My view of the world

I was going through some old slides and ran across a bunch from one of the river runs.
Back in 1951 a guy named Otis “Dock” Marston put together a team to run the Grand Canyon and test the feasibility of running up the rapids in the canyon.
The team consisted of Dock Marston, Edi Juan, Gary cooper, Jimmy Jordan, Ivins Macdonald, Joe Desloge, Guy Forcier, Willie Taylor, Clinton Seymour, Danny Daniels, Rod Sanderson, Frank Poettgen, Dr. John Maxson, who was a geologist who had made a run in 1937.
Mrs. Bill Belknap and Miss Maradel Marston, daughter of Dock Marston, would join them at Diamond creek for the rest of the run to Pierce ferry.
Ivins Macdonald was along as the cook and Frank Poettgen was the radio man.

Not a ride for the nervious types
There were five boats in the expedition, three of which were 19 ft Chis Crafts with inboard motors, Marston’s boat, the “Boo,” had a 158 hp motor and the “Step-in-again” and the “Sweet Chariot” each had a 130 hp motor. The other two were 15 1/2 ft Smithcraft metal boats with Evinrude 25 horse big twin outboards.


This is how all the fashion conscious river runners were dressed.

Jimmy Jordan in the “June Bug”, Named after his wife.
The “June Bug” and the “Twin” had Kapok filled hulls.

The “Twin,” one of the boats with outboard motors

You can see how they carried the extra fuel when they weren’t actually running rapids. Behind the gas there should have been a spare outboard motor.
They left June 8th and arrived June 20th, the trip ran from Lee’s ferry to Pierce ferry then on to Boulder City.
I was told that Jim Jordan got swamped in one of the larger rapids, with the water coming from the bow, over the top of the boat and when he beached it, the boat was full of water and he still had his captains hat on his head and his cigarette in his mouth.

Dock really did spell his name with a k, like boat dock. This was not his first trip and he’s the same man who ran the first jet boats up the river and then back down in 1961.
Gary Cooper was not the actor, he was out of Lake Arrowhead and was the pilot of the “Sweet Chariot”.