Yangtze River Adventure |
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DAVE'S LAST DAY On Dave's last day we had to carry him off the raft. The doctor was trying to get him to take more liquids, because he seemed to be drying up. Dave shook his head and said "It's not worth it," and slumped down, probably not regaining consciousness before he died at 11 PM that evening. Why had he taken the chance on an unknown river? He was a young photographer,
and The National Geographic was interested in the expedition's story.
This could have made his career. In the back of all our minds was the
thought that successful completion of the exploration certainly couldn't
hurt whatever else we wanted to do. We buried Dave on a beautiful point of land just before where the Yangtze
cuts through a mountain range, a place we called The River at the Top
of the World, for that People along the river were curious and friendly, running down to view
our seven rafts, bringing tea, carrying small children. Greetings were exchanged, and I have forgotten the phrases, but not the many faces. We began to see people standing on the cliffs and running down to the river banks. Behind them were small villages, two and three story mud brick buildings. Lunch breaks were near a couple of these towns, which were about 20 mile apart. At one stop we were given tea, loaded with yak milk. A small dam with a power house crossed one tributary to the main river
about 2 days above Yushu. The facility was occupied by about five men,
and they had a green house to grow vegetables. They invited us into the
Officials treated us to a tour of the city of Yushu, until then closed to foreign visitors. Much work was being done restoring the old city and the monastery. The priests were practicing a ceremony to welcome the Pachen Lama, the official Chinese version of Tibet's Lama, not the Dalai Lama. At night we attended a folk dance performance and were invited up on the stage and given a round of applause by the audience. Four members left the team at Yushu. On our second morning I was selected to ask Ken to a powwow so that the dissidents could ask him to turn over the leadership to Ron Mattson. They accused Ken of mismanagement and blamed him for Shippee's death, or at least for not calling in helicopters to rescue him. The matter was not up to a vote, Ken said. This was his expedition and if anyone wanted to leave they could. He was going down the river. Later he told me that he saw me standing there, waiting to see which way the wind was blowing, ready to go with whomever was staying on the river. I agreed, saying I wanted to go on with the adventure, no matter who was the leader. The next day we broke camp, with the four leaving on a bus for Chengdu, and Ken leading the rest of the team on to Dege. This is the incident Outside magazine called a "mutiny" in a story with a bias. One could hardly call it a mutiny when four quit. The magazine never did publish a correct version of the events, preferring the distorted view gleaned from interviews with the quitters in a very lopsided version of events. A year later, in a wrongful death suit brought by Shippee's kin, an Idaho court held for the defendants, not believing the testimony of the quitters. But that is another story. Before we arrived in Yushu I had mostly been riding in one raft, rowing every other hour, just for relief. Without me catching on, the oarsman was training me to row because he had made up his mind to quit. When we left Yushu for Dege I had my own 18-foot raft to row. By following Ken and Ron in the whitewater sections, I was able to row some intimidating rapids. Even when I didn't do everything correctly I stayed in the raft and kept the right side up. My overconfidence leaped ahead; I thought I was ready for anything. |
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