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National Geographic : 1969 May
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KODACHROME@ N.G.S . Colorado on August 10. They had run Marble Canyon in a week, but their store of provi sions was dwindling. Sergeant Bradley com plained to his diary, "We have had no meat for several days and not one sixth of a ra tion for more than a month .... " And omi nously, "The men are uneasy and discon tented and anxious to move on. If Major [Powell] does not do something soon I fear the consequences." For all of that, Powell camped here for two days to fix his position. It was a crucial thing to know. By his reckoning, they were already as far south as the Mormon town of Callville, which meant that the Colorado had to turn west, through totally unexplored country. With a sextant, Powell climbed the 2,000 foot cliff near the river and looked westward. There he could see "the edge of a great pla teau, from which streams run down into the Colorado, and deep gulches in the escarpment which faces us, continued by cafions, ragged and flaring, and set with cliffs and towering crags, down to the river." It was, as Powell said, the "Great Unknown." On August 13 his boats entered it. As we left the Little Colorado, we took note of one other ruin-a chilling one. Far up at the topmost corner of Chuar Butte, small mirrors seemed to be flashing in the sun as our raft moved. 698 "Hey, look up there!" Kenny Garrett said. "Somebody's signaling." He scanned the cliff with binoculars. "That's the wreckage of an airplane," Bill Belknap said. "You're too young to remem ber it, Kenny." The debris scattered above us is all that remains of what was at the time the worst disaster in the history of commercial aviation. On the morning of June 30, 1956, in a sky spotted with thunderheads, a DC-7 with 58 persons aboard and a Super Constellation carrying 70 people collided over the Grand Canyon. The planes plummeted down almost three miles to a greater unknown than Pow ell's. No one survived. Granite Gorge Marks a New Beginning When our rafts reached Unkar, Doug Schwartz and his archeologists, like the In dians, had gone. In a thrill-a -minute ride, we skirted the cliff through wild Unkar Creek Rapids. By evening, we made camp before the entrance to the awesome Granite Gorge. On the rim above us we could make out the stone tower at Desert View. It was proba bly near there that the first Europeans to behold the Grand Canyon came through the pifion forest to the edge of the abyss. They were a company of Spaniards seeking gold and heathen souls as a part of Coronado's
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