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Show Record front of the boat to keep the ice from chewing the wood. During the months of February and March we had difficulty with the boat sticking at the places that I have picked out on the 1179 map very frequently. During the month of April we had rains that would make these washes wash some sand into the channel at times. During the latter part of June and July the high water is going down, and it is really the worst time then, because the bars begin to show up when the river falls and you must feels your way 1180 all along there. In September and October the river runs in one place and is probably a little better than at very low water. In November there is not much difference. Between Castle creek and Lockhart canyon, Mill creek and Castle creek flow all the year round. The other washes in there are dry until it rains. We get our heavy rains generally in August, and in the dry washes has the effect of washing down sand. At one time the Kane wash came into the Colorado River with such force it seemed to wash the sand in long waves. At that time I was going down with the big boat. One of the waves seemed to be four feet high. The boat 1181 went through it. It seemed to bend the boat up and down lengthways. The bottom of the boat would strike in between the waves for prob-ably a quarter of a mile below this wash. In operating the big boat, if we had not been on the river for a day or two or a week we would always have the crew up on front sounding. That would help quite a bit. One fellow would take an oar and show me how deep the water was. Ordinarily he used a seven foot oar, and when the water came up to where the oar began to get small, that was just about right for the depth to go over nicely. That depth was about two and a half feet. When running regularly there would not be so much for the other men to do, because when running regularly I would know very near where to go, but I would kind of get off my course lots of times and got stuck. We discarded the Manila rope we carried on the first trip |