The Torrence and Fellows Expedition Through the Black Canyon, 1901

A story from Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.

An expedition in 1900 had failed to get through the Black Canyon, but it stirred interest in the proposed tunnel, both in the state and across the nation. Officials in Washington, D.C. directed Abraham Lincoln Fellows to keep surveying, and in 1901 he set out through the canyon with William W. Torrence.

Travelling light

This time they planned differently:

• Timing: they went in mid-August, to have the summer heat and a lower river.
• No boats: in place of them, they took an inflatable rubber air mattress to float on.
• Rubber bags: these kept their cameras, instruments, rope and other gear dry.

On August 12, 1901, they rode the train to Cimarron and set off. They moved quickly downstream, but the rocky shorelines were hard going. Snowmelt was still feeding the river, and in places they had to swim.

Fellows later described a spot he named the Giant Stairway, where the canyon walls looked cut into huge steps, lined with statue-like rocks, turrets and pinnacles. A long, thin needle of rock leaned out from one step, entirely separate from the cliff, and he marvelled that it had apparently stood that way for centuries.

The point of no return

Around noon they reached the place where the 1900 party had given up. Fellows wrote that he felt nervous and afraid there for the first time. He told Torrence that this was his last chance to climb out, on the right: once they crossed the river, there would be no going back. It was, Fellows said, the only discouraging word spoken on the whole trip. They crossed.

The Narrows

Accounts of the trip differ and may have been shortened, embellished or romanticised. What follows comes from the lantern-slide talks Fellows and Torrence each gave to audiences years afterwards.

After two nights in the canyon they reached the Narrows. They worked along the river's north side, then swam to a gravel bar just above the Narrows and below the difficult falls; the bar was later named Foster's Slide. From there they could see only part of the way through, because the cliff bends to the left. They could see the churning foam at the top of Whirlpool Rapid, just past the walls of the Narrows.

Torrence remembered the Narrows as the place where the real trouble started. Huge boulders bridged the stream, slick as grease, and the two men had to take turns climbing on top and hauling each other up. It took them a whole day to cover a quarter of a mile.

Both got through and kept clear of the rapid. Wilbur Dillon, an assistant hired for the trip, had come down a steep side draw nearby, and he had a fire and a meal ready before they went on.

The last stretch

They pushed on for another day, climbing talus slopes, slipping on polished boulders and moving in and out of the cold water. Swimming across one pool, Fellows was nearly speared by a sharp piece of driftwood jammed between the rocks.

Torrence described a section where fallen black rock had wedged between the canyon walls over the ages, piling up into a tunnel through which the river raced in a winding course. He feared they would be sucked under or smashed against the walls.

They came through the swift pools and rapids, passed the Painted Wall, and met Dillon again at the mouth of Red Rock Canyon.

What came of it

Fellows and his surveyors and engineers pored over the canyon for two more years. Their results led to the start of tunnel construction in 1905.

Sources

• National Park Service, "Torrence and Fellows Expedition - 1901", Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/torrence-and-fellows-expedition.htm
• Corrections: the source says "Torrence Fellows was directed" to continue surveying; the rest of the account makes clear the order went to Fellows. Its "poured over" is corrected to "pored over".
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.