White Water. The Colorado Jet Boat Expedition 1960. By Joyce Hamilton (1963)

White Water. The Colorado Jet Boat Expedition 1960. By Joyce Hamilton.

Publisher: Caxton Press, 1963, First Edition, 2nd printing.

Very good hardback with jacket. Some bumping to edges; no inscriptions, binding firm, light tanning and foxing. Dustjacket is scuffed, chipped, creased and marked with a repaired tear to spine.

'Through a vast twisting crack in the desert, between near-vertical cliffs sometimes a mile high, thunders the mighty Colorado River dirty, turbulent and treacherous. In the 250 miles of the Grand Canyon from Lee's Ferry to Lake Mead there are few places where it is possible for a man to enter or leave the canyon. Once committed to the river he must stay the distance-if he can. Many had lost their lives in attempting to run with the river down its miles of rapids. Some had dreamed of an up-river run but all attempts had met with defeat. It was with a new form of boat propulsion, designed in New Zealand, that a party of Americans and New Zealanders proposed to challenge the authority of the river. After a down-stream run to lay in caches of fuel they would turn about and run the rapids 'against the grain'. Impossible said the experts. Readers will share the author's tension as she watches her husband throw his frail craft time and again into the white water of Vulcan Rapid as a helicopter descends into the chasm to rescue an injured man as she waits for news of a boat sunk in the dark Inner Gorge. This is an adventure of modern times described with a feeling which could spring only from a close association with the men and machines involved in it.' 259 pages, illustrated.

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