It was filled with water, though, and all the
pictures were on the unfinished roll in the camera, and were ruined.
We had been in the ice-cold water long enough to lose that glow which
comes after a quick immersion and were chilled through; but what
bothered me more than anything else was the fact that I had been
caught in such a trap after successfully running the bad rapids above.
We made a short run after that so as to get out of sight of the
deceptive place, then proceeded to dry out. The ruined film came in
handy for kindling our camp-fire.
We were now in the narrowest part of the upper portion of the Grand
Canyon, the distance from rim to rim at one point being close to six
miles. The width at Bright Angel varied from eight to fourteen miles.
The peaks rising from the plateau, often as high as the canyon walls,
and with flat tops a mile or more in width, made the canyon even
narrower, so that at times we were in canyons close to a mile in
depth, and little over four miles across at the tops.
In this section of the granite there were few places where one could
climb out. Nearly all the lateral canyons ended quite a distance above
the river, then fell sheer; the lower parts of the walls were quite
often smooth-surfaced, where they were polished by the sands in the
stream. The black granite in such cases resembled huge deposits of
anthracite coal. Sections of the granite often projected out of the
water as islands, with the softer rock washed away, the granite being
curiously carved by whirling rocks and the emery-like sands.
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