Martin's Boat - A Film By Pete McBride

the river has a tremendous force it has an appeal about it that I can't describe but when you have people in a boat to sense a kind of the life that the river has it's mind-expanding for sure how's the boat look yeah it looks like a piece of artwork built this boat memory of Martin Linton because he deserved it I couldn't be happier tell ya I was a little worried that I wasn't gonna get this thing done to the last minute got her finished the Grand Canyon is America's open Aird cathedral that holds beauty in the palm of its hand no other landscape opens up deep time like the pages of a book and invites you to contemplate the implications of all that time here you have this giant hole in the ground and when you enter into it and when you float through it on the back of this legendary river that flows through its heart and that is responsible for having carved and created the thing in the first place you are entering a hidden and secret world whose walls are framed by rock that is so unimaginably ancient that it's almost impossible for the human mind to grasp and this happens if you spend enough time in the canyon particularly if you're a boatman I first saw the Grand Canyon in 1939 it never occurred to me when I first looked over the edge but I'd ever go on the river there had been trips but they were considered very special expedition you know you might as well go to the North Pole or something the first time ever wrote about through the Grand Canyon was 1956 commercial trips then were so uncommercial they were like the small private trips you might see the day we were all sleeping on the damp sand right next to the river beaches went way out I couldn't get enough of it we always wanted the Whitewater in the early days in those days though nobody ran lava Falls it didn't occur to me to question that and it wasn't until we had Dory's but we found we could run Lava Falls whitewater Dori is in many ways kind of you know the signature craft of the Grand Canyon they're very responsive to the eccentricities of the current kick and ride Glide everyone knows the dories will take tremendously rough water then every once in a while something crazy happens and you get spanked down they'll dump you and everything you own on the river into the water you're just rolling along sometimes you know it's coming sometimes it's a little surprising that it actually happens again must say that the best part of it just crashing through a great big wave but not quite going over from start to finish somewhere around 1100 to 1200 hours probably building the boat so little things that take a lot of time to finish a boat off so that you can take it on the river there's a mystic thing about a dory it has lines that belong on the water there's a soul about it spiritualism almost those who come to Dory's never seem to go away it's party kind of build a relationship with the boat we've now been here working in Grand Canyon for this as I guess our 43rd season we all take great pride in the fact that we get to Road doors down here brettly's ferry on the Colorado River right below Glen Canyon Dam I'm sitting on a brand new Dori Duffy Dale has been working on it during the last winter and as you can see it's called marble canyon ready to go yeah Duffy Dale is the son of Rican Dale who managed Grand Canyon Dory's for many years yeah a lot of people think they were like a the Mafia cuz there's this so many of us and we're always down here I think Duff was 12 years old on the first road his first boat how many trips you got not Duffy number like hundred twenty-nine he learned how to build boats from a young age then now he's the master boat builder my dad was building boats and I learned a lot from my dad so almost gets me all teared up just thinking about it just have him get on the lures and see it's a nice boat huh did a good job he's quite the river guide now and as you can see he's built a beautiful boat to honor Martin Litton and we named it the marble killing because he had a big influence on saving basically the Grand Canyon we would be a hundred feet underwater now because marvel Canyon Dam would have been built there would be any ripping of the dams for Bill I think it's a beautiful boat he's here with me so feeling the best way for people to understand how important it is to have the bottom of the Grand Canyon preserved it has to have them on that River Oh River named my river name well I go by mokey but later I be just became the king of the world I have a business card that actually says smokey Johnson king of the world my name is rioja Barger I gotta say the white water and being in a Dory is my favorite part of being down here for sure this is where I work every day not too bad around 150 trips in the Grand Canyon I think it does to a spiritual to me there's a real gentleness about the quality of this place the first Big Rapids intern in the marble King the fun was not nervous until I get in my boat that's when the heart rate picks up like Joseph began the rise there you see the dark red-brown rock all the way across the continent lost in the sky pigeons one of the really powerful talks that a lot of us do in Grand Canyon is at the marble canyon dam site well here we are in the heart of marble canyon he was in the 50s that it was initially anticipated by the Bureau of Reclamation that they would build a dam here and they did a bunch of excavations in this area to test the rock make sure it was going to be strong enough to stand the forces that would be created by putting a concrete plug across the Grand Canyon well Martin Letten stood up and said no and got everybody on board with fighting the scam and thank God we didn't don't have a dam here today Oh as a boatman who Rose a Dory down here and boat is your your home you sleep on it every night Gordon home for 110 days out of you keep it clean well today was a very hot day we like Deer Creek we have very thirsty and we figured we would toast Martin with his favorite drink gin and tonic blood here's the mark he was born in in 1917 and he grew up in a world that no longer exists I don't think anybody ever really knew all of Martin one of the most unique people I've ever had a chance to I was probably a little intimidated by him I mean it is a pretty famous guy at that time one of the last Greek warriors so much bigger than any of us he just looked the part it kind of looked a little bit like an Amish farmer that had gone to see and then he had an eloquent secret self to a cow he was pilot in World War two in a Cessna 195 and he saw from the air the emergence of this enormous reservoir that backs up behind the Glen Canyon Dam Lake Powell so I thought people ought to be reminded of what we have injured on this earth Martin started the tradition of naming the boats after wild places lost or compromised and it just makes you think about you know what could have been or what should have been what Martin did with his stories that was poetry we've been on the river for nine days out I didn't 36 miles of river travel that a great trip so far mile down the road is a very large rapid name upset and I'm not kidding but I'm not upset anyway it's the name of that rapid coming up from Mitchell upset which I'm not closed out on us and it just went right over the bow and completely submerged in bugs I wouldn't a high-sided we would've been in the drink swimmin help step good old Martin smiling inside the hatch or more than 3/4 way through the trip and Lava Falls is coming up tomorrow there's a good dozen Rapids down to the Grand Canyon that qualify is true humdingers and lavas sort of distinguishes itself this is the place where the Colorado River basically rolls over a set of enormous boulders and basically detonates there's no guaranteed line through it it's dynamic and the the Scout which proceeds running the rapid involves an enormous amount of discussion by the Silverbacks ok this rapid setting up where you hit that chuckles my dream that haystacks a hit yeah just hit where's the water the one Rapids where you know you can do everything right and still end up upside down that's how it goes in the canyon you know either have a story or you have a clean run the last time Martin piloted a boat through lava falls came to wind up on the far right hand which is not where you're supposed to be Martin's philosophy about rowing Dory's was you kind of just point the thing you think it needs to go and just see what happens rivers gonna decide he would get in these situations that would kill a normal person he had some high runs but he acted like nothing happened you just kind of keep on going downriver he wouldn't even turn his head around and see what he hit and just keep on going the thing that everybody always said about Martin was that he rode with an angel on his shoulder and he or she must have been on Martin's shoulder that day because right at the top of the rapid we hit a seam of current that kind of shot us over to the left and by god it put us pretty much exactly where we needed to be 30 seconds of frothiness and violence and we were done and he did it beautifully it was perfect or cants above Lava Falls then here at my background where's your heart rate right about now it's actually a little elevated just because the product right there all especially rolls new boats are there I'm going to probably be more amped up than I have in a long time it's lava morning bright and early never fails to get me going yeah big day at law River trip is sometimes has been called the voyage of life it is a microcosm of life the challenge isn't so great at the beginning and then it develops and develops and you find yourself able to cope with it and finally you've done it you've done the whole thing All Things Considered pretty darn good day at Lava Falls and it I'm glad it's back there and we all got through cleanly did you soap up by the way before you went in no you missed an opportunity basically had a golden trip inhibited his flip it feels pretty good you think dummy's a good boatman how's that gold or unfilled up in fact we were all gold so we must be all as good as Duffy what do you think you think it's sort of lucky that he got a golden round on his maiden voyage three oh yeah hopefully this both make it to 45 years all right Lee right I might be retired somebody if you go on this boat thinking about flights here it's really hard to capture what Martin Litton means especially now that he's gone the dedication to saving these places they felt like hell harder than anybody I can think of Martin said people asked me to be reasonable why would I want to do that reasonable people never get anything done we don't have anybody like that now it outlived all prognosis by at least a decade that's little blip email comes in and it's from John blasting mrs. Martin Linton yet and the day Martin Linton died in Flagstaff and some places in South America and Asia there was a big earthquake the whole house just explodes start shaking big bang noise I hear some crashing downstairs I said that the earthquake and went downstairs and my globe had fallen off the shelf on the floor my world and I lived wait that's mine we happen to be citizens of a nation that regards itself is exceptional and the Grand Canyon suggests that we would do well to listen to the messages that nature and Rock convey if martin linton didn't exist you'd see a lot of people who are haunted by the idea that we took something extraordinary and we threw it away martin definitely knew that what we do down there changes people and that's why he got into that line of work but i still really believe in getting people out there in Moe's boat and it comes from mark he left those boats people make quite a thing of how the Grand Canyon experience has changed their lives how the experience is somehow opened their eyes to something bigger and greater in life who knows you know what life would have been like having gone another way somehow make my way into it and I'm not the only one you

Channel: OARS

Views: 409,367

Rating: 4.8912468 out of 5

Keywords: Martin's Boat, Martin Litton, Grand Canyon Dories, Grand Canyon Rafting, Marble Canyon, Pete McBride, O.A.R.S., OARS, Conservation, Sierra Club, Colorado River, Kevin Fedarko

Id: 2fG0VyVm4Mk

Length: 22min 38sec (1358 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 02 2016