Lava Lessons

I started worrying about Lava three years ago. That's when the Park Service reshuffled its Grand Canyon river permit system, and we were able to move our launch date from "someday maybe" to Summer 2011. A good time: my son would be graduating from Durango High School a month before we put on, and head off to college a month after we took off. A perfect rite of family passage for a family raised in large part on the river.

Grand Canyon honeymoon mystery featured in Ken Burns' documentary

I recently picked up a book for the the winter reading queue that I've been eyeing for a while, Brad Dimock's Sunk Without a Sound.

Dimock is a fine historian and writer of very readable books on the Colorado River and the many characters who have plied its waters. (My personal favorite is his fascinating and fun profile of riverman Bert Loper, The Very Hard Way.)

Sunk Without a Sound tells the story of newlyweds Glen and Bessie Hyde, who in early December 1928 disappeared while on a solo river-running honeymoon in the Grand Canyon.

To write the book, Dimock and his then-wife made the journey themselves in a reconstruction of the Hydes' unusual fore-and-aft ruddered craft.

To this day, the mystery of the Hyde's disappearance remains unsolved, with some strange twists and clues.

A good five-minute overview video of the Hydes' story from the recent Ken Burns documentary "The national parks: America's Best Idea" is available here.

Ed and Bessie Hyde video.