Greg sat on a rock just out of the water. "How long do you want to stay?"
Erika floated on her back. "I'm never getting out of this water again."
Julie agreed. "What's the hurry?"
"We need to stop at Dangling Rope for gas on the way back."
Erika rolled over on her stomach and glided toward her husband. "Go ahead. My lover and I need some time alone. You can pick us up when you're done."
They all knew that Erika was joking because Dangling Rope Marina was miles downstream, almost to the houseboat. There was no way Greg was going to drive all the way there, then back up to Hole-in-the-Rock to pick them up.
Greg laughed. "No need, Erika. Julie and I will just wait here while you and Paul do what ever you need to do." He gestured to her with an open hand "Go ahead."
Julie laughed while she watched Erika swim after Paul who was staying just out of her reach, and splashing her. While the couple teased each other, Greg stood and stepped gingerly up the rocks to where they had left their possessions. When he reached their stuff, he turned and put his hands on his hips, scanning up and down the shoreline. Julie thought she could see a look of concern on his face.
"He pointed down by the edge of the water. "Doesn't it look like the water has gone down?"
Julie looked at the wet ring above the water. She saw Paul stop and look at it too. Erika took advantage, and grabbed her husband from behind. Paul shucked her like she was nothing and dunked her. Greg pointed at the Mastercraft. "Look at the boat."
Julie looked but did not see anything out of the ordinary. "What's wrong with it?"
Paul interjected. "The rope. We left some slack when we tied it off. Now it's tight."
Julie saw that the rope was in fact very tight and pulling the Mastercraft up against the rocks. "Maybe it came loose and somebody re-tied it."
"No, Julie. Look at the wet band around the lake." He motioned again with his hand and raised his voice. "The water has dropped, maybe five feet or more."
Julie wondered why the big deal.
"So?" Erika said. "Who cares if the water dropped a few feet?"
Greg crouched and chewed on his fingernail. It made Julie nervous. Generally Greg was very cool headed. She climbed up the rocks out of the water. Erika followed.
Greg started gathering shoes and socks. "Let's go. There must be something wrong. They must be dumping water like crazy or something."
"Who?" Paul asked.
Greg was already headed for the boat. "The people at the dam. I don't know. We can ask what's going on when we get to the Marina."
Julie gathered up her wet shoes and other possessions. Erika and Paul did the same. The three of them headed for the boat with their arms full. Greg was trying to pull the boat up enough to get slack in the rope with no success. Paul tossed his stuff on the ground and tried to help. Both men struggled, but the rope was already so tight that they would need to lift the boat to get enough slack.
"What are we going to do now?" Julie asked.
Greg fished through the glove box in the boat and retrieved his pocketknife. He freed the blade, cut the rope up close to where it was tied on the rock, and the Mastercraft settled into the water. He retrieved the remainder of the rope from the rock and threw it in the back. He climbed in while Paul held the boat away from the rocks. Greg reached for Julie and Erika's things, and then helped them both in. He was hurrying, which made Julie and Erika hurry too. When everyone else was in, Paul pushed off and jumped in himself. Greg started the engine immediately.
Julie sat in the other front seat and looked at her husband. His brow was furrowed as he scanned up and down the shore. He put the boat in gear and quickly accelerated as they headed out of the small bay into the main channel. Greg was very nervous, something that was very rare for Greg Crawford.
Sid followed his friend Ryan as they hiked east along the Escalante Trail. To their left, a couple hundred feet below flowed the Colorado River, which seemed to be running above normal. To their right the Grand Canyon rose gradually almost four thousand feet to the Navajo reservation, where they had left their car, but that was two days ago. Unlike the lightweights that rode mules up and down the tourist trails, Sid and Ryan considered themselves seasoned hikers. You had to be, to hike Tanner and Escalante, two trails which were not for the faint hearted, especially Tanner. Two days before, while descending the twelve-mile Tanner Trail, only two miles from the bottom they encountered the last obstacle, a steep climb nicknamed Asinine Hill. Two days later, Sid considered this whole hike to be asinine.
Over the years, he and Ryan had hiked most of the major trails in the Grand Canyon, some multiple times. Tanner, which was located almost 30 miles upstream from the major South Rim trails, had eluded them. And now Sid knew why. Tanner was a killer. Hiking down the trail had wiped him out. His left knee, which had never bothered him before, now screamed out with every step. And Escalante, comparatively, was the easy part. It only ran along the base of the canyon paralleling the river. The hard part, tomorrow, was yet to come, back up the twelve grueling miles of Tanner to the rim. Besides, this part of the canyon wasn't as narrow, and to be honest, wasn't as spectacular. In fact, when he lost sight of the river, Sid thought the landscape was downright ugly. Of course he grudgingly admitted that it might have something to do with the pain in his knee.
"Let's rest." Ryan said without looking back.
Sid didn't respond. But he immediately stopped and let Ryan help him out of his pack. With a sleeping bag, food, water, and stove, each pack weighed a ton. Sid leaned his pack against a rock then sat down and leaned back against it. He massaged his knee, but couldn't quite get his fingers deep enough to do any good.
"How much farther do you think it is?" he asked. Ryan always knew how far things were.
"Close. Maybe an hour." He looked at his watch. "We can have lunch at the trail head, filter some water, then head up Tanner. The farther we make it tonight, the better."
Sid closed his eyes and tried to wish himself a day into the future, up at the rim looking down, and the hike would be behind him. He opened his eyes to see if it worked, but saw he was still at river level. Maybe he was too greedy. He decided to try again, this time wishing only for a mule to carry him up the hill. Hanging from the mule, the knee would still hurt, but it would definitely felt better than hiking.
"Look at that helicopter!" Ryan said suddenly.
The mule disappeared. Sid opened his eyes. "Where?"
Ryan pointed upstream. "I didn't think they were allowed to fly that low."
The helicopter flew at an altitude of only a couple hundred feet above the water as it followed the river. Since the Escalante trail ran above the river, they were at almost the same level as the helicopter.
For a moment it looked like the chopper would fly right past the hikers, but it veered straight toward the two hikers. Ryan stood up defensively, something that Sid would have done too, if it weren't for the knee. Sid peered around the legs of his friend at the helicopter, which had stopped in the air and hovered less than a hundred feet away. They were close enough for Sid to see that both the Pilot and the other guy wore dark glasses and had dead serious looks on their faces. For a moment Sid wondered if the chopper had guns, because if it did, he and Ryan would be sitting ducks.
Not the pilot, but the other guy, spoke into a microphone. "The Glen Canyon Dam has collapsed upstream." The sound was so loud it made Sid want to cover his ears. "Hike immediately to higher ground. Try to get at least five hundred feet above the river, maybe more."