In the afternoon we finally made it to the Narrows. We soon saw why this was called Fat Man’s Misery. This was a very narrow canyon, more like a crevice, leading down two thousand feet to the Virgin River below. We’d climb down a little cliff inside the crevice and then this would level out for ten feet or so, and there would be another small cliff we would need to climb down. As least we were out of the direct sun, so it was cooler. But finding foothold on the rocky cliffs was difficult. My water was gone. Occasionally we’d run into a trickle of a spring and get a tiny drink from that.
After some time went by, we were just about down and we could see the river. I was so thirsty. Just then, like it was nothing, Todd Copling pulled out a can of Sprite and pulled off the top and started to drink it. I looked at him thirstily, like a man about to be executed. He gave me a sip.
And then we made it to the river. Most of the canyon walls were straight up cliffs of red sandstone, two thousand feet high. We had come down from that high? We had complained before about being hot and dry, now we complained about being wet and having to trudge through water for miles on end. It seemed for hours that we walked along the river bottom. If an embankment of sand came along, we walked on that. But that was rare. Usually it was shear cliffs on both sides of the river. The only hope we had at this point was that somewhere there would be a rise of land coming out of the river and we would hike up that. The plan was that later in the evening we would join up with the truck loaded with our food and our sleeping bags. But that was up ahead.
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