In June 1983 the snowpack came off the Rockies faster than anyone predicted and Glen Canyon Dam started to come apart, spillways cavitating, plywood bolted onto the top to hold the reservoir back. With the Grand Canyon closed to boats and the river running at a level nobody had ever rowed, three men put a wooden dory called the Emerald Mile in the water at Lees Ferry and went for the speed record. They did 277 miles in under thirty-seven hours, at night, through Crystal and Lava Falls at flood. Fedarko builds the whole history of the canyon, the dam, and the dory-running tradition around that one run.
The Emerald Mile