The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon

From one of Outside magazine's "Literary All-Stars" comes the thrilling true tale of the fastest boat ride ever, down the entire length of the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon, during the legendary flood of 1983.

In the spring of 1983, massive flooding along the length of the Colorado River confronted a team of engineers at the Glen Canyon Dam with an unprecedented emergency that may have resulted in the most catastrophic dam failure in history. In the midst of this crisis, the decision to launch a small wooden dory named "The Emerald Mile" at the head of the Grand Canyon, just fifteen miles downstream from the Glen Canyon Dam, seemed not just odd, but downright suicidal.

The Emerald Mile, at one time slated to be destroyed, was rescued and brought back to life by Kenton Grua, the man at the oars, who intended to use this flood as a kind of hydraulic sling-shot. The goal was to nail the all-time record for the fastest boat ever propelled--by oar, by motor, or by the grace of God himself--down the entire length of the Colorado River from Lee's Ferry to Lake Mead. Did he survive? Just barely. Now, this remarkable, epic feat unfolds here, in The Emerald Mile.

ISBN-13: 9781439159866

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Scribner

Publication Date: 07-01-2014

Pages: 448

Product Dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)

Kevin Fedarko has spent the past twenty years writing about conservation, exploration, and the Grand Canyon. He studied Russian history at Oxford before joining the staff at Time, where he worked primarily on the foreign affairs desk, then later moved to Outside, where he was a senior editor. His writing has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, and Esquire, among other publications, and a trio of his adventure stories from the Himalayas, the Horn of Africa, and the Colorado River are anthologized in The Best American Travel Writing. Fedarko is the author of The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon, a New York Times bestseller that won the National Outdoor Book Award and the Reading the West Award. He lives and works in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Table of Contents

Launch 1

Leviathan 7

Part I The World Beneath the Rims 17

1 First Contact 19

2 The Grand Old Man 29

3 Into the Great Unknown 40

Part II America's Pyramids 51

4 The Kingdom of Water 53

5 Flooding the Cathedral 69

Part III The Sweet Lines of Desire 89

6 Dories 91

7 The Golden Age of Guiding 102

8 Crystal Genesis 113

9 The Death of the Emerald Mile 124

Part IV The Master of the Emerald Mile 139

10 The Factor 141

11 Speed 155

12 Thunder on the Water 171

Part V The Gathering Storm 179

13 Deluge 181

14 Into the Bedrock 190

15 The Mouth of the Dragon 202

16 Raising the Castle Walls 214

Part VI The Maelstrom 229

17 The Grand Confluence 231

18 The White Demon 242

19 Ghost Boat 251

20 The Doing of the Thing 268

Part VII The Speed Run 279

21 The Old Man Himself 281

22 Perfection in a Wave 293

23 The Reckoning 306

24 Beneath the River of Shooting Stars 318

25 Tail Waves 327

26 The Trial 335

Epilogue: The Legend of the Emerald Mile 342

Acknowledgments 355

Notes on Sources 360

Notes 364

Select Bibliography 388

Photograph Credits 399

Index 401

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