
Steiger: Not to the Park Service? 
Grua: Not to the Park Service. 
Steiger: He just said, "Let's all get together and figure this out." 
Grua: Yeah. He said, "Let's sign up and let's not motor down there anymore, let's all go to rowing. Let's ban motors. Let's do this petition and hand it to the Park Service and get them to ban motors." And it made him a pretty unpopular guy amongst the motor outfitters. And definitely it didn't, like, cool down, but it didn't really heat up. That was kinda like, "Oh, okay." And then things kind of went along, but there was a lot of, you know, back room talking to the Park Service -rowing guides, and motor guides, and outfitters -urging them to ban motors down there, and make it more of a wilderness experience, I guess. So when the Park Service finally bought-into it, they went about it the wrong way, and tried to just ban motors. And they'd have gotten a lot further by not doing that. And the way they were going about it, they were gonna ban motors and give everybody a huge increase in use, as well as give the privates a huge increase in use. And it was gonna make it a zoo down there, and everybody could see that, even rowing guides and rowing outfitters. And everybody, when they had that on their plate as, "This is what we're gonna do for the 1979, and then became '80, Colorado River Management Plan," they just went "Unt-uh." And so everybody, I think pretty much all the outfitters and most of the guides, gave it a big thumbs down. They said, "It's better the way it is, status quo. Stay with user days, stay with motors, or it's gonna be a zoo down there. It's gonna be bumper-to-bumper boats." And they were right, it would have been. It would have been much worse than it is now. 
Steiger: That's what I thought too. I think the motor guys get kind of a bad rap. You know, the famous ____. The Park had the plan, and then they went.... And then a bunch of those guys [got it?] with Oren-Hatch, and they just wrote in some legislation and pulled the rug out from underneath 'em. but I always felt that, too. I felt like the plan, what you just said -I couldn't visualize it. 
Grua: Uh-huh, and Martin same way. Here's the quintessential purist, if there ever was a purist, and he put thumbs down on it. He said, "I can't support this plan." 
Steiger: This is Martin Litton. 
Grua: So we were all against it, and actually I think it, in the long run, has turned out much better. I think that the motors and the rowing down there kind of complement each other. At this point I'd hate to see the motors banned. 
Steiger: Well, so you made the jump over there to the dories. We should just touch on that for careerwise. So '72, you and Reagan went to work for Martin. 
Grua: It's actually '73. 
Steiger: And Martin was just starting his company, and he had these wooden boats. What did you think of all that? So, it wasn't so much wooden boats, it was just, "Let's go row." Plus, "We need a job." (laughter) 
Grua: Yeah, that was probably more than anything at that point. That spring was, "Here's somebody who'll hire us." Yeah, the dories were just ... pretty boats. I mean, I don't think I'd really thought about rafts versus dories, 'cause I grew up rowing a raft when I was a kid, and rafts were a lot of fun, but the dories were challenging, because of their fragility, and also, I think quite a bit more fun -you know, in terms of big ride in rapids. So they were appealing in that respect. So we definitely enjoyed runnin' 'em in those early days -still do, I guess. They're one boat you wouldn't get tired of running. 
Steiger: Was Martin famous? Did you see him as being a big character as far as what he had done on the dam fights and all that? Did that have any sway with you, or was he just a funny old guy? 
Grua: Well, yeah, as soon as we got to know him, absolutely. I don't think early on when I first started, did I realize how important he was in that fight, because that had all happened quite a bit before I started working down there -at least eight or nine years before I started working down there was when he was fighting to keep dams from happening in Grand Canyon. But yeah, as soon as we got to know him, and got to know the story behind him and how he came to be running trips and outfitting trips in Grand Canyon, yeah, you have to respect that. And so he's always had a lot of respect from all the boatmen that worked for him, I'm sure -hopefully from most of the boatmen down there. He's definitely got his quirks, like all the rest of us, but.... (chuckles) 
Steiger: I remember you guys being pretty aloof, I should have to say. I tell this story -I've never told you about it -but I remember being a little swamper my first year. I thought the dories were so cool, and I remember the first time I ever saw you guys, I was trying to drive, I think it was Resnick's boat or something, and I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and I ran into a dory, down there above Havasu. (laughs) And I remember I think you were there, and we went and we passed you and then we went down and tied up at Havasu, and then you guys came [along] and you were just furious. (laughs) I don't know, maybe you don't remember it like that, but the thing I remember about that time period was just that it was really edgy. Everybody was really, really tense. When I think about this upcoming deal, private versus commercial, I just think, "Oh, man...." 
Grua: Another one of those. 
Steiger: Well, if we're not careful, we're gonna get into this thing. I mean, this ain't over, by a long shot. What I don't want to see is they get down there, and it's all this, "Well, fuck you," "fuck the privates," or "fuck the commercials." I don't know how you avoid that, if people really start feeling pressed. I don't know what you do. 
Grua: There's definitely been some of that over the years, and that could get worse. But in terms of the motors/oars, yeah, I'm sure we were. I think "aloof" was more.... Well, maybe it was aloof. I like to think of myself as not feeling that way, 'cause I came from motor roots -at least in terms of my Grand Canyon experience. Certainly from the time that the Park started meddling with it, and trying to set up this launch-based system, and it was really gonna screw things up, that's when I decided that, no, unless.... The motors just shouldn't be banned by the Park Service down there. And unless the use was greatly decreased, in terms of numbers of people going down there, that motors have a place -in fact, they're almost necessary down there. 
Steiger: That's what I thought too. 
Grua: Because if you tried to haul that number of people -and that's what the Park wanted to do, they wanted to let everybody kind of have.... You know, that was sort of the bone they were dangling to the outfitters: "Well, you can take the same number of people down there, and just take 'em on longer trips, 'cause you'll have these launch-based trips." And it was gonna be bumper-to-bumper boats, because rowing trips, they generally go the same speed, and motor trips kind of generally go the same speed. But if it's all rowing and more people going slower -or the same number of people, let's say -going slower, it was gonna be a zoo, and it would have been. It gets crowded down there now, but the blessing is that the motor trips kind of go with each other and crowd each other a little bit, and the rowing trips kind of go with each other and kind of crowd each other a little bit, but motors don't crowd rowing trips, and rowing trips don't crowd motors nearly as much as if it was all one or the other. 
Steiger: That's a great rundown -the whole fire pan/toilet thing. You gave a great version of that.
What I'd like to do is wrap that up, and then just talk about some of the adventures. (laughs) Kenton Grua, you and your adventures with the Grand Canyon. I want to hear some river stories. And also, we gotta get to your hiking and things like that. But on a political front, just as far as all that goes, you guys were in the middle of this thing, jumped around, jumped to Martin. Actually, earlier you said sometimes you look back and think you never should have left Ted: Even though you got to row dories and all that? I mean, that's a pretty wild thing to hear you say. It says a lot for Ted. 
Grua: Ted definitely took better care of his guides than anybody I've worked for since -and still does, I think, in certain ways. I mean, it would be nice -and I think they are a little bit behind the times -I think they need to start takin' better care of their guides. I'll say that on record, in terms of retirement and medical, health insurance, that kind of thing. I think all the outfitters need to start doin' that. 
Steiger: There are only a few that are really good at it. 
Grua: There's only a few that are doin' it now. 
Steiger: Like ARR, and I guess AZRA, and probably [KNX?]. 
Grua: And OARS. 
Steiger: Oh, yeah, they're doing 401-K and all that. 
Grua: Yeah, 401-K and health insurance. 
Steiger: I gotta get signed up for that. 
Grua: You're not?! 
Steiger: No, I blew it off. 
Grua: Oh, man! It's been really good for me. I'm signed up for the full -I mean, I got to. You start to realize at our age that.... Of course, I was older than you when I realized. (laughs) 
Steiger: I blew it off before because I thought I just need that money, I'm not going to do that many more trips, but even two or three a year. 
Grua: Yeah, no matter how small it is, it's like.... 
Steiger: Multiplies. 
Grua: Yeah, it's before-taxes money. Like I say, nobody's gonna be there to take care of us when we retire -we gotta take care of ourselves. (break) 
Steiger: All right, I think we're rollin' again. So where were we? Maybe we should have a chapter on [adventure?]. When you first went to work for Ted, when did you really decide you were gonna really spend a lot of time in the Grand Canyon? 
Grua: I don't know if ... it was ever ... really a conscious decision. Just kinda ended up that way. 
Steiger: Really? 
Grua: Just decided to do one more season, or another trip. Kinda went season by season. But I always kinda intended to go back to school and finish that up and get a real job, but nothin' better ever really happened. 
Steiger: When you thought about that -I mean, gettin' a real job -what would that have been? Or did you even think that far? just some kind of a real job? 
Grua: Well, I started out in school wantin' to be a mechanical engineer. When I first started at the University of Utah, that's what my major was. You had to pick a major. I wasn't real serious about it, but that was kind of what I'd kind of grown up thinkin' I'd become, although I didn't really realize what a mechanical engineer did or was, at that point. And I don't think I'd have ever lasted very long in that field. (chuckles) 
Steiger: Oh, I don't know, you've done a lot of engineering since then, I'd say. 
Grua: Well, not that kind of engineering. 
Steiger: Well, one sort or another. 
Grua: But then lately, if I went back to school, I'd go into geology for sure, 'because that's always -well, for a long time, anyway -it's been a passion. 
Steiger: I always had the impression that at some point you said, "Okay, Grand Canyon's it. That's just where I'm gonna be, I ain't leavin'." But it wasn't like that, huh? 
Grua: No, it wasn't like that. I think back in those days, really it was like, "Boy if it gets any worse than this in terms of regulations or crowding or what-not, then I'm either gonna go run rivers somewhere else, or do something else." And then what they do is, they kinda tighten the noose slowly, you know, inch by inch. 
Steiger: "They," meaning.... 
Grua: Oh, well, I guess the Park Service or the outfitters or just society in general. Times change. You know, there were the sixties and the early seventies, and everything was ... looking like it was gonna get more and more, I guess, "liberal," if you wanted to call it that, in terms of people's thinking. And then suddenly in the eighties -maybe late seventies and early eighties -the pendulum just started like haulin' butt the other way. And now it's swung further than any of us could have imagined it would have in the other, conservative, direction. Although I suppose as you grow up, you also grow wiser in terms of various abuses (chuckles) of mind and body. 
Steiger: "Maybe those guys were right about some of those things." I think you stand out -for most people that know you or know a little bit about you -as being a pretty historic character yourself -just for some things that you've done. Specifically I'm thinking of about three things: your walk through the canyon was one of 'em, and the speed run was another one, and starting GCRG [Grand Canyon River Guides]. All those things were pretty big milestones. I guess we ought to start with the hike. 
Grua: Chronologically, that was the first sort of "different" thing I did. 
Steiger: So when did that get started in your mind? 
Grua: Well, as I can remember, as early as I started workin' down there, Colin Fletcher's book, The Man Who Walked Through Time, had come out, I think in the fairly late sixties. It was a brand new book, anyway, when I started workin' down there in '69. I got ahold of it and read it. It was pretty interesting, but as anyone who knew the Canyon could see right away, he didn't really walk through the whole Grand Canyon, or hike or whatever, through the whole Grand Canyon, by any means. He only went about 100 miles out of about 300 river miles -not quite. So slightly more than one-third of it was all he did, and claimed to have walked through the Canyon. And I didn't like his attitude, much, that came through in his writing of the book, that he was pretty proud of himself, and he really -not even subtly -put down Dr. Harvey Butchart, who was one of my heroes in terms of Canyon hiking. After he used him to get whatever information he had, or anything he knew about what he was about to do, or trying to do, he got from Harvey Butchart who was very kind and generous, giving him the information. And then because there was one spot that Dr. Butchart hadn't hiked, after Colin Fletcher.... (aside about spellings and pronunciation)
There was this little note that somebody'd written, some hiker, and left in Tapeats Cave. I don't remember the gist of it, but it was like, you know, "Got here. It was an incredible hike down from the rim. Blah, blah, blah. Almost died. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah." And then signed "Colon Flexor." (laughter) And that kind of cracked me up. I've never met him. I imagine he's a nice guy. But anyway, I apologize [for my pronunciation]. It's Colin Fletcher. 
Steiger: I read the book, but I don't remember him puttin' down Harvey Butchart. He was just snide about him or something? 
Grua: Well, what happened, was then there was this one area which was back in, I believe it was Fossil Bay, that Harvey had never hiked. So after Fletcher left on his hike, had gone down Havasu and started hiking, Harvey went and checked it out. And it wasn't so that he could do it before Colin did it, it was so that he wasn't giving Colin bad information. I know Harvey that well, and anybody who knows Harvey knows that that's all it was. And Colin came around, and he was like building up in his book -maybe in his notes or whatever, as he was hiking -to this, he was gonna get to this place "where no man had ever been. Not even the incredible Harvey Butchart, who'd been everywhere, had been here." And he got there, and sure enough, there were Harvey's distinctive footprints, and Harvey'd come and hiked that stretch. And he took it as Harvey had beat him to it, wasn't gonna let him hike somewhere that he hadn't hiked. And he kind of said that much in his writing, and that really turned me off to the book, and kind of challenged me, made me want to just, like, you know, "Okay, yeah, you went from Havasu to Nankoweap, but you didn't hike the whole thing. You carried the kitchen sink, and it took you...." I don't know how long it took him, but it think it was two-and-a-half months or something like that -I can't remember anymore. "But it took you forever, and you just really did it to write a book to massage your own ego. And somebody else needs to do it, just to do it, and do it right, do it light, and do the whole thing, and start at the top and go with the river, end up at the bottom." He started at Havasu and went upstream and crossed the river a few times. And so my idea was to do it all the way on one side, and go all the way from Lee's Ferry to the Grand Wash Fault.
So I started lookin' at it, really, that first year as I recall, just kinda checkin' out the route, as I was reading the book. 
Steiger: Workin' for Hatch? 
Grua: Oh, yeah. And just kind of more and more seriously every year was lookin' at it and kind of plottin' out where I'd go here and where I'd go there. And the spots that I couldn't see from the river and couldn't check out, I'd try and pull in there by some excuse on a river trip and go hikin' up and check things out. I finally got to where I thought I had a pretty good handle on it by 1972.
In the fall of 1972, I started out to do the hike, and had a bunch of food caches put in. And not very well planned, just kinda like wingin' it. And the big mistake I made was -and I was kind of a hippie in those days, and actually did most of my hiking and boating barefoot by then. I'd gone from cowboy boots and Levis to -well, I was still Levis and cutoffs -but to mostly barefoot, 'cause they didn't have good flip-flops back in those days. I'd go just about everywhere barefoot. So I got this idea I was gonna do it in moccasins. And there was this really good kind of moccasin made by an outfit in Tucson, called the Kaibab moccasin. They were fairly expensive in those days, even. I think it was like sixty bucks a pair. And so I got three pairs of those, figured they'd be light and I'd move fast. I started out from Lee's Ferry and kinda walked along the Marble Platform until Jackass Canyon. That was the plan, and I was doin' it all on the south side. And I hadn't even got to Jackass to where I was gonna start down into the Canyon proper, and I already had a hole in one of 'em, and started a hole in another. So I had a spare pair with me, but I didn't want to break those out. And what it was, the leather in 'em was a bad batch, and they weren't like a rawhide, but an untanned leather sole -real thick, but the leather in all three pairs -or at least the two pairs I had -I had another one stashed further downstream that I was figuring I'd use when I wore these out. But the leather just fell apart, basically. So I kept on walking, figuring, well, you know, just see how it goes. And I was trying to stretch that pair out as far as I could. So I got as far as, seems like it was right around -it was in the Redwall, walking on the top of the Redwall -and I think I was down around 36 Mile, right in that area, and I stepped on a piece of cactus. 
Steiger: Mescal? 
Grua: No, it was an old dead prickly pear, I think. 
Steiger: Went right through. 
Grua: Yeah, it was probably prickly pear. And it went right through. There was probably a hole about the size of a silver dollar in the bottom of both of 'em, right at the ball of my foot, and so I got it right in the ball of my right foot, just a hole bunch of old dead cactus spines. So I sat down and I picked most of 'em out. I remember I climbed down to the river there, just above 36 Mile, so it must have been just right above there, and camped out by the river and pulled out spines and thought, "Well, [I] want to keep goin'." I thought I got 'em all out, so I thought, "Well, I'll just keep goin', see how it goes." So I started hikin' on down from there on top of the Redwall, and it was gettin' really bad. And the next place you can come down after 36 Mile is there at Eminence Break. And by the time I got there, I was really hurtin', and it was starting to infect. It was a couple of days later, so it was starting to get infected, and there was obviously some I hadn't gotten out. So I just camped out there for a couple more days, and O'Connor and George Billingsly came by on the last Grand Canyon Expeditions trip, and they were sort of my backup, sort of my safety. So I decided it'd be the better part of smart to bag that trip and hitch a ride on out. So I just rode on out with them, and came by the next year and picked up all my food caches that I'd left -came by in the spring. It was my first year with the dories.
So then I just kinda kept plannin' it and figured I'd do it, but didn't really have a firm plan as to when. And in 1973 -actually, it was later that same year when George Billingsly got married, I met Ellen and she and I kinda got together. And ended up the fall of '76, we were down in Flagstaff, Ellen and I, and she was goin' to school, workin' on her -I think she was still workin' on her bachelor's, but she mighta been workin' a little bit on her master's degree by then, I could be wrong. 
Steiger: This is Ellen Tibbetts. 
Grua: She was workin' on a ceramics degree. So I wasn't doin' much, I was just hangin' out with her and bein' in Flag, and I started thinkin', well, maybe this is the time to do that hike. So I hadn't put any caches in or anything, but I started plannin' it and started getting together what I wanted, and started buying food and caching it. I think I started hiking things in, in January -put in six food caches in square five-gallon honey cans, big round lids -and kind of spaced them out in what I thought would be about two-week intervals, two weeks of food at a time.
And then ended up leaving on the trip about as late as I could possibly leave -in my usual style. That was February 29, 1976. It was a leap year. And Bart Henderson and I took off, and he was coming along to photograph it. He was thinking article or a book, and I was kinda thinkin' that, but never really thinkin' I'd really want to do that, write it up. He took some good pictures. I shouldn't really say (chuckles) how we did it, should I? 
Steiger: It's a good story, isn't it? (tape paused) So Bart started out with you, but he didn't go the whole way with you? 
Grua: No, he went to.... Where'd he hike out? Tanner. 
Steiger: So you went the whole way on the left side? 
Grua: Yes. And then actually I was gonna do the other side, put in most of my food caches, was gonna try to do it all in '76, the Bicentennial Year or whatever it was. Then I started having back problems that fall. Didn't realize what it was. Started gettin' some sciatic pain, and thought I just had a problem in my hip, because it's a pain that shoots down your leg, kinda, emanating out of your hip. But its root cause is lower back, lumbar problems. So I was in bed a lot of that winter. I'd manage to get up and we'd hike a cache in, Ellie and I. Then I'd end up in bed for another week when I got back, just because I didn't know how to use my back properly. But taking some posture lessons and just proper back ... 
Steiger: Mechanics? 
Grua: ... mechanics, lessons, I probably could have done that hike in '76 and done both sides. But as it turned out, I didn't, and I still haven't hiked the north side.
But anyhow, you know, went from Tanner, where Bart went out, to Hermit, and met Ellen there. And she came and hiked with me to Havasu, and then she went out. Then I was by myself, again, from Havasu to the Grand Wash Cliffs. 
Steiger: So you went all the way from Lee's Ferry to the Grand Wash Cliffs, which was like 277 river miles, but God only knows -more like, what? 350-400 miles of walking? 
Grua: Hm, probably closer to 600 or more, by the time you do all the little.... 
Steiger: What was your total elapsed time on that? 
Grua: Thirty-six days. 
Steiger: That's amazing. So you were doing like fifteen or twenty-mile days. 
Grua: Yeah, I'd say that was an average day, fifteen to twenty, easily. There were days I probably did closer to thirty. 
Steiger: So you just travelled real light, huh? 
Grua: Travelled pretty light. I had a North Face rucksack, which was one of the interior frame backpacks, pretty small pack. This time I used Penney's high-topped work boots, with the Vibram sole. One pair made it all the way. Kinda took a lesson from Harvey Butchart. He'd usually wear a crepe sole, Insulite-looking sole -work boots, high-topped work boots, which are still really the best thing there is for hiking in the Canyon, because they lace up high around your foot and give you lots of ankle support, and also don't get dirt and rocks and spines and crap in 'em as you're goin' along backcountry, off trail. 
Steiger: I hike in running shoes these days, but I guess that's not so good for carrying a load. 
Grua: Yeah, not so good for backpacking. But once again, the fancy Gortex, three-quarter top boots that don't come way up, don't hold a candle to the plain old high-topped, lace-'em-all-the-way-up work boots, for hiking in the Canyon. 
Steiger: Was it a pretty gnarly trip? What was the gnarliest part -stretch for gettin' through -of that hike? 
Grua: Well, there were some hairy stretches. Probably the most difficult hiking was on the Muav Ledges, upstream and downstream from Havasu, from just below Kanab Creek to National Canyon on the south side, Tuckup Canyon on the north side -although I didn't do that. That was a stretch that Fletcher didn't figure out. It says in his book, "I came down to the mouth of Havasu," and he looked up and he thought maybe he could walk along the ledges, but he was lookin' at ledges down by the river, and he probably wouldn't have found the route, which at Havasu is a ways above the river. Maybe 100 feet above the river, maybe 150 feet, there's a ledge that goes all the way, but it was a lot of work, and really steep, and really loose. And the best way to do it was to go right along the edge. That's where the bighorn would go. That's how I knew it'd go as a route, is early on in my Hatch days I spotted some bighorns up on that ledge, cruisin' along -actually, several times in that first four years that I worked down there. I'd seen bighorns on that ledge, and also talked to George Billingsly, so I thought there'd probably be, because there's some little layers of shale in there. 
Steiger: This is that one that hooks in with that one right by Ledges, huh? There's a little ledge halfway up the river. 
Grua: Ledges on the right? 
Steiger: Yeah. 
Grua: Yeah, high up there is where you'd be on the north side or the right side, going through the same ledge -not right down at the river. 
Steiger: But from the Ledges camp, you can see a ledge, that I've seen sheep walkin' across right there. 
Grua: Yeah, uh-huh. 
Steiger: And that connects with what you're talking about? 
Grua: Yeah, across the river, that was where I walked. Yeah, you've probably seen 'em in the same place: from Ledges you look up and it looks like a teeny little ledge. 
Steiger: I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen these sheep on it. 
Grua: Right. 
Steiger: And so you didn't walk up on the talus, you walked right on the edge. 
Grua: Yeah, you really had to be right on the edge if you wanted to move at all. Otherwise, you were just like grippin' and climbin' over big boulders, or gettin' scratched to death by catclaws that were up against the cliff, or anywhere along the slope. So you just kinda had to go where the trail was, or where the track was, and that was right there. You'd come to a lot of places where you'd have what's called a "dihedral" or a "book" in climbing terminology, where there's sort of like an "L" shaped section of the cliff, and you can't go around to the back of it, you've gotta jump across it. The trail would jump like four feet, five feet, six feet. And that's what the bighorns would do. So they'd be right on the edge, and they'd just leap across this little gap, that if you missed it, you'd tumble about a hundred feet and just get torn to pieces by the carnivorous Muav limestone before you hit the bottom, and you'd be pretty dead at the bottom. We've seen -I mean, there was that bighorn maybe four or five years ago that was like draped out on a rock, that had probably just missed that jump up above. So it's one of those things you either -on that ledge you could move really fast, if you did the bighorn trail, and just did those jumps. And even not doing the jumps, just walking along, you're right on the edge, and it's kind of "ball-bearingy" and loose, but there's a little faint trail there that the bighorns use. But it was exciting. It was a pretty scary, pretty hairball ledge to do. You'd get sort of ... wigged out, and then climb up and go along in the rocks for a while, until it felt like it was safer, or "I'll never get there if I'm goin' this speed." And then you'd come back down to the ledge and just start movin', make the jumps. There were a couple of jumps [where I just went], "Unt-uh! No way." 
Steiger: But Ellie was with you through that? 
Grua: Down to Havasu, uh-huh. 
Steiger: So at least there was somebody to pick up the pieces maybe. Big deal. 
Grua: Yeah, you wouldn't have picked up the pieces, you'd just go, "Oh, boy." 
Steiger: "There he went." 
Grua: Yeah, that was pretty scary. Then all those caches turned out just right in terms of food quantities, but they were more like a week's worth of food, what I thought would be two weeks. I was really hungry. I'd be eatin' a lot. My food was pretty much like a homemade granola. At night I'd have a soup mix that I'd throw nuts in, like almonds and cashews and a bunch of.... 
Steiger: You were a vegetarian even then? 
Grua: Oh, sure, yeah. I've been a vegetarian since 1969, late in my first season, became a vegetarian. 
Steiger: What possessed you to do that, when you were runnin' around with all those cowboys in boots, and drinkin' and all that? 
Grua: (chuckles) It is pretty strange, isn't it? Well, like most of us, it had a little bit to do with a woman. 
Steiger: Ah-ha. 
Grua: Ahhh-hhhaa. (Steiger laughs) I guess my first serious river girlfriend, maybe my first serious girlfriend in my life, was a lady named Noel Cox at that time. Noel, like Christmas. I met her at Phantom Ranch and we sort of hit it off pretty well. She was a Prescott College student. And I definitely had leanings toward not eating meat. I mean, I had hippie leanings. (chuckles) There's no doubt, in many respects. So we hit it off pretty well, and she was a vegetarian. So I became one. I think since then she went and married a rancher and I seriously doubt that she's a vegetarian anymore. 
Steiger: I don't think you can be if you're with a rancher. 
Grua: Pretty hard to work on a ranch and be a vegetarian. I haven't even seen her, talked to her, in over twenty-five years. 
Steiger: You couldn't do it socially. Everybody that you meet eats meat, and I didn't even try. Okay, so thirty-six straight days, and you're out there walkin', 500 or 600 miles. 
Grua: Actually, in that time, I took a couple of days off, didn't really go anywhere for a couple of days, rest days. The rest of the time, yeah, it was like, "There's nothing else to do." And the days were gettin' longer, but still not really long in March, which is mostly what I was hikin' in. And by the time it was dark, you'd camp. 
Steiger: Go to sleep. 
Grua: Cook a quick meal, go to sleep, wake up way before light. I'd usually wake up about five or even a little bit before that. Sit there and kind of enjoy the morning and stoke up a little bit of instant coffee and have my granola with milk and water. And I'd be rarin' to go, so I'd be all packed up by first light and walkin'. And my pack never weighed -I think the heaviest it ever was, was about thirty pounds, and that was climbin' up around Prospect or Lower Lava. 
Steiger: That's really good. 
Grua: That's the highest I ever got, too. 
Steiger: So you weren't carrying that much water? 
Grua: No. The most water I ever carried was about a gallon, and I didn't drink it all. 
Steiger: Were you just watering at springs mostly? filling up? 
Grua: Springs, potholes in the river. 
Steiger: So you weren't worried then about treating anything? 
Grua: No, nobody did. There weren't all those diseases. 
Steiger: Yeah. 
Grua: Nobody had ever even heard of giardy [giardiasis]. I don't think that was in the equation. If it was, it hadn't got down there. Drank out of some pretty nasty-lookin' water pockets, just pot holes -pretty soupy. 
Steiger: Right. Not all that long ago, either.
Well, so somewhere in there you must have decided to do a book out of it. What did you end up with out of that? What did that do for you and the Canyon, doing that walk? -if you can even say. Did that change the way you felt about the place or anything like that? 
Grua: Well, I learned a lot. All the way, the things that struck me -all along the way, you could see evidence of Anasazi or Hasatsinin [phonetic spelling]. And there were places where you'd walk where there wasn't a trail, a historic trail that we know of that had ever been used by a white man. And there was like a deep trail there, that somebody'd made -probably wasn't bighorn. And mescal pits. So it was definitely done by the Anasazi. I don't know if anybody ever just kinda walked the whole distance, or hiked the whole distance, per se.... 
Steiger: But they moved through there. 
Grua: They moved through there, did everything that I did, in terms of hiking. And that was kind of a neat feeling, to be in their footsteps.
And I really don't know why I had it as a goal, other than because of the way I'd felt about Colin Fletcher doing it ... and I guess doing it poorly, I think -that he didn't.... That I didn't want him to be able to claim to be the first man to have walked through the Grand Canyon. I didn't care who did, per se, but I thought that he was a poor choice of human to have that distinction. Really, that distinction belongs to Dr. Butchart. He's the person who knows the most about the Canyon, and he's the Canyon hiker. I completely give him credit for that, and there's a lot of people who hike and know the Canyon hiking-wise a lot better than I do. But it was just something I guess I ended up doing more for the challenge it presented, and because I could do it and say, "No, Colin, you didn't walk through the Grand Canyon." 
Steiger: The whole Grand Canyon. 
Grua: "You just did a little hike, you did it backwards, and you were also kind of an arrogant so-and-so." _________. And I didn't throw my wine bottle into the river, or piss into the river in the middle of the night. (chuckles) Didn't do any of that stuff, I just hiked. 
Steiger: The lower end, was that pretty rugged too? Geez, Louise ... 
[END TAPE 1, SIDE B; BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE A] 
Steiger:... like from Granite Park on down. Were you down close to the water then? No, you were right up on top, on top of the Tapeats, goin' through there? 
Grua: Well, from Granite Park, for a ways, no, you're by the river. Some of the most rugged, in terms of just.... 
Steiger: Down to about Diamond Creek or something? 
Grua: Uh-huh. Just above Diamond Creek you've gotta go up. Essentially, yeah, just above Diamond, about [Mile] 224 you've gotta be up. Other than that, you're along the river for quite a ways in there. You gotta go up a few times when you're in the Muav, the 190 Mile reaches, in through there, you gotta climb up a few times, a couple of tricky spots there. But far and away, the hardest going -not the most dangerous or anything -but the hardest, most difficult going, was where you had to go through jungle, where the river goes really slow, a lot in the 190 Mile reaches. Also, up around Nakoweap area, just above Nankoweap. And that area is just like a complete jungle. Even then, it was "jungley" enough, that the only way to really go was to go up above the catclaw and mesquite and talus most of the way. So it was hard goin', and every once in a while you'd get suckered down. You could see what you thought was a way to get through, and sometimes you'd end up just bushwhackin', because you'd get to a point where to go back and then go up and over and around was like way more work than just crashing through it. So you'd just crash through. By the end of the trip I'd pretty much shredded at least the sides of my pack, and my clothes, to get through it. The only thing I had for new clothes was socks -in every food cache I had a couple of new pairs of socks. I'd leave my old ones and hiked 'em out later. But it was pretty much a minimalist trip. 
Steiger: I wonder what else? I guess that's about [all for] that story, huh? 
Grua: But, yeah, it gave me an appreciation of hiking the Canyon. 
Steiger: How about geology? Did you learn about geology from doing that? Or did it expand your sense of the Canyon itself? 
Grua: I don't know if I learned anything that I didn't know before I did that. I mean, definitely you gotta know the geology of the Canyon to do it, because you gotta hike in certain types of geologic strata -limestone and sandstone, when it's at the river, doesn't usually let you hike there, because it'll cliff out. So you kinda were looking for the closest shale layer to the river, and trying to stay in that region when you're hiking along. So geologically, yeah, you have to go along with it. (chuckles) Definitely George Billingsly was a lot of help there -as well as just studying it. I mean, every trip I went down when I was thinking about doin' it, both times -the first time that I didn't make it, and the second time -every trip I'd try to follow the route all the way, and mentally and even on paper take notes of where I need to check out, where I had question marks. And some of the places I had question marks about, George was pretty helpful in terms of answering, 'cause he, by then, knew the Paleozoic geology stratigraphy there really well, especially in the western Canyon. It's a lot less well known part of the river. And he'd helicoptered and hiked all over that part of the Canyon by then, so he was like an encyclopedia of knowledge in terms of that, to where he could, knowing the geology in a place, even if you hadn't been to that specific place, he could say, "Well, yeah, it's a pretty good guess, you know, that that Muav Ledge would go, that you could hike that all the way along," kind of thing. 
Steiger: Your other great feat was, of course, the speed run, the world speed record through the Grand Canyon, which was also.... Okay, so your hike was thirty-six days, and the speed run was thirty-seven hours, right? 
Grua: Second one. That was another one that took two -two speed runs. 
Steiger: Two tries. 
Grua: The first try we didn't set a record. 
Steiger: We kind of covered that. There's a written story that I wrote up in Krista Sedler's [phonetic spelling] book, There's This River. So maybe we don't need to get into that in super-exhaustive detail. But for this interview, we should probably say that in, what was it, '81? or in '80.... 
Grua: The first one was in 1980. 
Steiger: In 1980, Kenton and Rudi Petschek and Wally Rist had been wormin' this idea around for about (chuckles) ten years. And when they got the opportunity when they spilled the high flow out of the dam, those guys jumped in a dory and went out to set the world's speed record through the Grand Canyon. 
Grua: It was really Wally's idea. One has to give him credit for it, because it was his passion. 
Steiger: He was the guy that was obsessed with it. 
Grua: When I started workin' for the dories, he was an old timer, he'd been workin' for Martin for at least two, maybe three years. I think he was a schoolteacher in Phoenix in the off season. He'd researched -I mean, everybody, because it was in the River Guide, knew about the Rigg brothers doin' it, and he just thought that would be the coolest thing that you could do, to take a dory and row through faster than the Riggs did back in 1951, I think it was, right? Fifty [1950] or '51? 
Steiger: I almost thought it was later, more like '54 or something. I don't know -we've got it, there's a record of it. 
Grua: Yeah, we can look it up. 
Steiger: Yeah, the Rigg brothers went in two-and-a-half days. Kenton, Wally, and Rudi went in two days. And then in 1983 when all hell broke loose at Glen Canyon Dam with the flood, Kenton and Rudi and a guy named Steve Reynolds -who they called "Ren" -those guys went, and set a new record of thirty-seven hours, all the way through, from Lee's Ferry to the Grand Wash Cliffs. Very dramatic story, and that is all documented elsewhere. We'll have to put it in the Kenton file. But it's definitely noteworthy, a spectacular thing to do. I wonder what we need to say about it, other than that? 
Grua: Crystal was big. 
Steiger: Crystal was so big! Had a little mishap there. (laughs) But it turned out okay. 
Grua: Yeah, that was a wild flip. 
Steiger: No problem, no cause for alarm. 
Grua: End for end. Yeah, there was no makin' it through that hole. 
Steiger: No. This tape's gonna run out here pretty quick, but I wanted to hear.... How are you doin'? Are you wearin' out? Doin' okay? 
Grua: I'm doin' okay. 
Steiger: I want to hear some other fun adventure stories. I'd love to hear that. This thing is gonna run out. I'm right at the end of this. Maybe I should start a new one. Yeah, we're gonna start a new [video] tape here. 
[END OF DECEMBER 2, 1997 SESSION; BEGIN DECEMBER 7, 1997 SESSION] 
Okay, this is Tape 2, original DAT Tape 2, and Session 2 of the River Runners' Oral History Project. This is an interview with Kenton Grua. Our first session was about a week ago. It's now December 7, 1997, and we're in Flagstaff at Kenton's house. This is Tape 2 -two tapes so far of this session. 
Steiger: I can't quite remember where it was we left off. What were we talking about right when we left off, do you remember? Was it your hike that we had been? 
Grua: It seemed like we were right in a lull, like we were done with whatever it was. 
Steiger: Yeah, there was the hike, and it seems like that's what it was. And then it was like "River Adventures," which we decided to postpone.
So what we're gonna address tonight is politics, the history of GCRG. Do we need to say anything more about Martin? And I say that just as a precursor to you gettin' involved with GCRG, because it's interesting that here was this.... Okay, you go to work for the dories, you work for them for twenty years, and you spend all that time with M.L. learnin' about his history and stuff, and then all of a sudden he sells the company, and what happens? You start Grand Canyon River Guides and go after Glen Canyon Dam. That strikes me as being not entirely coincidental. So, just as a way of leadin' into that, I guess the question is, How did Martin fit into that picture, and how did he influence you? And I think we might have this elsewhere, so you can cut it short if I'm barkin' up the wrong tree here, but you had said that originally you got the job with the dories because you wanted a job rowin' in the Grand Canyon, and then later on you found out about all these things that Martin had done for the Canyon and the rest of the world. So I ask you, where did all that stuff fit in? 
Grua: It definitely had a lot to do with it, as you know, because you and I were kind of co-conspirators to a large extent on Grand Canyon River Guides' beginnings -as well as a lot of other people. 
Steiger: Well, I didn't have anything to do with the beginning of it. My recollection was I worked for the company that year, and did the last trip with you, which was really when I first met you. I mean, I knew of you forever. You were like a legend in my mind, I was just thrilled to get to know you. But then I went off. I was like in New York that winter. And then I remember getting a bulletin saying here was Grand Canyon River Guides, that you had started it -big meeting at the Hatch warehouse. I mean, I got the newsletter informing everybody of it. 
Grua: (chuckles) First "newsletter." 
Steiger: Yeah, which was this little mimeographed sheet. I got it, I think they forwarded my mail, and it was like, "Whoa, here's Grand Canyon River Guides. Well, that sounds pretty good." 
Grua: Meeting at Hatchland. 
Steiger: Yeah. I instantly was for it. I thought, "This is the coolest thing." But I didn't have anything to do with.... I mean, my sense of it was this was something that hatched in the mind of Kenton. It was another one of those things that people had said, "Well, we need to do this," forever, but I don't think anybody but you was really serious about doin' it. 
Grua: Well, I think a lot of people were really ready to do it. Yeah, I think it was a big combination of watchin' Martin headed out the door, Grand Canyon-wise. Or at least it looked like he was gonna be headed out the door, sellin' the company and claimin' he was gonna retire -though he still hasn't really, probably never will -which is good, which is really good. But you could just see a void opening up there that had to be filled. And also, just the whole boating community is such a cool thing, that it was really time to finally put something together, sort of a boatmen's club. WRGA, which was originally probably really a boatmen's club, it had turned into an outfitters' organization or club, and then it'd just kind of -it was kind of dissolving too at the same time that Martin was selling the company. So there really wasn't anything goin' on, and a whole lot of stuff seemed like it was goin' on, though it seems like it always is. (chuckles) We just kind of keep reinventing the wheel and never quite solving it. We just put another bandaid on things, and go on, stumbling down the road.
Actually, originally, the first glimmerings of it, is we put together a little meeting. I guess it was Brad [Dimock] and I and a few other people, mostly, that thought it was a great idea. And so the most likely meeting place, or the most guides that could get together was Brad's house. So we just kind of called it more of a party than a meeting there. But it was the "original" meeting of GCRG. That was a full house. 
Steiger: That was that winter? 
Grua: Yeah, the winter before that first spring meeting. Everybody went, "Yeah, great idea, let's do it, let's do it. You're in charge!" (chuckles) To me, in terms of at least.... 
Steiger: It was your idea, right? I mean, you were the one that said, "Let's start an association."? 
Grua: Yeah. And actually, it was a lot Mike Taggett and me, up in Hurricane, because at that time I was up in Hurricane. The Dories had been there for years and years, and it was lookin' like we were gettin' uprooted from there. So there was a lot of change goin' on. And Taggett and I talked endlessly about it, and he was really generous with his facilities and his new toys -Apple computers and stuff like that, and the new old Macs -you know, the very first Macs that came out. 
Steiger: The little bitty ones. 
Grua: Little teeny screen, and little itty bitty computer. 
Steiger: That was so cool. 
Grua: That was a cool machine. That really started a revolution. So we put it together on that -you know, the first mailings. [We] called around, got ahold of the Park Service, got as many names and addresses as we could from them; called all the outfitters and tried to, as much as we could, get their crew mailing lists, and some of them were cooperative, and some of them weren't at all cooperative. (chuckles) 'Cause they were goin', like, "You want what?! You're doin' what?!" And so we were tryin' to keep it really above board, and more of an environmental, Canyon-oriented, and group-oriented thing, in terms of guides as a group.
My biggest thing that I wanted to do was -well, first of all, have a cohesive group or club that we could belong to that would give us more of a voice in what was going on, both with the outfitters and with the Park Service in the Canyon, because, really, I mean, who cares more about it than we do? And a good excuse to get together once a year or twice a year. 
Steiger: And have a party! (laughs) 
Grua: Party. Talk about shit and party. I think that's still the best reason we have for existing, and I hope it continues to exist for that reason. Really, it's kind of amazed me how much it's taken off and become its own thing. It's a lot like havin' a kid and then watchin' it grow up and turn into whatever it turns into. 
Steiger: It was pretty amazing, huh? 
Grua: Yeah, I sure hope it keeps goin'. I think it's the best hope the Canyon has right now, really -GCRG. And that's comin' from not really bein' very involved in it myself, anymore, other than I sure like to go to the meetings. And I like to go to the board meetings and stuff. I mean, I guess I'd say I was involved, but I'm not right now what I would call contributing a whole lot ... of opinions. 
Steiger: Me too. That's everybody. 
Grua: Well, you're doin' a lot of work, still. I'm kinda punched out of the work. I did put in some time the first three years. 
Steiger: A lot of time. 
Grua: And not just me -Denice [Napoletano] was key. She was the first secretary. She was the one who really did the footwork, and made it happen. And she worked her tail off for three years on it. 
Steiger: Also, to clarify -just 'cause I don't think it's right on this tape -this big shake-up, this big transition that we're talkin' about is Kenton worked for Grand Canyon Dories, Martin Litton, which was his little river company that was based in Hurricane, Utah, for its entire life. And Martin got in financial trouble and had to sell the company, sold it to George Wendt, who owns OARS; and John Vail, who owns Outdoors Unlimited. These two other outfitters partnered up, bought this company, so there was this big shake-up. What year was that? Was that '88? 
Grua: Uh-huh. 
Steiger: Yeah, '88. So there had been this little dory scene, there was this beautiful warehouse, and this beautiful, incredibly idyllic little life that went on for everybody that worked for the company. You lived right there in Hurricane, then? 
Grua: Yeah, out behind the warehouse. 
Steiger: So Martin got in trouble, sold the company, and all of a sudden Dories are goin' to Flagstaff, and they're gonna be run under OARS. All this is happenin', "and oh, by the way," in addition to you gettin' ready to make that change, you and your wife at that time -I mean, you and Denice had been married for a couple of years. So you're havin' to deal with that transition, and then you say, "Well, by the way, we ought to start an association." But you were in Flag, and Brad was in on the initial.... You guys called a meeting. 
Grua: Yeah, we kind of knew. It was really, I guess, the original, initial thing was me and Taggett and Denice, sittin' around 'til all hours, and other dory.... 
Steiger: Taggett. 
Grua: Jane. There were other dory people there involved, goin', "Yeah, this is a good thing, we gotta get this goin'." It was time. 
Steiger: Mike Taggett was a dory boatman. 
Grua: The inventor of Chums. 
Steiger: Yeah, the inventory of Chums. 
Grua: Eyeglass retention devices. 
Steiger: He's now a successful entrepreneur -very successful. Okay, so who else in the Dories, besides you and Taggett and Denice and Brad? Do you remember? And Jane Whalen. 
Grua: Jane. Ellie [Ellen Tibbetts] was around. I imagine Coby was in on a few discussions. You know, it was like whoever we could grab around there. Some of the Sleight boys -Walt, I imagine, was in on a few discussions. Mike Grimes. 
Steiger: I take it, for you, it was like the speed run, like the high points you got goin' on it -you were goin' on it. 
Grua: Yeah, it became something that really had to be done, and that the time was right for. So then, yeah, we called this meeting at Brad's house to get the Flagstaff half of the Canyon [guides] in terms of what they thought about it, and it was a really successful meeting. There was a lot of people there, we had the whole house packed. 
Steiger: And everybody said, "We'll be in, you do it." 
Grua: [They] said, "Yeah, let's do it. Let's get together." So we kind of scheduled a time for a spring meeting, and talked it over with Hatch, and went back to Hurricane and did that first newsletter and mailed it out, everybody we could mail it to. Dropped a few bucks on the postage. 
Steiger: Who paid for that? Who paid for the postage and all those things? 
Grua: Ah, we did originally. I think we fronted a bunch of money to it. 
Steiger: Who's "we"? 
Grua: Denice and I. Taggett might have put in a little bit. But then I think everybody got paid back -not for time or anything, but for direct expenses -out of the first dues. It's always pretty much paid for itself. I made it a loan, I think, a $500 loan, or something like that, early on, but it paid me back -no interest or anything -but short-term loan, too, was paid back within a matter of four or five months. 
Steiger: Okay, so you [rolled?] the idea around with Taggett, there was a meeting in Flagstaff, and there was a bigger meeting at Hatch, and the newsletter gets sent out. I remember gettin' that newsletter and instantly goin', "Yeah!" sendin' my money right in. "Okay, sign me up for that." I mean, it was that kind of thing where it didn't seem to take.... Do you remember what the membership curve looked like? Didn't seem to take much prodding before there was a couple hundred people on board. 
Grua: Yeah, we had a lot of people get on board right away, and then there were a lot of people who were real suspicious of it, really like.... 
Steiger: "Is this gonna be a union?" 
Grua: Well, it was like the Flagstaff Rowing Mafia. I think there's still a little element of that, you know, though we try our best not to make it that way. I don't feel like I'm Rowing Mafia at all -I love motors, and the best people down there are the motor guides. We're all totally interdependent. I think it works really well the way it is. 
Steiger: You love motors? Now, why is that? 
Grua: Well, they have a place. They take lots of people through, which is good or bad for the Canyon. I mean it's bad because of this continuing demand, which is just gonna keep growin', to see the place. And that's what we're kinda facin' now, politically, more and more, with the big private waiting list. It's a limited resource, and too many people want to do it. And the more people we show it to, the more people are gonna either want to come back and see it, or tell a friend and they come see it. It's just like this ever-expanding ripple. You know, you throw a rock in the pool and it just keeps goin' and gettin' bigger and bigger and bigger. That's what we're facin' now, and have been for a long time. 
Steiger: It's ironic. Yeah, who trained all those private guys? 
Grua: But then on the positive side of that, is right now we're talking seriously about taking out Glen Canyon Dam. Taking it out. We used to sit around and talk about blowing it up! Seriously or not. But we're not doin' that anymore, 'cause that would be nuts anyway -we always knew it was. But there is a chance in our lifetimes that we could get rid of that thing. I think that has a lot to do with what we've done, so there's the positive and the negative, the yin and the yang of what we do, and that's why I've kept guidin', and I think most people who are serious about guiding and showing people the Canyon have to feel that way. You have to believe that what you're doin' is -even though you're lovin' it to death -it's better than killin' it with a dam and a reservoir. A million people boating through the Grand Canyon in a year would be better than having a reservoir. If all those people stopped goin' through for a few years, it'd recover. If you build a dam and drowned it, you're talkin' where there's a magnitude, more time before it comes back and recovers. It will. Glen Canyon, we always know it's gonna go, there's no way. No matter what we do, it's gonna go. 
Steiger: The dam? 
Grua: Yeah. But I'd like to see what was there. That really excites me, because you've heard it, and seen pictures of it. But man, to have it back, wow. 
Steiger: So you envision yourself walkin' up those canyons and stuff? 
Grua: Oh, yeah. I think it'll happen. I think politically it might not happen, but I just watch nature, I watched '83, and that almost got it, and I can see a lot bigger water than that comin' down the river. So every winter I pray for it. [Andale el Niño! (Tr.)] 
Steiger: That's the flood of 1983. I tend to agree with you. I mean, I think the most likely scenario that I see is the same thing, if they keep fuckin' around and they keep it full -then they get caught with their pants down. 
Grua: Yeah, it'd go. I mean.... 
Steiger: But in terms of where we're at.... We gotta get back. So just a little capsule history of GCRG. Well, I don't know, do you want to talk about the dam? I don't want to divert you. 
Grua: Well, maybe we should come back to just the whole reason for guiding and the good aspect of all the people that love the Canyon is that [first and foremost] the Canyon is protected. And when we started down there, that wasn't the case. 
Steiger: When you started? 
Grua: Yeah, it was just barely beyond the dam phase. I mean, the whole political climate in the country has changed that much in this last thirty years. Back then there was still a lot of people -a whole lot of people -that were in favor of damming the Grand Canyon, building reservoirs there. We were really more lucky than we realized, not to have 'em. And that was kind of Martin's legacy that he left us. He was the original guy to sort of in a way sacrifice the place by popularizing it, taking people down. That was always his philosophy. I don't think he was ever in it for the money at all. He was in it to tell people about it, and he knew at the same time he did that, showed it to people, got people addicted, that it would change the experience, and make it -just crowd the place up. You know, you love it to death that way. But that's far and away preferable to having it under a reservoir. And then I don't think we dreamed in those days that we could even be entertaining something like the Glen Canyon Institute, and dismantling the dam. So who knows where it's gonna go from here? 
Steiger: My sense of the situation is that Grand Canyon River Guides had a lot to do with the Grand Canyon Protection Act, and the Glen Canyon Dam Environmental Studies, Phase II. I'm not sure of that, but my sense of it was just by rallying, it wasn't the guides that they listened to, but by us rallying our powerful passengers that we take down, and those guys writing letters to their congressmen, that that really helped grease the wheels. I might be wrong on that, but what do you think? 
Grua: Well, that's just what I'm saying. That's where our strength is, because we're teachers down there, and we can mobilize people with a lot of different strengths in different parts of the country, that come down to, a lot of them, just to do it because their friends did, or whatever, and it changes 'em, and they come back out goin', you know, "We've got to do everything we can for this place -and for other places." Yeah, I think we did. Yeah, as I recall, on the Grand Canyon Protection Act, Congress got more mail on that, actual mail, than on any other congressional issue. 
Steiger: Yeah, for that year -or maybe it was ever. 
Grua: Maybe ever, I'm not sure, but it was a big issue. 
Steiger: Well, I know that we generated a hell of a lot of mail. 
Grua: Yeah, and it's the collective "we." It's the "we" that took people down, and towards the end of the trip, after everybody was pretty thoroughly addicted, we'd drop the.... 
Steiger: And my sense of it was that was everybody -everybody working did that for years and years. 
Grua: Yeah, a lot of guides were doing that. And I think that does go back to GCRG. It was the organization that did that, and that's what got us kinda where we are now, too, in a way. So a symbiotic relationship. (break) 
Steiger: Okay, we're rollin'. We're back from our dinner break. It's now ten o'clock at night, we're razor sharp. 
Grua: Wound up. 
Steiger: Hours of interview time today, counting the Wegner one. We're goin', so what we need is a little capsule version of the history of GCRG. So there was that first meeting, membership poured in, there was a little mimeographed newsletter. About how many pieces of paper was it? 
Grua: I think we even got a few dues right there at that first meeting at Brad's house. We kind of decided what the dues would be, twenty bucks a year. I think it's still that. No, we went up to twenty-five, right? 
Steiger: Yeah. 
Grua: Still a bargain. Then we went back, and then it was pretty much me and Denice -largely Denice -putting the addresses together and the mailing lists, and putting together this first newsletter and mailing it out. Then we got together at Hatchland. It wasn't a huge turnout, probably about fifty, sixty people, but a lot of support. 
Steiger: That's where you elected officers? 
Grua: Yeah. 
Steiger: Drew up the bylaws? 
Grua: Yeah, we came up with the bylaws beforehand, and they were sort of not.... We borrowed a lot of stuff from Western River Guides Association Bylaws -kind of adapted them to what we were tryin' to set up. So we had those all sort of typed up to hand out, and let everybody vote on. And then, yeah, everybody, right on the floor there, we nominated officers -president, vice-president, secretary, and board of directors -which is still about the same thing. I think it was six or eight? Six board members. Yeah, I got nominated (chuckles) for president. 
Steiger: Whoops. 
Grua: Elected right there on the spot, so it was all over. Denice was the first secretary, and Bill Ellwanger, of Hatch fame, was the first vice-president. The first board, [who] was that? 
Steiger: I can't remember. 
Grua: I know Whitney. Boy, we need to go back in the records. 
Steiger: Yeah. 
Grua: Were you on it? 
Steiger: Not the first time. Not until the second one. 
Grua: They were two-year terms, but that one turned out to be a three-year for some reason. (chuckles) 
Steiger: As president. We didn't get around to having an election. Nobody wanted to do it until Moody came along. 
Grua: Yeah, that's what it was, it was hard to find someone else to do it. 
Steiger: No fuckin' way. 
Grua: Everybody was pretty involved, but finally Moody stepped up to the plate. 
Steiger: But I remember it was a long, arduous.... The focus pretty quick became "What are we doing with Glen Canyon Dam?" What was it -Babbitt? Didn't Bruce Babbitt come and talk to the first Guides Training Seminar that we ever put on? 
Grua: Right, yeah, in Flagstaff. He was the keynote speaker. 
Steiger: And how did the Guides Training Seminars go? My recollection of that was, I remember bein' there. The Park was gonna do away with 'em, "Forget about guide training, we don't need that, that's not important." 
Grua: Well, they'd been doin' it. 
Steiger: Butch Wilson and Ken Miller, they wanted to nix that. 
Grua: Right. They'd been doin' 'em, and what happened was Mark Law got in there, and that sort of drove Crumbo out of the River Unit, and Kim Crumbo ... 
Steiger: Had developed the whole program. 
Grua: ... pretty much was the Park Service's guides training program. So they really didn't have anybody to take it over. None of those guys wanted to be bothered with it. I think that was the first good _____ out of Grand Canyon River Guides. You know, we could use these guys to pass that baton to. 
Steiger: Well, I remember going to a meeting with you. I don't know how I got involved in it, but I was there -you and me and Edwards and Denice. I don't know if Edwards was there or not, but I remember sittin' in a room with Ken Miller, Butch Wilson, maybe Mark, and asking them, "Don't do away with the guides training seminar. That's a really good thing. We want you to keep that up." And they said, "Well, if you guys want it, you do it yourselves." Wasn't that what.... 
Grua: Yeah, they said they'd work with us, but they wanted us to take it over. 
Steiger: To do it. 
Grua: They'd help facilitate it -and they always have, they still do send people on it, and they provide equipment, and actually really help out there, but the real leg work of puttin' it together.... 
Steiger: That became, early on, one of GCRG's tasks. 
Grua: Uh-huh. 
Steiger: And the first one, you invited Bruce Babbitt. Was it you? 
Grua: Yeah, he came to the rim. He just did the keynote address on the rim part of it. 
Steiger: And didn't he come and give some kind of inspirational -on the dam, didn't he -I remember he gave some kind of speech that fired everybody up. 
Grua: Yeah, well, in his keynote address, that's a lot of what it was about -about just our part in the whole picture, how important we were, and mostly from the aspect of the contact we have with our clients and the public at large, in that respect. 
Steiger: Well, our clients are the public. 
Grua: Oh, absolutely, and some pretty influential public at that, a lot of 'em. Yeah, I think we did a lot to at least grease the wheels for gettin' the Grand Canyon Protection Act passed. There was a lot of people that had a lot to do with that, but I think collectively, not so much Grand Canyon River Guides, but the guides themselves, with the backing and prodding from Grand Canyon River Guides. 
Steiger: Yeah, I sort of remember all the workin' boatmen really did punch in on that one. It was easy to get our people to do it. The enemy was far away, and not one of us, and it was easy to get everybody fired up about taking better care of the Canyon. 
Grua: Yeah. 
Steiger: I have this fond memory that I tell everybody -one of my Kenton stories that I always tell -and you ought to correct me if this is wrong. I remember goin' in, suddenly we started goin' to these meetings. There was the Glen Canyon Environmental Studies II, and then suddenly there was the environmental impact statement, full blown, that was gonna be done. And then there were all these meetings of all these government agencies who were gonna figure out, "Well, what are we gonna study?" and blah, blah, blah, and I remember my recollection of this.... I'm bein' a bad interviewer here, I'm supposed to ask short questions. But I remember we'd go in there and all they were worried about were the low flows. (Grua chuckles) Do you remember? 
Grua: Uh-huh. 
Steiger: I remember we go in there and we're tellin' 'em, "No, no, if you're worrying about the beaches, you gotta look at the high water," which nobody wanted to hear. And you, in those days you had a big beard down to about chest high. I don't remember if you had a pony tail or what, but you looked kind of like Hayduke, and you were president of Grand Canyon River Guides. I remember you were in there talkin', and you said all this stuff and nobody would listen. And you could just tell their eyes were glazed over. I remember you went home and shaved, got a haircut, and went in there the next time and said exactly the same thing that you had said the first time, and all of a sudden everybody was like nodding and paying attention. Do you remember that? 
Grua: Oh, yeah. 
Steiger: What brought that about? 
Grua: You mean the idea, or just them payin' attention? (laughs) 
Steiger: No, the idea was obvious. How did you figure out to clean up your act and all that stuff? 
Grua: Oh, that's an old story. (laughs) It doesn't take much to figure out. I mean, it's still that way, it always will be. 
Steiger: That's pretty hilarious. Yeah, so you went to meeting after meeting, stayed up late, put out a lot of kind of mimeographed newsletters, those first ones were. They weren't too bad. 
Grua: They weren't mimeo, they were like "Kinkoed" [inexpensively photocopied]. 
Steiger: They weren't bad, but they were different than the ones now. 
Grua: Oh, yeah, it's nothing like that -they're printed. We kind of went to that as Brad started to get more and more involved in it. 
Steiger: Yeah, he shined it up. 
Grua: Really. I mean, Brad and Moody took it and made it what it is, there's no doubt. And Jeri [Ledbetter] with her ... 
Steiger: With the books and all that. 
Grua: ... membership drive. 
Steiger: Yeah, I know, that's definitely a collective thing. What else to we have to say about it? What do you think? What do we need to say about the history of GCRG? What else stands out for you? 
Grua: Just some great parties. I mean, it has made the river community a lot closer. I mean, everybody grumbles about it, that we're not doing anything for the guides. But I think if you look -you don't even have to look closely -to see that a lot's happened for the guides. At this point, not for everybody, but the company that I work for, and several other companies, are starting off with 401-Ks. And they could do a lot better -everybody could -and you're always gonna just keep grumbling about it, but I think the collective energy of just having a guides' organization, that really does make a difference -at least in terms of Park Service management policies, and Bureau of Reclamation dam management policies -that gives a collective credibility that makes the outfitters start to go, "Yeah, these guys really are serious and committed, and maybe they're in there for the long term, and maybe we should start treatin' 'em a little bit better." So it's like a friendly "union" that hopefully.... I mean, I think it's done a lot for a lot of us, and hopefully in not the too distant future, it's gonna do a lot for all of us. I mean, our theory is to guilt the outfitters, essentially, into taking better care of the people that are working for them, and for the Canyon. That's a big part of it too. I think our main focus should continue to be the high road, and that's protecting the Grand Canyon, and rivers in general, and sort of a philosophy in general that we want to espouse and pass out to the people that we deal with. So I think it's done that, will continue to do that, hopefully. I hope we can be proud of it in another fifty years, when we're sittin' around in rockin' chairs. 
Steiger: We did have some good parties, didn't we? (laughter) I can think of a couple in particular. (laughs) 
Grua: Oh, man! Hopefully we'll have a bunch more. 
Steiger: Oh, my God. That's pretty well said. That's pretty good. What else do we need to say about GCRG? What are the pitfalls? As somebody that started out with a goal in mind, and who has taken a step back -because you have to after a while. I mean, once you've been in there, and when somebody else is doin' it, you can't fall all over yourself tryin' to help 'em out. Sometimes the best thing to do is just get out of the way. Do you see any dangers ahead for the organization? 
Grua: Well, you're always walkin' sort of a tightrope between doin' something, saying something -well, like the whole idea of "Why aren't we a union?" kind of things. It's like you can't make everybody happy all the time. And it is a delicate balance. I mean, a lot of stuff that GCRG is doing now, I don't necessarily agree with, or know if I really approve of. 
Steiger: Like what? 
Grua: Oh, like the wilderness thing. That to me is like you can say what you will, but it's probably gonna be.... Or at least the motive behind it is to get rid of motors in the Grand Canyon, and I'm not for that. 
Steiger: You really think it is? I mean, I gave up thinking that. I did at first. I actually think that Crumbo would settle for having a potential wilderness. Think that's naive, huh? 
Grua: Yeah. I mean, I know Crumbo pretty well. (laughter) I love the guy. 
Steiger: I do too. 
Grua: And he's a brother, but he's definitely got this idea. And I respectfully really disagree with him, 'cause I think there's a place for the motors. 
Steiger: Okay, forget the motors. If you just took what he said at face value -you think you don't need wilderness to keep a cap on the people? I mean, what I get from the last thing that he said in this last Perspectives issue, "Okay, forget about motors. If you don't get a designated wilderness, what you're gonna see is the use is gonna do nothing but go up," which it's done, just like it has been doin' ever since you guys said it was too crowded back there in 1970. 
Grua: There's nothing in wilderness that says they can't increase use, either. 
Steiger: Except the, quote, "wilderness experience" that has to be provided. 
Grua: Yeah, but if they decide that it's okay to increase use in a wilderness, you can increase use. I mean, there's no particular -I don't see how it protects it any more than it's protected right now. I mean, right now we have a cap on use, and for the last ten years, they haven't increased it. 
Steiger: My sense was that Crumbo said there are legal definitions of how many contacts a day you're allowed to have, and like that. Do you know about that? I don't know exactly what the language is. I won't pin you down. 
Grua: Yeah, I'm not familiar enough to get too involved.