Icons + Artifacts: The Emerald Mile

It normally takes two weeks to row the entire length of the Grand Canyon, and if you’re ever lucky enough to find yourself on a river expedition inside that hidden kingdom of ancient rock capped by a cobalt-colored sky, it’s likely that one evening—probably around cocktail hour—somebody on the trip will decide to uncork the tale of the most storied runoff in the history of the Colorado.

It was in June of 1983 when one of the largest snowpacks ever recorded melted all at once, tearing out of the Rockies so fast it almost breached the Glen Canyon Dam, forcing the release of enough water (ninety-three thousand cubic feet per second) to generate a maelstrom deep inside the canyon. In the midst of this crisis, a trio of whitewater guides led by a boatman named Kenton Grua shoved a dory named the Emerald Mileinto the teeth of that flood in the hope of smashing the record for the fastest boat