OCR Text |
Show Record trip I made in November when I had the accident to my boat was for compensation. In 1910 I started to work at the pumping plant and didn't have very much further personal experience on the river; I made no more trips with my own boats. In 1914 I made a trip with the Wimmer boat to the junction of the rivers. On the return trip 5220 from Moab in November, when we stopped to hunt and had occasion to land our boat, I recall encountering no trouble. The channel had gone back to its natural winter channel and the silt bars were exposed and so hard that we could run up to them and camp on them. I have made landings when there was mud and silt at the edge of the river, but only recall special instance when we wanted to stop at the Foot Bottom. On that occasion I ran in to the high point of a silt bar about one hundred feet from the bank, where the bar was covered with only about four inches of water. The nose of my boat caught in it and I kept the engine running and sucked the mud from under the boat and went on to shore. I ran up there perhaps because I intended to land. Bars that have never been exposed to 5221 the atmosphere are still soft and by creating a current through the revolution of your propeller the silt is sucked out and you make enough channel to get to shore; in the morning you will back out. I don't think the channel of the river changes so much from high water itself as from some projection on that will turn the water. I can't say that the channel changes during high water, but the current will change at points where there is some projection in 5222 river. The kind of boats I had in mind operating when I first went to Green River was freight boats up to one hundred feet long, with a minimum capacity of a carload. I was one of the persons who endeavored to induce the government to improve the navigation of the Green and Colorado Rivers so that we could run those big boats without obstruction. I was unsuccessful in my endeavor to get the government to spend the money. |