Counting Coup along the Yellowstone River

We weren’t even supposed to be here. We should have been up in Alaska running Devil’s Canyon on the Susitna River, or at least that was the original plan. Instead we were on the dusty runway of a little airstrip outside Gardner, Montana, getting ready to run the Yellowstone River in the grand jewel of the National Park system. It was a great run and a worthy substitute for the Susitna. There was only one problem – it was against the law.

An illegal run on the Yellowstone was not something to advertise, and so we’d kept ours secret. In the preceding weeks we had discussed inviting several of our other friends, but in the end to keep the team small, we had settled on our threesome of Rob Lesser, Bob McDougall, and myself.

The run is a gem kept within the fortress of Yellowstone Park. The whitewater stretch is over 50 miles, rushing through the wilderness from the Lower Yellowstone Falls north to Mammoth Junction at the park's boundary. For kayakers, the trick is to avoid being seen getting in or out, or at Tower Junction halfway through the run, the only place where a road crosses the river. If you want to see the park by paddle, stealth is your game.

Late at night we left Rob’s van – without the kayak rack – in an inconspicuous place in a backstreet of Gardner, not too close to the river and not too far away. The license plate was a worrisome problem, a bit too conspicuously displaying Rob's longtime moniker of “KAYAK 1,” which Rob hastily tried to obscure without much success. We dropped it off anyway and hoped nobody would put two and two together. North of town along the highway we camped on the new airstrip, which was under construction and deserted. Hiding the kayaks behind a mound of dirt in case of off-duty rangers, we sacked out in the dust for a short night’s sleep.

I dreamed that night, tossing and turning on the rocky ground. We had overslept. It was starting to get light and we’d be seen for sure if we headed into the Park. With the weird clarity of the sleeping netherworld, I noticed there were dozens of dark forms circling us, all kayakers we knew, huddling around us and asking, “Hey, glad I found you! Heard you were going to do the Yellowstone, can I come along?” There were cars and kayaks everywhere. Rob, McD and I were all urgently going “Shhhhh, will you be quiet?” It was lighter by the second. A van full of rangers pulled into the airstrip, they had seen the boats and were about to bust us....

Then I woke up.

The sky was jet black, full of brilliant stars with the cluster of the Pleiades shining brightly overhead. The airstrip was empty. I shook the dream out of my head and squinted a single eye at the glowing hands of my watch. 4:30am. Time to move. McD was already awake and had nudged Rob into coherence. Climbing out of the sleeping bags, we dusted off the bivy sacks and packed up. A few minutes later we headed toward Mammoth Junction on the highway, hurriedly chewing on granola bars and cheerios. There was not much talking as we cruised into the park, low lights on, holding our breath as we rounded the corner toward the main gate. Nobody. I revved all four chipmunk cylinders of the Toyota and we sped over the bridge toward Tower Junction. On to the Grand Canyon!

Kayaking teams are strange mixtures of personalities and ours was no different. On the one hand, paddlers are strong individuals, each the captain of his own ship working with the river alone. On the other hand, if you’re going to paddle with people in a difficult place, it had better be a close-knit crew. When it works well, a team is the perfect democracy, but when it doesn’t, it's civil war. Our little group was one of those peculiar matches that made a very good team.

McD was a big guy who liked to move along his own path, and at 6 foot 4, wiry and muscular, you weren’t going to get in his way. One of the top expedition paddlers for many years and a long time big wall climber, he had the whole package for weird descents. He was a poster-child for quirkiness though, with mannerisms such as taking pride in his healthful eating (only whole grains and veggies), avoiding all fats and meat. He offset this by stuffing chewing tobacco in his mouth, stealing my chocolate chip cookies, and smoking an occasional cigarette. He reminded me of another pal who always ordered vegetarian pizzas – with sausage. A smooth, cool reserve gave McD a level head no matter what broke loose. It also kept the world at arm’s length, although certain friends were allowed entry.

Where McD was herbivorous, Rapid Rob loved meat and grease. Where McD was reserved, Rob loved to chat. And if McD was quirky, Rob matched him quirk for quirk. He was a homebody who had paddled the globe. Someone who inexplicably got in a dither making everyday decisions but was lucidly clear on difficult rivers. He also was the original “been there, done that” guy in kayaking – been North and South, all the way East and all the way West, with first descents in Alaska, South America, the Himalayas and points between. He had even been to the Park years before and done the first descent of the Yellowstone's Grand Canyon, although the trip through the Black Canyon was aborted due to one of the earliest coups counted by the Park Service. As in many other places in the history of kayaking, Rob helped define the game here, which by the time we showed up on this trip in the fall of 1986, already had a fair history.

Even though it has always been illegal, or perhaps because it has been illegal, kayaking in the Park has an honored tradition. In certain circles, getting caught even has cachet.

A psychiatrist would have a field day interpreting why somebody would want to kayak the Yellowstone River in the Park. As normal people might see it, the kayakers would not only be risking their lives in Class V rapids, but blatantly breaking the law at the same time. Freud would have thought himself lucky to find such death wishing, anti-social cases, and probably would have written a whole book on their dysfunctional childhoods.

So you see, it has been suggested that kayakers are acting out some adolescent rebellion. Arguably, the secretive nature of the run also is a draw with hints of forbidden fruit. We see it more as the natural annoyance of strong individualists chafing against laws that don’t make any sense. Whatever the true source may be, it lies buried deep within the psyche of riverrunners.

But if a kayaker’s mental state is fodder for diagnosis, there’s no question that the rangers have some deep rooted neuroses themselves: a sense of superiority and personal property, of identifying with the larger forces of Right and Goodness, or even (just maybe) the perks of fascist authority.

The simplest explanation though, is that the Yellowstone is a great run, fully within the abilities of good Class V paddlers, and a fantastic way to see an inaccessible part of the park. As for the rangers, well, after all, kayaking there is against the law, so what else are they supposed to do? In the end maybe kayakers just like a good run, and maybe the rangers just like a good chase. Maybe laws don’t really have much to do with it, they only present the arena for each side to count coup on the other.

For the Park Rangers the mere idea of someone putting a kayak on the sacred water raises hackles. Worse than illegal, it is a cross between impudence and heresy. They historically have gone to great lengths to hunt down trespassers and unleash the wrath of the Yellowstone Magistrate Court System. They have gotten their share of kayakers.

In fairness to the Park personnel, on a daily basis they deal with some of the most clueless people in the world. There always is one more rescue of a tourist from yet another self-created disaster. In the park's lore, there have been people gored by bison, impaled on bull elk’s antlers, and mauled by bears. Everything imaginable occurs in Yellowstone Park, as well as a lot of things that are beyond comprehension. To deal with this weirdness of tourist humanity would tax anybody. And try as they might, the noble Park Rangers can not save the people from their own flat ignorance.

Humans are said to be a species that represents the pinnacle of evolution. Our massive brains are filled with billions of specialized neurons, a capability for language and intelligence that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. But if we are the pinnacle of evolution, then Yellowstone is one of the places where natural selection weeds out those who are playing with less than a full deck. Take the mother who was seen leaving a line of Oreo cookies. It extended from near the grizzly, who was rooting in the garbage, across the parking lot up to the picnic table where her family sat, chatting happily among themselves with an infant sitting in a carrier in the center of the table, waving an Oreo. To the incredulous onlooker who asked in disbelief, “What the hell are you doing?” She replied with blank innocence that she wanted her family "to get a good look at a real bear."

So you see what I mean. The Park is beautiful and dramatic, and a place where Nature collides with the raw force of human ignorance. The battle, if less than inspiring, at least is grand farce.

The rangers are subjected to questions that stun the ordinary intellect, so it's only natural they sometimes resort to humor to defend their sanity. Thus, a tourist stands at Artist's Point overlooking the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and asks, "Can you see the canyon from the rim?” With the vast chasm gaping in full view right behind him, the ranger answers: “It depends on which way you're looking."

Near the geyser fields tourists walk past the signs warning of breaking through thin crust. They fall into boiling hot springs. By the canyons, they climb over the railings set up for their protection, past the signs warning of crumbling, unstable rock, and fall off cliffs and waterfalls. They are clobbered by rotten trees, become hypothermic swimming in the ice-cold water, crash into each other on the roads, and start fires that sweep out of control.

Maybe it isn’t the rangers' fault that they Play God in the Park or look upon the tourists as accidents waiting to happen. All but the most sincere of them have a certain kind of superiority, a sense that this lovely place that belongs to all the American People must be protected from the vast cluelessness of these very same American People. And among all these ignorant and clueless tourists, all the most foolish of them, the kayakers hardly stand out as paragons of intelligence. They are just one more group of nuisances in God’s Great Yellowstone. A particularly annoying nuisance because they think they know what they are doing, and what they want to do is explicitly illegal.

There are various strategies for paddling the river and not being seen. These are the tricks of the trade and some are clever indeed. I can’t divulge them here; your imagination has to suffice, because the Park personnel will be looking with baleful eyes upon this manuscript trying to perfect their anti-kayaking routines. It’s worth hearing a few of the stories though, in order to understand the kayakers who plan and execute the run, and the rangers who try to nab them.

Once, several friends headed in to do the Black canyon. Slipping by in the dead of night they were seen by some off-duty rangers - a truck with suspicious kayaks on the top. The rangers knew something was up, turned off their lights, and followed at an inconspicuous distance. Hardly believing their good luck, they silently observed as the kayakers hid their gear in the forest near Tower Junction. It was as if FBI had happened upon Al Capone planning a bank heist and, rubbing their hands in anticipation, laid a trap. When my friends drove back in the darkness before dawn, the feds were ready.

It should never be said that the park rangers don’t have a sense of humor in their own warped way. They sprung their trap so the humiliation was maximized, waiting until one friend had packed up his boat, changed into his kayaking gear, and was squatting down to relieve himself in the bushes. Suddenly, on flashed the searchlights. "Hold it right there!" shouted the rangers. I don't think he could have held it if his life depended on it. They threw the book at him and his embarrassment was complete. To top it off, he was also fined for "littering". With attitudes like that, it is no wonder the kayakers and the rangers take all this personally, even though none of them know the others. The battle goes on with the Yellowstone River as the prize, as each tries to count coup on the other.

On the kayakers’ side, the many victories are silent and must remain so. Even the greatest ones are heard only in whispers, but we relish them: quietly paddling out through the rapids in the dark right under the rangers’ dormitory at Mammoth, flitting like ghosts past the guardians of the American Park System. Hitching a ride with rangers while looking like innocent foreign tourists. In one case a paddler even got picked up by the official Park helicopter itself to complete his shuttle. Wherever there is authority, there are those who delight in tweaking it.

McD, Rob, and I pulled up into the parking lot at the Grand Canyon and quickly unloaded kayaks and gear, Rob and McD hustling out of sight. I drove away and left my car in a distant parking lot, stashing the rack in the trunk, and ran back quickly to where the others were.

Dawn was breaking as we hiked through the forest, the air brightening as we went. High on the Yellowstone plateau the sun comes up early, and its first rays shone down into the forest and rising mist. We hiked through the pillars of dark shadows and shafts of light thrown by the early morning sun, thickets of autumn colors, finally dropping over the rim and into the fog.

Finding a hidden gully, we descended a long, nasty talus slope which led slowly down to the river, sometimes cut off by cliffs. Teetering along with kayaks on our shoulders in a rough single file, rocks ready to roll at every step, we tried not to kill whichever team-mate was below us.

The fog disappeared as we descended. The sun lit all the canyon's multicolored hues - pastel yellows and oranges splashed in grand brushstrokes across the walls, twisting rock formations with dark broken pinnacles. Below, the river cascaded violently down a set of large waterfalls, smashing off the sides of the cliffs.

At the bottom we washed runnels of sweat off in the river. The first few tourists were at the overlook, far above, tiny figures perched along the edge. Around us was evidence that we were not the only ones who had made it this far. There were fishing hooks, candy wrappers, and beer cans, probably some locals from Gardner, or (I have heard it said on good authority) certain off-duty rangers going to a favorite secluded fishing spot with a wink and a nod from their comrades. After all, there are perks for the palace guards. We picked the trash up and stowed it in our boats.

And then we put on the magnificent Yellowstone. The water was clear and running strong, the autumn air crisp. For a time the rapids were easy, with tumbling wave trains and current humping around boulders. Ahh, the scenery! What a wonderful place! The steep-sided gorge was filled with strange monsters of rock, seemingly ready to topple or come to life. It was like paddling on a moon of Jupiter, oranges and yellows and blacks, vertical walled basalt cliffs, whiteish volcanic slopes cascading into the river.

There were several large rapids, one Rob called Osprey Alley. A series of ledges bordered by a low cliff on the right, with osprey nests dotting the trees and several of the wide-winged raptors circling slowly overhead. The river pushed down into the wall and cut sharply to the left. Rob and McD smartly punched through a wide ledge hole on the corner and pulled an eddy. I totally blew the line up top and got slammed all the way to the other side of the river, violently shoved through a turbulent slot next to the cliff. I shared the surging eddy with a matchsticked bustle of driftwood and logs, got out as fast as I could and ferried across the river to the others.

"Nice line," said McD, shaking his head.

The next part of the drop, Rob cruised right down the middle and disappeared into the middle of a hole, flying upward in a huge backendo. The boat shot completely out of the water as Rob looked over at us on the bank, smiling broadly while hurtling through the air upsidedown, completely in his element. “I don’t think I’m going to try that,” I told McD. I boofed the left side and felt guilty about not heading into the meat of the action. It seemed I should be taking my lumps, but I couldn't handle it with Rob's aplomb.

Large mineral hotsprings covered one side of the river, slumped and rounded mounds of whitish orange mud, streaks of blues and greens running through them from the springs. We carefully climbed up into the billowing steam to peer into the mysterious blue-tinged pools. In another place, black cliffs rose straight out of the river, a dark fence risen from the underworld hemming in the current, thousands of hexagonal columns set upright like some strange construction of gnomes or dwarfs smithing shapes in the fires at the earth's core. Further on, we rounded a corner to find geysers bubbling out of the river itself, blowing gusts of boiling water and steam up through the surface. Late in the day, we stopped to camp amidst the willows on a sand bar. A cow moose forded the river just downstream from us, followed by her calf, all legs and bony knees, ungainly and huge.

The next morning, we wanted to get on the water early, moving past Tower junction at dawn before any tourists or fishermen came around. We got a late start. McD kept pushing, but Rob kept pulling things out and repacking them. Finally, McD took off in his boat. I was a little torn in my loyalties, but I could see McD’s point, and so I waited a few minutes then took off too, hoping that Rob would soon follow.

We stopped where we knew we would have to, a rapid just above Tower Junction where you have to scout. Unfortunately, it was broad daylight by the time we got there, about 8 in the morning. 300 feet up and looking right down on the rapid from an overlook, was a person silhouetted against the sky, leaning on the railing and staring at us.

“I hope whoever that is doesn’t tell the rangers,” said Rob ruefully. We ran the rapid, paddled around the corner and under the bridge. Deserted. Not even any early morning fishermen, and we continued downstream into the Black Canyon feeling increasingly secure.

We were scouting Hell Roaring rapid when it happened. A few miles down from Tower Junction, this is the first big rapid that demands you take a look. The water rushes down into a big rock wall on the left, breaks down into a huge pile of white, and flushes between the cliff and a large boulder. It’s an obnoxious, violent rapid. We got out of the boats and pulled them up on the big talus blocks above the rapid, then climbed to a jutting ledge where we had a view.

The noise of the rapid was deafening. As we scouted, a low throbbing beat seemed to expand out of the river, growing from a subtle shaking, getting louder and louder, until Rob said, looking puzzled, "Do you hear something?"

Suddenly, a deep whup whup whup exploded around us and a chopper burst over the rim, circled upstream, then buzzed down the river straight at our ledge.

My first reaction was shock, “The overlook dink must have snitched.” I started down for the boats, hopping off the ledge and over the boulders, for some reason thinking that we should hide them. McD shouted, “Forget it, they’ve already seen us,” and calmly turned to scout.

I climbed back up to his stance with the chopper whup whupping around very low, perhaps 50 feet off the ground. We could see the pilot and another guy through the windows, and there was no doubt they’d seen us. They didn't look pleased.

After the first shock wore off, we decided to ignore them and by the time I got back to Rob and McD they were pointing out the line with the chopper hovering overhead. Leaves and sticks and dust flew everywhere, blinding us and making it impossible to be heard even when we shouted.

Suddenly the chopper veered away over the trees and out of the low canyon. The motor got louder, and then started winding down. “Shit, they’re landing,” said McD. That thought sunk in for few seconds, and Rob said, “They’re going to let someone out to chase us!”

We bolted for our boats with the sound of shouts coming from somewhere in the forest above us. Slapping on the sprayskirts, we pushed off into the river. Only then did it dawn on me that I didn’t know where to run the rapid.

Out of the eddy we went, much closer than we would have liked. The chopper appeared upstream, wheeled around in an arc, and bore straight down on us like a giant weedwacker. We were caught like scurrying mice between the churning rapid and the long arm of the law.

McD was first, taking huge strokes. The powerful current shoved him way left, and he plowed straight into the big wave crashing off the cliff wall. His boat stopped for an instant, violently cartwheeled end for end, landing upsidedown the third or fourth go-round. He flushed into the eggbeater channel between the boulder and cliff, and disappeared. Rob was close on his heels, paddling as hard as he could toward the right to avoid McD's fate. He missed most of the break, but still went into the end of it, cartwheeled violently, and flushed out around the wall. Watching the action as I came down, I had just enough warning to head hard right from maybe 20 yards higher in the rapid, and broke through the end of the hole. It's nice to have probes.

We headed downstream through the runout of the rapid with the chopper in close pursuit. The damn thing pulled overhead and only 30 or 40 feet off the water. The prop wash flattened us and nearly blew the paddles out of our hands as we tusselled through several rapids without scouting.

It is difficult talking below a hovering helicopter, much less kayaking a rapid with your paddle being torn out of your hands. The WHUP WHUP WHUP of the blades was deafening, but even so the rangers tried their best to tell us something important. As best I could make out, it was “zzzzzGRAKK BRACKLE zzzzzTT,” as they shouted incoherently over the chopper’s PA system. A bit mockingly, I cupped my hand to my ear and got blown over by the prop wash.

They hovered over us for some minutes screeching on the PA as we paddled down the river, but the only understandable word I could hear was “KAYAK.” The rest graded into a deafening stream of static. We could see the rangers inside motioning to us with quick jerks of their hands. We waved back cheerfully.

From there on out, it was cat and mouse. We knew we were had, but honor required us to make it as far as we could and not surrender without a chase. And chase us they did. I can imagine the call to action: “Kayakers in the Park!” Horror and dismay!

After following us for some way, the chopper disappeared over the rim, although we could hear it from time to time. First it seemed to be behind us, then somewhere ahead, probably leapfrogging people around. We talked it over and decided that if we came upon somebody, we’d paddle by. If we were caught on shore though, we wouldn’t try to break away. It seemed sensible enough, a combination of civil disobedience and a jail break.

Maybe 15 minutes later, we rounded a corner in a quiet stretch of river and there it was. The Law. A ranger stood on a long cobble bar stretching out into the river, arms on hips, his hat cocked a little to the side, one hand resting on his revolver. He looked like Wyatt Eryp at the OK corral waiting for the Clanton Brothers.

As we came toward him, he coolly gestured with his thumb toward the side, slow and smooth and sure of himself, “Git over here.” We kept paddling and came abreast of him, maybe 50 feet out into the river. “Hey,” he called out again, voice insistent and half an octave higher, “You guys get over here!” We paddled past and headed downstream, still chatting among ourselves without paying attention to him. It's amazing how quickly authority can be rattled. Fists balled up, he screamed after us as we paddled away, "That's it! That's it! You're going to jail!”

Around a corner, we were gone.

The rest of the day went like that. Although we rarely saw them, there were a series of rangers along the trail. We thought we heard the chopper from time to time and hid under overhangs, expecting it to divebomb us any second, and we figured they probably were keeping track of where we were. Down we went, stopping to scout only briefly at various rapids, running things seat of the pants. The ranger we had paddled by hoofed it along behind us, getting far behind while we paddled and quickly catching up whenever we scouted. In the water we would push off as he appeared around a bend just upstream and rush through the rapid.

Late in the day we came to a big rapid. McD climbed ahead up to an overlook, and after a long scout, motioned we should portage around it. It was probably runnable, but we were tired, in a hurry, and decided not to risk it. The river corridor was hidden from the trail at this point, which was up somewhere on the rim. The intermittent cliffs and huge talus boulders shielded us as we groveled along with the boats, getting far above the water and then moving slowly down a series of small cliffs.

Right above the water, just a minute or so from putting back in, Rob turned around and looked back up at me. He hurriedly brought out his camera to take a photo. Self-consciously, I straightened up my helmet so I wouldn’t look like a dork. Just as I smiled for the birdie I heard scraping and rocks falling, then a panting, horse voice growled from behind,

“That’s god-damned far enough guys.”

The ranger’s name was Randy. A nice guy, especially considering he had been running after us all day long. He took down our names and addresses. He brought out his radio and talked with a group somewhere downstream. Then he started asking us about the run. It turned out he was a kayaker too and seemed to think the run was pretty cool, although he couldn’t really say so outright.

It was clear that climbing out to the trail from here wasn't much of an option, so after the formalities of the arrest, Randy agreed to have us paddle to the end of the rapid where several other rangers were waiting. He bid us off with a pleasant good-bye, “Now you be sure to stop or else you’re gonna get in a hell of a lot more trouble.”

Incorrigible to the end, we pulled an eddy just out of sight and discussed the situation. McD said, “We could just keep paddling, I’m pretty sure there’s no scouting from here on out. There’s no way they could stop us.”

Rob demurred. “We’d have to paddle right under the guardhouse at Mammoth, right through the middle of Gardner in broad daylight with the whole Park Service after us.”

McD was persistent. “Think about it, if we keep paddling 'til after dark..."

“Yeah, where? To Livingston?” said Rob, referring to the next town 70 miles downstream.

McD smiled with a far-away look in his eyes, holding his hands up like a movie producer visualizing a scene, “It seems so right, paddling into the sunset. I can just see it, they’d have the Highway Patrol after us, jetboats, the whole shebang. We’d make the national news.”

“Is it worth it?” I asked,

“Nah," he said with a shrug, "they got us, fair and square.”

That settled, we paddled around the next corner and there they were, four rangers waiting for us at a large eddy. Unlike Randy, these guys were cut of a different cloth, sassy and sneering, “Thought you’d get away, didn’t you? So, you want to pack your boats along the trail? Ha! Nice day for a stroll. They aren't heavy, are they? Mind if I toss in a few rocks?”

It was a good five miles down to the edge of the park and end of the line. 45 minutes cruising by boat, or two hours hiking by trail. It didn’t really matter much to me, all paddling would do would get us to the legal endgame faster.

Rob was lame as could be. He didn't want to walk and said in a totally transparent way, “Uh gee guys, these boats are pretty heavy and I, uh, I’m a little, uh, long in the tooth to carry one that far..."

McD's and my eyes met, thinking the same thing: better do something before they made us schlep our boats just to be obnoxious. "Sure we'll hike out." I said, "It’ll take us maybe four hours. Can’t go very fast with a loaded boat, unless you want to help us." We picked up our boats and McD added, "but we could be there in maybe 45 minutes paddling."

That was true, by the way. They'd already radioed in and the judge said he’d come in late and mete out justice that evening. The only question was whether they wanted us to get out in time. The judge or the trudge.

They let us paddle out. Chalk it up as a small victory for common sense.

Forty-five minutes later the park's Praetorian guard greeted us at the bottom, ten or twelve guys joking and laughing. They were in a great mood. The hunt had been hard, but successful, the fox caught and brought in by the hounds. Coup had been counted and it was a great day. They were trying to rub it in, talking loudly to each other as we climbed up the bank. “Hey! Whaddya think helicopters cost, 600 bucks an hour? Lemme see, that's eight times 600..."

After we’d carried them up, the kayaks were taken and incarcerated in a jail cell, behind bars where they belonged. Our paddles joined them as accessories to the crime. Making a show of rattling the keys in the massive lock, the ranger smiled and said, "We'll just take these, and they'll be aaaall safe and sound in here." Looking at them in the jail cell I kicked myself for not bringing a camera. The police hadn't even given the boats their Miranda rights.

We had an hour before the judge appeared, and knocked around Mammoth talking about judicial strategy.

"Maybe we should insist on having a lawyer."

McD said, “The one thing to do is get this out of the park system. It's the crime of the century in here, but nobody outside gives a shit. I learned my lesson down in Yosemite when I took a shower in the wrong place and they hammered me with a huge fine. It's a damn fiefdom here. Don’t play their game."

We went to the courthouse at the designated time. The Judge appeared. He was not in a good mood. It was Sunday evening and he had been pulled away from his supper to deal with insults to the American Park System. We didn’t disappoint his preconceptions, as we appeared in smelly clothes, unshaven and dirty.

They lined us up in the courtroom, the judge sat imperiously behind his bench in his robes. He gave us a lecture about the sanctity of the laws of the United States of America, mentioning the pristine nature of the park, the statutes and administrative rules we had violated. "These are serious matters and must be taken seriously, gentlemen,” he said, the last word bitten off with distaste. He spoke with gravity and pounded his gavel, “By the power vested in me by the United States of America, you are hereby charged with three offenses. Boating on closed waters. Failure to heed a lawful request. And, ah-hem,” he cleared his throat and paused for a moment, “No boating permit.”

He leaned forward and frowned. "You have the right to have this heard here in the Magistrate’s court, or in the District Court of Wyoming. What do you wish?”

One after the other, we said, "District Court."

I could hear the wind come out of the rangers lined up with us. Right at the end, right when they were ready to really give it to us, we’d spoiled their coup.

Maybe they wanted to show how merciful they would be to us sinners, you know, "love the sinner, hate the sin," but we didn’t bite. All the not-so-veiled threats, of paying for eight hours of helicopter time when they were joy-riding around, dive-bombing us, with rangers playing Yellowstone SWAT in the backcountry, seemed a little unfair to blame on us. They could have just waited for us at the bottom, but that wouldn't have been as fun.

On the way out of the Park, we listened to Warren Zevon over and over again on the tape player, “Send lawyers, guns, and money, the shit has hit the fan....”

Our arrest didn't make the national news, but the Laramie Boomerang had a story. There was official condemnation: Mr. Bob Barbie, the Park Superintendent was quoted in fine form, “You don’t go rollerskating in the National Museum of Fine Art.” Rob's quote got more to the point: "It's a great piece of whitewater, but we have a bureaucratic lockout.”

As for our boats and court date, after the initial arraignment, months went by and we heard nothing. I called and left messages with the District Attorney's office in Cheyenne and with the Head Ranger's office in Mammoth. The paperwork was gone. Poof! The case had disappeared and nobody knew anything about it. I left more messages. People said they'd look into it. Nothing happened.

More months went by. I conferred with McD and Rob and we decided it would be nice to get our boats back, come what may. I forged ahead. Finally, after perhaps another dozen phone calls, I traced out the problem.

The District Attorney who had the case quit. The Assistant DA also quit. The replacement for the Assistant DA, you guessed it, had quit as well. Must have been something about the job. The secretary who did the filing left to have a baby and never came back. The Park personnel had other headaches to worry about. And of course, some of them had quit too. In the end, when it came down to it, the crime of the century was just another misdemeanor lost among the murders, embezzlements, and kidnappings the overworked justice system is supposed to deal with. "Boating on closed waters" just doesn't cut it.

Maybe I should have let that sleeping dog lie, but I wanted my paddle and boat back. After a great deal of persistence, we finally got the case resurrected.

One fine day in Missoula, the District Court judge heard the case. The overworked prosecutor had obviously just been faxed the paperwork only a few minutes before, and was busily reading through it at his table. He had bigger things on his mind, as immediately behind him there were two scruffy men in orange suits, handcuffed and in chains, whispering with a lawyer. Three police officers warily guarded them. Several other people waited in the back of the room with other lawyers.

The tone of the proceedings was immediately apparent. The judge squinted down at the paperwork, adjusted his glasses, squinted harder, then looked up with an annoyed frown and intoned, “Can anyone tell me what this case is doing in my court?”

Silence.

He repeated the question. I ventured a reply, “I can, Your Honor.” Respectfully, I explained that we had been kayaking in the park and it was illegal. The Park had been determined to hit us with these charges. We were sorry, but felt the restrictions were hypocritical and unjust. The park personnel claimed it all was for protecting the wildlife, but they let horses, flyfishermen, backpackers and everybody else in and additionally, they themselves had done far more harm joyriding at treetop level in a helicopter for eight hours and scaring every animal within twenty miles of the river.

At that point the prosecutor spoke up. “Your honor, the law says…” and he read the Park ordinances. The judge listened politely and turned back to me. “Mr. Ammons, the law is the law regardless of whether you like it or not. How do you plead?"

“Guilty.”

Bang went the gavel. “You hereby are fined $25 for these misdemeanors. Make sure you never appear in my court again for this kind of frivolity. Next case.”

The same thing happened with Rob. McD’s hearing was last, down in Boise. The prosecutor there was a bit more organized and made McD feel pretty small. But the fine was the same and we all shook our head at the Park Service’s endgame. When it came down to it the case was trivial. And given the immense waste of energy and money the Park rangers had expended, seemed to border on the absurd. Later, McD heard from a friend in the park that 20 people had been involved in the manhunt for us. You can calculate yourself what a day’s worth of helicopter time is, together with the wild chase, landing and taking off, buzzing down the river corridor, and 20 rangers' time. Your tax dollars at work.

A bit later some friends picked up our boats out of the jail cell at Mammoth. By that time the kayaks had languished there, high and dry, for almost two years, locked away in solitary confinement (and never having been read their rights). Fortunately, they remained silent. The ranger who took my friends to the boats asked what the court had done. When told, he shook his head in dismay. “It’s a travesty, just a travesty.”

The travesty of course, just like the ranger said to the tourist at Artist's Point, depends on which way you're looking.

I got my boat back, but a few years later I left it in a canyon up in northern Canada on another misadventure with McD and Rob. C'est la vie.

Now, all this time later, the whole thing seems like a farcical dream. I have a copy of the court summons on the wall of my study. There it sits, an emblem of authority and a reminder of the long arm of the law.

The United States of America

versus

Robert W. Lesser, Douglas Ammons,

and Robert M. McDougall.

Damn, the entire United States of America against me.

You know, I certainly can’t recommend breaking the laws of our country. It isn’t a good idea. Of late, there is a gradual push among responsible kayakers to nudge the park service into opening the river, at least the Black Canyon, which is well within the abilities of class V paddlers. After all, there’s a trail alongside that part of the river that gets plenty of backpacking and horseback traffic. Fishermen ply the waters. Kayakers slip by with less impact on the land and river than any of the activities now allowed there.

There's no resolution in sight though. The park service has long acted as if the Constitution itself decreed the park was not to have kayakers. Motorhomes, yes. Snowmobiles, yes. Tour buses and concession stands, huge hotels, curio shops, vast paved parking lots, but no kayakers.

If we were dealing with this honestly, the rangers wouldn't feed us lines about skating in the National Museum of Fine Art. They wouldn't talk about effects on the wildlife from an activity that has less impact than anything already allowed in the park. Instead, it would be a breath of fresh air to have them slap their foreheads and cry out like anguished bureaucrats, “My god! Don’t we have enough headaches now? More people in the backcountry doing foolish and dangerous things? Can’t they go someplace else?"

But to say on the one hand that kayakers disturb the wildlife, and on the other hand allow every other kind of traffic, including helicopters, seems a bit illogical. I don’t know for sure, but I think if you asked the osprey they’d rather see a few kayakers drift quietly by than be buzzed by a chopper 40 feet off the deck. And I could tell you other stories too, of certain events like dropping relocated bears from 500 feet up, or the ferrying of certain important park personnel to fish at hidden lakes, but that would be digressing...

Undoubtedly the Park Service would be happier if everyone made things simple and stayed in their motorhomes. And if people would just obey the rules then there’d be no kids bareback riding on elk, no gored French tourists, no bears fed marshmellows or inner tubers mistakenly washing over 308 foot high Yellowstone Falls. The Park Service could play God and everybody would be content. Unfortunately, that is a dream which will never come true, because while those staunch men and women uphold the Great Laws of the Land, the mice still play and kayakers still sneak the Yellowstone River in the park.

For myself though, all this was a long time ago and I’ve had a while to think it over. In the years since, a number of friends have asked me to go back, saying, “it's a fantastic run, come on!" and I’ve considered it at length, but refused. I don’t know, I guess I'm just a little older, a little wiser, and I'm not really interested anymore in counting coup along the Yellowstone River.

***