THE WEST
John Daggett, one of the West’s iconic characters, died recently at
age 82, though his amazing feat of body-surfing the Colorado River
through the Grand Canyon 56 years ago will no doubt live forever. Back
in April 1955, Daggett and his friend, Bill Beer, both 20-something
Southern Californians, got the crazy idea of swimming 270 miles of the
cold, pre-dam Colorado River with equipment so low-tech it’s almost
unbelievable: wool long johns, $15 black rubber shirts and 89-cent
rubber generator boxes filled with food and a movie camera. Only some
200 people had run the river before them — and that was by boat — yet
for 26 days the two friends “floated, swam, clanked, banged and dragged
themselves and their water-logged river boxes downriver,” according to
Tom Myer’s poignant farewell to John Daggett in the boatman’s quarterly review.
The adventure remains one of the classic stories of the river, and what
better time to read or reread Bill Beers’ cheerfully titled account: We Swam the Grand Canyon: The Story of a Cheap Vacation That Got a Little Out of Hand.
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