Stuff You Should Know - Kenton Grua: Grand Canyon Legend

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

Tune in today to listen to the amazing story of Colorado River guide Kenton Grua's wild 277 mile record-breaking speed run down the center of the Grand Canyon. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's Kate and Oliver Hudson! Host of the new podcast, Siblings Revolary. Siblings Revolary. That's right. We started this show because, you know what, no one talks about siblings in that dynamic. The siblings, they know each other better than anybody. Yes. You know, listen to Siblings Revolary on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

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home on the web, stuffyshodo.com, click on the tour button, and it'll take you to all of the beautiful places you can go to buy your tickets. And we'll see you guys in January. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too and this is stuff you should know. That's right. Life is a highway. I don't want to ride in hall and night long.

Not again. Down the river. Canadian legend. Tom Broca. That's right. No, it's not right. But hey, we want to welcome yet another new writer that's helping us out. Welcome Anna, because Anna helped us with this. Anna Green. Anna Green, and I thought she did a really good job. And we hope Anna can write some more stuff for us in the future. And I could have sworn that this was a listener suggestion.

And I looked and I just could not find it. So if someone suggested that we do a show on a gentleman named Kinton Grua, who was a Grand Canyon River guide, pretty remarkable person, then I'm really sorry because I looked and looked at your email, but I just couldn't find it. So yeah, if you to write in and say,

hey, that was me, I'll check it against my records and we'll give you a future shout out. Also, I got to give Anna the coronation, you ready? Du-du-du-du-du-du! That's right. All right, welcome aboard. The old mouthhorn. So we're talking Kent and Grua,

never heard of this person before in my life until I started researching this person It's man. This legend actually really Yeah, he's a if especially if you spend much time hanging out with Grand Canyon River folk You will you will hear stories of Kent and Grua although apparently not from him while he was alive He was supposedly very humble as far as his own accomplishments go. But if you talk to one of his friends, you would probably get some thrilling stories out of them because he did some pretty interesting stuff along that

Colorado River. Yeah, absolutely. And we also want to shout out a book that both Anna and we, and we used Kevin Fedarko wrote a book called The Emerald Mile about this river run, this record breaking timed river run down the Grand Canyon river, Colorado River. And I knew the name and then I remembered that I watched this great documentary from that geo called Into the Canyon. And Kevin Ferdarco was one of the guys. He and a guy named Pete McBride, hiked almost 750 miles from one end of the canyon to the other and made this really gorgeous gorgeous documentary. So I highly recommend Into the Canyon as well as the book The Emerald Mile and Big Thanks to everything that Kevin

Fodarco does in terms of raising awareness for the Grand Canyon. Like, think about that, man. That's so many miles. You would have to get a new pair of shoes at some point in the middle of that. I think they did. You would have to. I think they bailed on an attempt and then came back and did it or something. I can't remember, but just gorgeous photography and really good stuff.

The Grand Canyon is just a truly a magical place. Yeah. If you've never been there, just go. It's one of those places where you're like, yeah, I've seen pictures and stuff but it's one of the places that where I truly understood the meaning of breathtaking. I actually literally got physically short of breath when I first stood there on that rim. Like, you had a panic attack?

No, it was just truly breathtaking. It's really, really, just, you gotta go. You gotta do it. Have you been? Yes, I have. I've been to the North Rim. I didn't ride a burrow or anything like that, but I did look down and get to see the whole thing

from that that wooded forested North Rim that is not like what you think of when you think of the Grand Canyon. It's like just a whole other side of it. It's really neat. Yeah, it's amazing. I did have a panic attack. That's why I couldn't breathe because I was looking over into it. I'm like, this is I can't do this. But yeah, it's pretty neat for sure. Yeah, I've never been down to the river. My friend Bret and I hiked down. There's, I'm not sure how far down it is, but we hiked down to, there's this one sort of area where you can hike down to and hang out for a bit. If you don't want to go down all the way and then hike back out. And young in shape chuck, that hike out was one of the toughest things I've ever done.

Because you're basically just going up, right? Up, up, up. Up, up, up in the heat, heat, heat. Oh, wow. So back to Canton, Grua. He was somebody who could hike up the sides of the canyon up out of it because he did that a lot, mostly because he spent a lot, essentially his entire adult life

in the Grand Canyon along the Colorado River and if he wanted to go see his family or friends see a movie that's what he had to do he had to hike out of the Grand Canyon to go do those things so he was from everything I saw extraordinarily fit but also Kind of a at one with the canyon if if anybody could be he was definitely one of those people Yeah, for sure he was born in Salt Lake City in 1950 and It was really big into snow skiing until he was 12 years old when his family because of business business, his father started a trucking company, moved to Vernal, Utah. At the time, there was no skiing in Vernal. And so his dad said, hey, kiddo, you're 12, you'd love to be outdoors and adventure.

So let's go on a rafting trip and they went to the Yampa River for his birthday. And Kitten Grua was like, this is where it's at. I love a rafting trip and they went to the Yampa River for his birthday and Kitten Grua was like, this is where it's at. I love river rafting. So Pop's bottom, my army surplus raft and he as a young kid started taking these little solo rafting trips. Right. And that's kind of where he learned how to navigate rivers initially.

He got the river bug. He totally got the river bug. A few years later, he was going to study mechanical engineering at the University of to navigate rivers initially. He got the river bug. He totally got the river bug. Few years later, he was going to study mechanical engineering at the University of Utah. And during winter break of freshman year, he was offered a job working for Hatch River Expeditions, river boating outfit along the Colorado River

in the Grand Canyon. And he said, so long college, I'm going to go do this. And the job was even just patching boats, like it wasn't even as a river guide. But that's how much he'd love spending time not just on the river, but specifically the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon itself. But because of his natural talent and his just complete passion for the job, he became a river guide within just a few months of his first job there. Yeah, absolutely. So he's now taking adventuresome tourists through the Grand Canyon down the river.

He got another job after that at Grand Canyon Expeditions for a little while and met a really important person in his life there, a mentor in some way, as far as conservationism, got a Martin Litten, L-I-T-T-O-N, who was starting his own company, his own expedition company, and Litten was about, he was all about just preserving the, not just the Grand Canyon, but just all of nature and was just sort of ashamed of what

humankind had done to nature. And in fact, the boat that that Gruo would eventually pilot down the Colorado River for that record-breaking run was called the the Emerald Mile. These boats, Litten had he would name them after natural wonders that had been destroyed by humans as a reminder. And this, apparently, the Emerald Mile was a stretch of old growth redwoods in California that were clear cut in the 60s. So he named this wooden dory, this boat that you paddle with orers after that stretch

of redwoods. Yeah. And a dory in particular, for the most part, people at the time, and I think still today were going down the Colorado River through the green kingdom and on these expedition tours in rubber boats, like zodiacs, like motorized boats that you could bump up against rocks all day. And they were probably going to be fine. That's something more regular boats.

What do you mean regular, like a pontoon? No, like in the early days, they were just like, I saw something that looked like old wooden criss-crap. Oh wow, okay, wow, that's kind of cool. Talk about doing it inside. But also motorized rafts, yeah. Okay, so the Dory itself though, it was originally like a fishing boat

that Europeans, I think the Portuguese were the ones who really kind of perfected it, would take out on the ocean. So they were like sea worthy row boats basically. And they eventually made their way to New England where whalers would take them out. And the Martin Linton got his hands on them for the Grand Canyon because he was just like, you experience the Colorado River in a d door in ways that you can't possibly in a raft, let alone a motorized raft. So it's like a purposefully old-timey antique way of going down the Colorado River.

And they still use doors today as a matter of fact, so amount fits to. Yeah, and Grua was like, this thing is amazing because he wanted, as we'll'll see he really enjoyed getting down that river fast and this the the Dorees like they they won't obviously because they're made of wood they won't bounce off a rock like a raft will but they're much more able to be steered they handle a lot better they're much more I don't know if live is the right word, but you can you can motor down that that river in a Dory better than you can in a raft if you're into speed and turning. Sure, but but a lot of the most

of the Dory expeditions use ors their road, right? Oh, yeah. So the other thing about it that you you mentioned is that like it won't handle bumping against rocks like a raft will. They're much more fragile, much less forgiving than a rubber raft, which means you have to be that much more experienced and have that much greater ability to take a dory down the Colorado River than you would like a raft. Yeah, and they can get dinged up a little. I kind of thought at first, you hit a rock with one of these and you're sinking immediately. It's just explosive catches fire.

Exactly. And I'm sure that can happen, but as you will see, you know, they can get bumped up a little bit. And you know, they're pretty hearty, I think. Yeah. No, for sure, but it's just some of those rapids can be pretty rough on the old boat. Yeah. absolutely. So Gruo was in love with Dory's, just like Martin Linton was, and he came on Linton's

company, Grand Canyon Dory's, and began piloting a Dory called the Cheta Huchi. He did that for like 10 years down the Colorado River. He made nearly 100 trips, which by my estimation, that's almost half of the days between 1969 and 1979 when he made those 100 trips. He spent on the Colorado River. That's a lot of times the Colorado, that's exactly what he wanted to do. He could not have been happier. He chose this life for himself, and he just did it, he made it work, and he became an expert on the Colorado River

as it runs to the green canyon. Totally. Like reading this, I got very jealous of his life. Yeah, I was looking at some of the Dory expeditions they have, and I was like, man, that's amazing. And then it's like 18 days. I said, no, I'm not going to do that. Like are there helicopters that you can lower in

and do a couple of days and then come out? No, there's not apparently. Well, sadly, there are helicopter trips and they will take you down and land you on a big plateau. That's one of the things I learned from that documentary that Fedarko was in was they were trying to raise awareness for these, you know was they were trying to raise awareness for these, you know, they're trying to build some big like hotel basically, like halfway down the

canyon and all these people were fighting it scene like you can't do that. You can't turn this into a place where people can get hell rich people can get helicoptered in and stay in a five- resort. Like, no, no, no. Okay. First of all, I felt like a jackass before. Now I really feel like a jackass. But so you were talking about getting trapped off to row. Sure.

Like zip lining out like a, like a ranger. Right. But I mean, like walking down from a resort to go row for a couple of days. Maybe even better. Pretty good. But the, but the, the, the, the, the kind of upshot of what you're saying is a good analogy from what I understand to compare rafting or boating down the Colorado River these days would be like going on an

expedition to Everest. It is nothing like it used to be. Even 20, 30, 40 years ago, it's just gotten so much easier. There's so much money being thrown at this now. It's just not even a challenge any longer. It's like a posh vacation for people who like to act like they're their adventures. And I'm saying that I'm not going to climb Everest. So I can't really be critical, but I'm saying comparing it to how it originally started when these outfits were first Created in like the 40s 50s 60s It's just nothing like that today. It's far more commercialized. I guess is what I'm trying to say

Yeah, so if in the meme how it started how it's going should be a Person like bleeding from the head and spitting river water out of their mouth and And then another one with a dude holding a martini as he goes down the river. Exactly. Alright, I say we take a break. Oh yeah. And we come back and we talk a little bit more about Kinton the Grua, the man. Discover the heartwarming and hilarious world of sibling connections on sibling revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson. You might be asking yourself, what is sibling revelry?

Yeah, well, we just made it up. They'll have some laughs and maybe inspire some people along the way with universal tales of what it's like to grow up with brothers and sisters. We're full blood siblings, the only full blood siblings. In our family. Well, not in the world. I mean, in the whole world, that's just it. Like, no one.

Dive into family tales, and explore the human mind with guests like Joel and Benji Madden. And it's fun because we've decided to open it up, you know, to really like all kinds of different siblings. And it's going to be an awesome season. It's more than a podcast. It's a celebration of the ties that bind us. Listen to sibling revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Fear the unknown is the greatest fear of all and for millions of Americans there is no greater unknown than what to do when faced with an Alzheimer's diagnosis. My name is Dana Torito and my podcast The Memory Whisperer, takes a closer look at Alzheimer's disease

and those affected by it. Like many of you, I've experienced the disease firsthand. I've been an advocate and care partner for decades and have written extensively about the subject. Each week, I'll talk to people who've been personally affected by the disease and learn how they cope with it. Folks like TV personality, Lisa Gibbons. Action is the antidote for fear.

And nursing dementia researcher, Dr. Feyron Epps. We no longer can be silent. We have to speak what we have to share, our experiences, so we can help each other and learn from each other. Listen to the Memory Whisperer on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. In the new Amy and TJ podcast, Amy Roboc and TJ Holmes, a renowned broadcasting team with

decades of experience delivering headline news and captivating viewers nationwide are sharing their voices and perspectives in a way you've never heard before. They explore meaningful conversations about current events, pop culture, and everything in between. Nothing is off limits. This was a scandal that wasn't. And this was not what you've been sold. The Aimean TJ podcast is guaranteed to be informative, entertaining, and above all, authentic.

It marks the first time Robock and Holmes speak publicly since their own names became a part of the headlines. This is the first time that we actually get to say, what happened and where we are today. Listen to the Amy and TJ podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, as promised, we're gonna tell you a little bit more about the personality of Kent and Grua. He was quite an adventurer.

Like you said, was just in love with nature and in particular the Grand Canyon. And that river, his nickname was DeFactor. If you ever read anything, you're going to see him probably called Kent and DeFactor Grua. And that was because apparently he was just like this larger than life personality. And like anytime he was a part of larger than life personality and like anytime he was a part of something, he had some sort of influence on it. He was a factor and thus the factor.

Yeah, we'll put. He was also very fond of pot and drinking liquor. While he was working and on the trail and after I guess after rowing for the day, sitting on a beach, you probably light up what one might call a spliff. Back then it probably be a doobie. For sure and I'll bet it just gave you a headache instantly. But he also was a little kind of fashion conscious, you could say.

Anna points out that he would wear cut off Levi's that look cool, especially if you're barefoot and you have long hair and you're stoned. But if you're like fall in the water, it takes like a week for those things to dry out. So long story short, Ken and Grille was very frequently chafed on the inside of his thighs. Right. He was not at all a man. He was five foot six, but you know, had an outsized personality and sense of adventure, I guess. There was one story that he was on one expedition and they drank all the booze. So he hiked all the way out of the Grand Canyon to go get more booze and hike back in. Yeah. That's just one story about Kent and Gru. But it definitely drives the point home like he liked booze,

but he was also willing to physically exert himself at the drop of a hat. So he was a tough dude essentially, but he was also supposedly really kind and gentle with the tourists that he took down the river. He was well known for that, but he was also known for being very opinionated about how the river should be navigated, how an expedition should be run, and so he would be more than likely to butt heads with some of the other river guides that he worked with. But they didn't rub off toward the passengers, which I think makes him a

pro, I'd say. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we're going to build up sort of story-wise to the record-breaking river run, but he did some pretty remarkable things before that. One of which was to hike the entire length of the Grand Canyon from Lee's Ferry to Grand Wash Cliffs. He read a book in 1968. It was a backpacker named Colin Fletcher who did that hike, well sort of, we'll see. The man who walked through time was the book and he said, I'm the first person to hike the entire link to the Grand Canyon. And Gru was like, no, you didn't. You hiked the canyon within the national park system,

but buddy, that ain't all of the Grand Canyon. That guy went, what? So I'm gonna do it, and he did. He tried a couple of times. He tried the first time, and this is 277 miles as the crow flies. Yeah. Like I mentioned before, when Fedarka did it, hiked 750 miles because he can just walk a straight line

You're there's things you just can't navigate around so you're having to hike You know three times as much Or at least two and a half times as much as the length of the canyon to complete that hike It's not and he did it first time he tried it remember I said he liked to run around barefoot and cut off Levi's? Oh, yeah. Well, he realized he was going on a very long hike. So he went to the trouble of buying himself some leather moccasins to hike in. Those lasted very short time before he started wearing through him and actually cut his

foot on a cactus, started to get infected. He's like, I should probably stop now. That surprised me that he would, I mean, that's a mistake. Yeah, I think he really knew that that wasn't gonna work, you know? I don't know that that's true. Like, he was capable of making mistakes for sure.

He's also capable of evolving his opinions and understandings about things. And he wasn't so dumb that he kept going until he died. Right. You know, that was 1972, I think. Yeah. Four years later, he's like, I'm going to do this different. I'm going to not only wear work boots instead of, um, Markisons, smart move out of the gate. Yeah. He scouted the whole route in advanced and hid, um, supply caches along the route so that he could travel as light as possible. And that's when he set out that second time. That's when he was successful hiking almost 600 miles

is the route that he took. Wow. That is amazing. I think he, if you average it out, he was averaging like almost 17 mile a day clip, which is super fast. I mean, when I've done hikes and I'm really hauling it, if I get 10 miles in a day, that's like a really long, hard day. And he was in the Grand Canyon arduous conditions in the 70s when gear was not like it is now and averaging close to 17 miles a day, which is nuts. It took him 36 days to complete the whole thing. I can barely get 17 miles in a day in the helicopter, let alone hiking. So yeah, 36 days to hike almost 600 miles. And this is,

again, it's not a straight line, it's not flat. Like there is up and down and over and it's, what he did was very significant. He became the first person on record at least to have hiked the entire length of the Grand Canyon, not just the National Park, the whole Grand Canyon. And so whenever you're hearing about people boating through the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River, what they're talking about is that same link, the whole geographical Grand Canyon from Lee's fairy to Grand Wash Cliffs. Man.

All right, so let's talk a little bit about that river run that you just described. You know, from point to point, the very first expedition down that Colorado River was by a guy, a silverboard veteran with one arm named John Wesley Powell in 1869. It took 98 days at that point and pretty much wrecked the crew. I mean, it was by the time they got there. They were starving. It was a very, very tough ride in 1869. Can I just say one thing about that expedition, Chuck? Sure. Three of them, three members of the expedition said nuts to this, like we're giving up

and set off on foot and were never heard from again. And they left two days before this expedition finally reached its destination. They just didn't know that they were close to the end and they left two days before this expedition finally reached its destination. They just didn't know that they were close to the end and they left and died. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's sad. Yeah, but they were the first Europeans on record to have circumnavigated the Colorado River through the entire Grand Canyon and it was a big deal. Yeah, that's like the old mine in Apocalypse now. deal. Yeah, that's like the old line in apocalypse now. Never never get off the G.D. boat. Right. The gosh darn boat. In the case of apocalypse now, it's because there might be a tiger in the jungle. Right. So I saw also that this was considered the last voyage of discovery in North America.

There was a big deal that John Wesley Powell and his group did this. That's right. Then in 1949, there was a guy named Ed Hudson, who was a pharmacist, who made a run in a motorboat. So it was obviously the fastest at the time at five days and 10 minutes. And then all of a sudden motorboats and regular boats started attempting these speed runs. People were trying to break previous records depending on how adventurous you were, I guess, depends on whether or not you wanted to use some motor. But obviously the burrays are off to the people who didn't use the motor.

Yeah, I'm sure it was still hard, but it ain't like Patelin, you know? No, Ed Hudson, the pharmacist in 1949, he did it in like five days and 10 minutes using a motorboat. Jim and Bob Rigg, I think two years later, said nuts to the motorboat. We're going to not only go down the same path

that John Wesley Powell did in 1869 that nearly killed him, without a motor, we're going to break Ed Hudson's motor-based record. And they did, actually. Yeah, 52 hours. And this was at a time in the 50s when like a tourist trip, that same tourist trip, and a non-motorized boat would be about three weeks. And of course, they're not trying to break a record. They're trying to show everyone a nice good time. Right, exactly. Probably fairly relaxing. So it's not. Yeah. But some people did like the slow train. The longest attempt was in 73 and that took 103 days. That's a little more of my speed,

I think. So we need to say something about the Colorado River as Kent and Grua knew it. He came along in, what was it, 1968 or 69? Yeah. 100 years exactly after John Wesley Powell, Kent and Grua came along and took up life on the Colorado River through the Green Canyon. But unfortunately for Kent and Grua, that was six years after the Department of the Interior created the Glen Canyon Dam upstream of the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River. And the Colorado River was tamed. That's the best way to put it.

It was up to the, I think the Army Corps of Engineers or whoever runs the dam there at Glen Canyon to decide how much water the Colorado River had. And before that, it had been considered the wildest river in America because the snow melt from the mountains upstream, depending on how much it snowed that year, and then how much how high the temperatures rose and how quickly they did that spring that river could turn wild in an instant because so much water would come down from the mountains and it would just flood the Colorado River including some of the side canyons and it would make it nuts. And Kent and Grua and he this too, came along after that ceased. Now the Colorado was relatively mild.

Yeah. If you're going to go down a river and you want to see how challenging it might be as a rower, you're going to look at what's called the gradient in feet per mile. Obviously, the higher the gradient, the faster that water is going to be. A pretty wild river can have a gradient between 25 and 60 feet per mile. The Colorado River has a gradient of 8 feet per mile. So the actual, you know, where the river sits and the land beneath that river, that gradient isn't too crazy. It is the steepness of the sides of that canyon is what makes it crazy, because like you

said, when that stuff flash floods and it hits the Colorado River, it can move boulders, it can create waves and when that water hits the still water, it can create a wave like 20 to 30 feet high. Yeah, for sure. In a river. Yeah, and one of the reasons why stuff like that happens is because all that debris and Boulder create these natural dams on either side of the river, narrowing the channel, speeding up the water, and once you have fast water running into slow water, all sorts of crazy stuff happens. So and once you have fast water running into slow water, all sorts of crazy stuff happens. So, just speaking geographically, the Colorado River shouldn't have rapids, but because of its situation in that stretch

of the Grand Canyon, it does. It has some pretty cool rapids. And Kent and Gruin knew how to do this. Like his job was to take people through these rapids down this stream, but again, the river that he was on was not the same river that John Wesley Powell had been on because of the damn. Yeah, absolutely.

So you wanna talk about the first attempt in 1980? Yeah, I mean, successful. A tip makes it sounds like you didn't do it. He actually did set a speed record in 1980. I think, how fast was that one? He did it in 46 hours and 56 minutes. He beat Jim and Bob Riggs, 1951 record which had stood for almost 30 years.

Yeah, so he breaks the record and you would think, you know, a lot of people would say like, all right, I did what I attempted to do, broke that record, but Kitt of people would say like, all right, I did what I attempted to do, broke that record, but Kitten Gruehl was like, man, that river was not fast that day, that couple of days. And I can do this a lot faster. And he became sort of, I don't know about obsessed,

if that's the right word, I don't know if someone who smoked that much weed can get that obsessed or worked up about anything. But he said, I know I can do this if that, it doesn't matter how fast I'm rowing, unless I have a faster river just from the natural conditions, then I can't break that record.

So I'm gonna wait until the conditions are right and that happened in 1983 because of El Nino, at the time at least the most extreme El Nino that had happened to that point, caused a ton of snow, all that snow melts at some point. And all of a sudden, you're going to have flooding such that if you're measuring like a river flow, you measure it in cubic feet per second. The Colorado River through the Grand Canyon averages about 12,000 to 15,000 cubic feet per second. And that summer, that June specifically, I saw anywhere from between 70,000 and 100,000

cubic feet per second, which is, you know, up seven to 10 times as fast. Yeah. That is a lot more water. Number one, it goes a lot faster and it changes the river. Like the river that he was used to, the rapids he was used to, the features that he had to circumnavigate during a normal um, boating trip down the Colorado. It was not there. They were different. They were altered by this huge influx of very fast moving water.

And so what had happened as Kevin Ferdarco points out in the emerald mile that for the first time it probably for the only time in his lifetime, Kenton Grua had a chance to take on the Colorado River, the same river that John Wesley Powell took on in 1869. This stuff did not happen. It caught the core of engineers by surprise so much so that they to keep the lake Powell from topping over the Glen Canyon Dam, they were putting up plywood barriers. That's how like unprepared they were for this incredibly historic flooding. I think there was like 2600 miles of shoreline in Lake Powell, the reservoir that's behind the dam. The reservoir was

rising a foot a day. That's how much snow melt was coming down. And so they were just releasing, according to Arizona Central, up to half a million cubic feet per second in a release at a time. So this was flooding the Colorado downstream, but it's the only option they had to keep the dam from breaking or from being toppled and, you know, the water coming out of control. So it was a wild river again, all of a sudden, like it had been before and Ken grew was all about that. He was all about it. So I say we take a break, and then we'll come back and let everyone know what happened on June 25, 1983. Discover the heartwarming and hilarious world of sibling connections on sibling revelry with

Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson. You might be asking yourself, what is sibling revelry? Yeah, well we just made it up. They'll have some laughs and maybe inspire some people along the way with universal tales of what it's like to grow up with brothers and sisters. We're full blood siblings, the only full blood. And our family, well, not in the world. I mean, no, in the whole world.

That's just it. Dive into family tales and explore the human mind with guests like Joel and Benji Madden. And it's fun because we've decided to open it up, you know, to really like all kinds of different siblings. And it's going to be an awesome season. It's more than a podcast. It's a celebration of the ties that bind us. Listen to sibling revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or

wherever you get your podcasts. Fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all. And for millions of Americans, there is no greater unknown than what to do when faced with an Alzheimer's diagnosis. My name is Dana Torito, and my podcast, The Memory Whisperer, takes a closer look at Alzheimer's disease and those affected by it. Like many of you, I've experienced the disease firsthand. I've been an advocate and care partner for decades and have written extensively about the subject. Each week, I'll talk to people who've been personally

affected by the disease and learn how they cope with it. Folks like TV personality, Lisa Gibbons. Action is the antidote for fear. And nursing dementia researcher, Dr. Feyron Epps. We no longer can be silent. We have to be what we have to share, our experiences, so we can help each other and learn from each other.

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you get your podcasts. Okay, so, um, Ken Gruis says it's time like that 1980 record that I broke that I'm not very happy with. I'm now going to break that record. I'm going to take this river like I know it can be taken. And he went to his friend Rudy Petshek, who was at the time 49. Kenton would have been 33. Yeah. So Rudy Petshek was like old. And then Steve Ren Reynolds was the other guy that they they brought on. So the three of them decided that they were going to take the emerald mile out onto the Colorado river. And they said, 35th, by the way. Okay.

Ren. Yeah. Okay. And they went to the park service and said, Hey, we'd like a permit. We're going to take the emerald mile down the Colorado river. It's nuts right now, isn't it? And the park service said, no, you're not going to do that. Yeah, you got to get a permit to do something like that. They said, no, like you said, they're trying to keep people, no, they're trying to keep people off the river.

And as we'll see later on, they even had a ranger station on the river. I guess it was Benjamin Bratt probably telling people to get out. What? You never saw the river wild? No, it's at the most Bruce Willis where he's a cop and a boat. Nope. Okay. River wild was a Meryl Streep and David Strathren, Kevin Bacon and John C. Riley. I wasn't Kevin Bacon like a crazy homicidal serial killer is stalking these guys. I'm not a serial killer. He's a bad guy though. Okay.

It's a really good movie. I highly recommend it. But Benjamin Bratt is a ranger that literally does what this other ranger did is like station down before the bad rap had saying, get out. You shouldn't be here. I just want to shout out my favorite Benjamin Bratt fact that he was born on Alcatraz during the American Indian movements occupation of Alcatraz.

Did we talk about that? Yeah, in our Alcatraz episode. And did not remember that. We'll also talk about it in our forthcoming Benjamin Bratt episode. We have a done one on Alcatraz, have we? Yes, dude. You sure? I believe we did one on Alcatraz itself and the escape from Alcatraz.

Yeah, I do remember escape from Alcatraz. The escape from Alcatraz one by the way was a good one. All right, so he doesn't get the permit. So he goes back to Martin Litten, his mentor, and he says, Hey, man, you got a lot of pull around here. I wonder if you could help me out. And Litten said, sure, I'll call up the Grand Canyon, National Park Superintendent, himself, Richard Marx,

KS, not X. No. Did we gonna make a Richard Marx joke? No, it just thought it would be great if it had been B-Richard Marx like in his life right before he hit it big. Right, and he said, he said, you know what? It don't mean nothing. And he went, hey, that's got a nice ring to it. Yeah, that's right. Sign on the dotted line. Sign on the dotted line. That's a good song.

It is. So, Marx said, all right, here's what I'll do. I will call up the Rangers out there on the river tomorrow. And I'll get back to you. He didn't get back to them. And so Litton and Grubo said, I guess that means we have permission, right? And so they took off on June 25th, 1983. Yeah, 11 p.m. they took off. I guess under the cover of darkness maybe, that's the only reason I can think of that they took off so late. Yeah, or maybe they just timed it so they've finished at a certain time or so. I don't know either, but they did take off just before midnight.

The way to heat maybe? Maybe, that's a great one. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. know anyway the fact is this They were paddling for hours in pitch darkness Because the canyons the canyon walls of the Grand Canyon can prevent the sunlight from hitting inside the canyon at the river level During the day this was nighttime and so the canyon walls were preventing level during the day. This was nighttime. And so the canyon walls were preventing any moonlight

from even getting down. So they were rafting on a river that was flowing at about 10 times its normal rate, if not more, in the dark without the benefit of using their eyes. So they were having to like literally feel the vibrations in the ores to tell what was coming up in which way they should go during this nighttime paddling event that they did. Yeah, and I mean, to be sure, these were some of the most experienced people to undertake something like this, but that is still like, it just can't be overstated

what a accomplishment was just to make it through that first night. Yeah, especially doing it stoned wearing nothing but co-health leave us. So they would paddle, like I said, three of them, so they would paddle for about 15 to 20 minutes at a time because it's really rigorous, tough stuff that they're doing. Yeah.o went up first and paddled first, and they would switch off when they would get tired. They would rest, take little cat naps when they could, when they weren't paddling, obviously.

And things were going pretty good for the first few hours. And then they reached a series of rapids called the Roaring Twenties, that is really tough in particular with all this water because there's something in rivers called, I would assume people know it in eddies, but you might not. Eddies is like a very calm part of a river usually off to the side where the water is flowing back upstream and like avoid in the current.

Usually it's like blocked by a big rock or something and it's a good place. Usually that's where you're, if you want to off and get out of the boat and get on land, you'll pull off to a nice little calm eddy. But you can also have an area where the eddy meets the rapids. And that's called an eddy fence. I saw it described as confused water. It doesn't really know which way to go, so it's going everywhere at once. And it's just really, really unstable water. It doesn't really know which way to go, so it's going everywhere at once,

and it's just really, really unstable water. And these ed defenses were all over the place, just like, not crushing literally, but just like wreaking havoc on their boat in this trip they were taking. Yeah, because the water, the boats, going the direction of the water, and if the water all of a sudden is going multiple directions, that gets telegraphed to the boat, and if the water all of a sudden is going multiple directions, that gets telegraphed to the boat, and it makes it very difficult to move around, right? Yeah, but they did get through that part, obviously. They did, and again,

they're going through the roaring 20s at night in pitch darkness, just FYI, I just really want to make sure everybody keeps this in mind. The other thing is, is they were taking these rapids wide open. They weren't stopping to scout what was ahead and then getting back in the boat and then taking it with full knowledge of what was coming up. They just took it as it came essentially.

Which is, again, really nuts considering that this was not the river that they were used to. It was the swollen, wild, raging version of the river that they were used to. It was like the Colorado on bath salts, basically. That's what they were taking on in the dark without the benefit of eyesight. Yeah, I think steroids is overuse bath salts. Yeah, if you really want to drive the point home, use bath salts. No, don't actually use bath salts in your analogy. They get through this on, you know, experience, on instinct.

Like you said, feeling their way, the sun finally comes up. They're flying down this river. They're going through, you know, all kinds of crazy rapids, huge whirlpools, these big standing waves that I talked about that got up to 20 feet. I think one of the guys even said, Petschick said some of them were like three stories high at times. And they finally get to Crystal Rapid, which is at mile 98. And they were worn out like super, super tired, obviously. And that is where Benjamin Bratt was stationed. Yeah.

Park Ranger, Benjamin Bratt. And he said, hey, you shouldn't be paddling through here. And also, I was born on Alcatraz. That's a great Benjamin Bratt impression. No, he was stationed there to get, if there were any tourist boats that had somehow already been on the water, which they shouldn't

have been to begin with, because they were denying permits. Yeah, I didn't understand that part. I guess there were some already out there, maybe, because especially if some of them were taking three weeks. Oh, God, they didn't want to ruin people's vacation. Maybe, but he was there basically to say, hey, pull over. All of you tourists get out and hike out and boat captain and whoever else, you're going to have to take this thing

down the rest of the way, like by yourself. Yeah. I hope you don't like company because T.S. for you. That's right, but what happened with this group? So they didn't, one of the things that caused Benjamin Brad to be stationed there was that a commercial rafting outfit had gotten overturned. One of the boats had been overturned at this under normal circumstances, very tough rapid

called crystal rapids. And one person had died, I believe a passenger had died. This happened like 11 hours before the Kent and Gru and his group came along in the Emerald Mile. They were totally out of contact with everybody, so they had no idea this happened. And so the reason Benjamin Bratt was there was because it was so dangerous what they were coming up on that literally their lives were in danger. So when they came upon the park ranger, Benjamin Brett,

they pretended they didn't see him. What was cool is, look over there on the right, guys. Exactly. What was cool about it is that this park ranger had been a river guide himself. He immediately recognized who was in this boat, and he pretended he didn't see them.

Yeah. So that everybody could just kind of go their own way and just pretend like they hadn't seen one another, and these guys could continue on because he said he knew immediately what they were doing because of the river condition. So he just let them go their way. He kept an eye on them as they went further along though and hit that crystal rapid, and he witnessed their boat being overturned very violently.

Yeah, this is when they hit one of those, the one that Petchick said was two to three stories high. Flip that thing at the top. Everyone ends up in the water. Kitten Grua was pretty okay and Petchick was pretty okay. The boat got banged up a little bit. I think it lost some of its ball post. A chunk out of the stern, but it was still very much operational. Reynolds was injured. I think there was a head injury. As a result, he did not do a lot of at least tough rowing after that. I was surprised he did anything at all. I figured be like burnt rentals in deliverance at that point to sort of laying down in the middle of the canoe uh... but he apparently would row some uh... calmer parts

uh... and i guess take that with the grain of salt because i don't think any of it was very common uh... grew in petchick said all right it's the two of us basically doing the tough tough rowing in a hundred degree heat. And it was, it was real tough stuff from that point on. It was already tough, but it was really, really tough, but they decided not to quit. No, they didn't.

And that's really significant because again, their boat overturned. Reynolds was injured. They were thrown out of the boat, violating whirlpool, got sucked under, all three of them miraculously got free, and then they had to turn the boat back over upright again, get back in it, totally exhausted at this point and decide to continue on. They did. That was just absolutely nuts. Problem is, as they knew the park range had seen them them and so they

were kind of all worried about possibly losing the river guide licenses because again this was a wild cat river run. It was not sanctioned. It was technically illegal. But they continued on. They said we've made it this far and they kept going and gave themselves I guess a period where they're like okay okay, this is not working anymore. We're all too exhausted. We need to take some rest. Let's just take an hour and we'll all get some sleep and then we'll wake up and be refreshed and it'll be like starting over again and new.

Yeah. Of course, what happens is they sleep for three hours, almost woke up in a panic because they had just almost killed know, almost killed themselves. They're exhausted and now they're thinking like, now we've jeopardized this record that we're trying to get. We don't know if the river will ever be this fast again. Right. And here we slept for three hours.

So instead of taking their ball and going home, taking their orren going home, they said, now we gotta go extra fast. So at mile 239, they get out another set of oars and someone said, where did those even come from? And Grua said, they were at our feet the whole time, dumb, dumb. And they started rowing two at a time. So they were hauling, but rowing together, which obviously, you know, I don't know if that probably doesn't double your speed, but you're going much faster at that point. Yeah. So that was, they woke up it, I guess, about one because they took that rest at 10 and

accidentally slept for three hours. So actually, yeah, one, I had to count it out on my fingers for a second. And then they kept rowing. And another 10 hours later, they finally reached the end. So they had just been exerting themselves almost constantly for 36 hours and 38 minutes. That's what their final time ended up being. So they just destroyed Grue was previous record-setting run. Thanks to the river being so nuts. Yeah, he did it. The three of them did it, rather. And he did not lose his license.

He was worried about that. So that's the good news. Apparently, he got a $500 fine, which he couldn't even pay. So his lawyer negotiated a community service, which he may or may not have even done. And like you said at the very beginning of this, he wasn't a big braggart about his own accomplishments. They kind of spoke for themselves to him. So he didn't really, you know, it's not like he started making the talk show circuit or anything like that. But

of course, word was going to get out people talk and he will always remain a legend of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River because of the speedrun. Yeah, he died at 52 in 2002 and he died while he was riding his mountain bike. And I couldn't find out how it was like that sounds like he went over a cliff or something. Apparently, he had torn his aorta somehow. They're not sure how, but he was found laying beside his mountain bike dead. And his wife, I believe his third wife, Michelle Grua, said, this is exactly how he would have wanted to go. So I mean, if you're going to be like a rugged outdoorsman and you die on your mountain bike, that's not the worst way you could go.

No, it seemed like he was just laying there on a side and they said it looked like a peaceful position. So there is speculation that he may have known what was going on and just lay down to be with the woods. Right. To be with the woods. That's the new euphemism for it, isn't it? I guess so. Michelle Gru also wrote in a memoriam, and Boatman's quarterly, I think, that he had mellowed out some a lot, actually, in his later years.

Still lived the life that he lived, but he became focused on being a dad. I think he had three or has three kids and And it was just from what I can tell an all-around interesting neat dude Yeah, I mean he started a conservation group didn't he? He did called the Grand Canyon River Guides That's right which is still around today and

That Grand Canyon Dorees was sold to an existing outfit called Ours, which gives Dory tours down the Grand Canyon still today. Tempting. It's time to be too. And then I was like, again, 17 days is a little much. And also, do I want to perish in the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River and I decided now I don't You could just be with the woods. I just rather stay locked inside my house You got anything else? No, I got nothing else

I just know that that's one place you will not crash a Dory into a boulder is in your house Definitely not. Yeah, well since I said not, that means it's time for listener mail. Oh, this is cool. This is from someone who's grandmother had a nice little, what do you call him, a pneumonic device. Yeah. Yeah. For when you want to remember something?

Nymonic. You're thinking of pneumatic. No, for when you want to remember something? Numonic. You're thinking of pneumatic. No, numonic. Hey guys, stuff you should know is a staple of my daily commute. Truly enjoy learning about common and obscure stuff and you've helped our trivia team, the Mircats. Claim victory on more than one occasion. Kill Mircats.

For sure. Anyway, just finished the episode on the wreck of the coast of Concordia, and thought I'd share the way that my grandmother taught me how to remember which direction was Port versus Starboard. She would say, there's not much port left in the glass, like Port Wine. Port side being left. Port left in the glass. Interestingly, she was not a seafaring woman, nor a lover of port.

I wish I could recall the context of her telling me this even, but it's always stuck with me and I thought you might give a kick out of that. Uh, thanks for all the information and laughs and that is from Aaron. And I wrote Aaron back to see if I could get, uh... A report? No, grandma's name, but I didn't hear back. So let's just say grandmother to Aaron. Okay. Intribute.

Yeah. And? Okay. Is that Aaron with the A A or Aaron with the E? E R I N. Thanks a lot, Aaron. That's a good one. It's as at least as good as mine that I came up with.

But, there's four letters in both poor and left, I think. Oh, that's good too. That's what I remember. So apparently the system works. Yeah, agree. Well, if you want to be like Aaron and improve or try to improve upon our mnemonic devices, we love that kind of thing.

You can send it in an email to StuffPodcast.com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hi, this is Shannon Dordy, host of the new podcast, Let's Be Clear with Shannon Dordy. So in this podcast, I'm going to be talking about marriage, divorce, my family, my career. I'm also going to be talking a lot about cancer, the ups and the downs, everything that I've learned from it. It's going to be a wild ride. So listen

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