Center. To enter, we had to pass through a security system tighter than any I’ve seen at airports, instituted some years ago to deter terrorist attacks on the dam. We apprehensively noted the posted weather forecast—temperatures between 35 and 49 degrees, with rain or snow in the offing. We studied a 1990 topographical model of Lake Powell, hopelessly anachronistic because of shrinking water levels, and took a short tour of the 710-foot-high dam, completed in 1963.
It was led by a sandy-haired young man who told us the concrete of Glen Canyon Dam was good for two millenniums but sediment buildup could render the dam inoperable in 700 years.
Environmentalists are less conservative. They say silt coming in from the reservoir’s tributaries could clog it up in a few centuries, never mind that the dam has already damaged habitats and geology at the Grand Canyon, one hundred miles downstream.
Partly for this reason, even environmentalists with cooler heads than Seldom Seen Smith have advocated decommissioning the dam and draining the reservoir—a drastic measure that, nevertheless, has been carried out in the last few decades at about 100 dams across America.
For the thirsty dwellers of the dry Southwest, the specter of losing a water and energy source may be upsetting. The dam’s power plant produces $90 million worth of electricity a year, and Lake Powell serves as a holding tank for Lake Mead down-river, a big water supplier to Southern California. Beyond that, the reservoir has undeniable recreational value. But since the onset of the drought, visitation to million-acre Glen Canyon National Recreation Area had decreased from 2.6 million in 1999 to 1.8 million in 2004.
Meanwhile, the National Park Service, which manages the recreation area, was making the best of things by extolling the wonders of newly reclaimed sights while busily extending boat launch ramps at northerly marinas, such as Bullfrog. “Visitors can still enjoy and participate in the same activities that they did when the lake was full—boating, fishing, hiking, camping, and exploring,” Kitty L. Roberts, recreation area superintendent, told me.
But it all depended on the weather.
That February, the water level stood at 3,561 feet, just 71 feet above the lowest point at which the dam can generate electricity. “If it drops below that, we’re out of business until the lake comes back up,” said Tom Ryan, a hydrologist for the US Bureau of Reclamation, which built and operates the dam.
Despite heavy winter snowfall in southwest Utah, Ryan said, it looked like an average year for runoff, which routinely plumps the level of Lake Powell in July. He expected the reservoir to rise about 40 to 45 feet by then, though at that rate it still would take years for the lake to refill.
“And if we have a hot, dry spring, that estimate will be eroded. There’s still a lot of uncertainty,” he said.
From the dam, John and I drove five miles north to Wahweap Marina, the winter nesting place of huge, luxurious houseboats, some with DVD playerss, staterooms, and fireplaces. There we claimed the far more modest 18-foot powerboat I had reserved for our trip up the reservoir.
Opponents of the man-made reservoir call it “Lake Latrine” and “Lake Foul,” but I can’t agree with their aesthetic evaluation. It’s majestic, with tucked-away coves and beaches backed by surrealistically shaped mesas and buttes. On the way, though, we saw Lake Powell’s bathtub ring, a white calcium carbonate deposit left by the receding water, distinct in some places, already wearing away in others.
At Dangling Rope Marina, we stopped for a $100 fill-up. The attendant, who hadn’t seen any visitors in days, told us about a good place to camp in Oak Canyon, a few miles farther, on the east side of the lake.
While tying up the boat there, I got caught in some Lake Powell quicksand, which has the consistency of cellulite and is sticky enough to suck in a short person, like me, to the thighs.
John and I pitched our tents, cooked up one of those wretched, dehydrated backpacker dinners, and went to bed. Unfortunately, it snowed that night and my tent leaked, leaving me with stiff joints, a sour mood, and a wet sleeping bag. I was ready to abort the trip in the morning, but John thought we should at least try to make our scheduled rendezvous with Wolverton at noon in Davis Gulch.
So I went on to Lake Powell’s confluence with the Escalante. Along the way, we passed Hole-in-the-Rock Arch, where Mormon pioneers cut a treacherously steep wagon trail from the plateau above to the river in 1880, and the mouth of the San Juan River on the east side—both places I’d only imagined in my dreams. We went astray a few times, but finally found the Escalante and turned in. Between periods of drizzle, the sun came out, revealing bright blue skies and scudding clouds. But the rivers’ meeting at Davis Gulch was an ugly scene, choked with flood-strangled cottonwood trees.
Then I saw what I assumed to be a hallucination: a man in a blue shirt, picking his way across the quicksand.
It was Wolverton, a canyon rat if ever there was one, strong and scrawny, with a thatch of shaggy brown hair. He had kindled a campfire up the gulch, where I warmed my feet and hands, dried out my sleeping bag, and decided that, having come this far, it would be folly not to continue.
Wolverton, the only backcountry ranger in the Escalante River region of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, had been keeping a close watch on sinking water levels in area tributaries. But the last time he climbed down into Davis Gulch and Fiftymile Canyon was the previous summer. Like us, he was eager to see what new glories the drought had revealed.
La Gorce Arch came first, a triangular window on the sky framed in lustrous sandstone, 100 feet wide and 75 feet high. Just a few years ago, when Davis Gulch was fuller, it could be reached only by kayak. Now, as nature intended, you have to crane your neck to see it from the creek bed.
Hiking up the gulch was sloppy, so we exchanged our boots for rubber sandals and neoprene socks. Sometimes the walls of the canyon narrowed, forcing us to wade in the cold water. Then they’d open back up, flooding the chasm with warming sunlight from the plateau hundreds of feet above.
“This place is like a big Christmas present gradually being unwrapped,” said Wolverton, stopping short once and opening his arms wide.
On formerly inundated rock ledges, spring-green vegetation had taken root and the bathtub ring had faded. Underfoot, we crunched “canyon popcorn,” perfectly proportioned balls of pebbles, a little like candied apples, fused together with mud on their roiling way downstream.
Farther up the gulch, we saw mounds of silt the size of tanker trucks, trapped and then left behind by the retreating water of Lake Powell, which has more silt-bearing tributaries than Lake Mead, another reservoir on the Colorado River impounded by Hoover Dam.
“Sediment is the reservoir’s fate,” Wolverton said. “It doesn’t matter how much boaters want [the lake] or how much water people need. It’s going to silt up and the whole thing will be gone.”
Wolverton led us out of Davis Gulch on a steep, old slickrock stock trail. The world seemed different—more horizontal—when we reached the top of the plateau. I could see places I’d known before only on a map: the long rise of Waterpocket Fold to the north and the tiered flanks of the Kaiparowits Plateau to the south, looking in the snow like a Mexican girl’s petticoat.
It was flat and easy going for about two miles north across the plateau, but then we came to the edge of Fiftymile Canyon and started down. No old stock trail there, just sure-footed Wolverton to follow.
He had already chosen our campsite for the next two nights, a wide, narrow shelf high above the stream, sheltered by a lip of rock. Delicious, cold, drinkable water was available from a seep in a nearby cliff,
