By the time I neared the eddy, everyone else had already climbed up the steep, cactus-lined slope to the vantage point overlooking the falls. Angling my boat, I ferried towards shore, crossed the eddyline and ran my bow up on the cobblestone beach.
By the time I neared the eddy, everyone else had already climbed up the steep, cactus-lined slope to the vantage point overlooking the falls. Angling my boat, I ferried towards shore, crossed the eddyline and ran my bow up on the cobblestone beach.
As if to remind me why we were all here, a large "Danger--Falls 1/4-mile!" sign, painted in faded white letters, rose out of the eddy on a cliff above the pool, catching my attention like a Surgeon General's warning on a pack of cigarettes. Unlike the ever-present dangers of nicotine, however, the falls didn't need to carry a cautionary message anymore. They were destroyed in the fall of 1993 in an act of environmental vandalism even the Monkey Wrench Gang would have a hard time condoning.
This, of course, is exactly why I found myself scrambling up an innocuous, saguaro-filled slope above Quartzite Falls on Arizona's Salt River. At the top was the rest of the party, an odd consortium of river runners lured here by filmmaker Kristin Atwell, 27, who is making a documentary on the life and death of the falls. She had already taken several journeys down the river for her project, most recently with cinematographers Gordon Brown and Allison Chase, each trip adding new insights to the film. This time she stacked the trip with interviewees she thought would add more color to the production: Mark Dubois, co-founder of California's Friends of the River (FOR) and Oregon's International Rivers Network (IRN); Pam Hyde, director of Southwest Programs for American Rivers, a Washington, D.C.-based river conservation organization; Roger Saba, a long-time private rafter from Phoenix. I was here to explain what the falls' destruction meant for paddlers, and my friend Pete Foster, a hydrologist from Flagstaff, Ariz., was here to explain the basics of hydrodynamics.
At the top of the ridge, Paul Atkinson, a cameraman from Channel 8, Phoenix's PBS station, focused on Pam, the falls barely visible in the background. "I feel violated," she said, the tone of concern easily readable in her voice. Atwell, holding a reflective shield, shifted it so a faint beam of light caressed her face. "Not only for the loss of the falls," continued Pam, "but because it happened in a wilderness area. To do something like this defeats the whole purpose of what a wilderness area stands for." Hers was a stirring performance--far more than mine on what the falls meant to paddlers and Pete's on how reversals trap their victims. After Pam's soliloquy, which caused even the neighboring saguaro to bend an ear, Paul Mischud, president of the 150-member Central Arizona Paddlers Club, took the stage, echoing sentiments expressed by others. "It's a travesty," he said, blinking into the lens. "I feel like a part of me is gone."
What is gone is Rocky Balboa's left hook, the Salt's knock-out punch that has caused trepidation for paddlers ever since it was first run. A frothy, white monster that had killed and would kill again. William "Ken" Stoner (also known as "Taz"), 37, who confessed to the crime in December 1994, simply took matters into his own hands to put the beast to rest. While Paul continued, I climbed up to the top of a rock where Roger was gazing intently at Quartzite's remains a quarter mile away. "You used to be able to line your boats down at certain levels on the right, but it was a dicey move," he said, pointing to a pile of boulders. "Otherwise you had to wait in line with everyone else trying to portage." I followed his gaze to see a large quartzite dyke disappearing into the river and re-emerging on the other side. Harder than the surrounding layers of sandstone, the dyke withstood everything the Salt threw at it over the years, from sun-beating droughts to 100,000-cfs floods. But it could not withstand the Hand of Man. Proof came a few minutes later when two rafts rounded the corner, preparing for what used to be the climax of the Salt's 58-mile canyon run. Instead of catching a must-make eddy and beginning an arduous portage--which sometimes took several hours--they followed each other to the right, took a splash or two across their bows and emerged unscathed downstream.
Their runs were exactly what Stoner envisioned they would be like in the aftermath of the explosion. But instead of getting a pat on the back for making the river safer, he was chastised in a wave of public outcry. News reports surfaced throughout the country labeling him an eco-terrorist on par with Hayduke of Monkey Wrench fame. "He was a little reluctant to talk to us, for obvious reasons," said LA Times writer Paul Dean, who hiked with Stoner to Quartzite for an interview. "He had been beaten to death by various media and assumed we were part of the assassination team. He wasn't talking to the media, which is what made him attractive to us."
Once Dean and Stoner made it down to the falls, Stoner explained his rationale. "I did it to save lives," he said. "To make it safer for the public to pass through." He then referred to the deaths the year before of two Californians, Richard Panich and Jerry Buckhold, who tried to run the falls and failed. "That made me want to take the killer out of it," Stoner continued. "Quartzite Falls is a hazard, and has been for a number of years. If I'd thought about it (demolition) before, I wasn't serious. After the drownings, I was serious." He faxed a copy of the story on the deaths to his friend, explosives and hazardous materials expert Richard Scott, who used an $800 cashier's check to purchase commercial binary explosives--inert ammonium nitrate that, when mixed with nitro methane, can create an explosion 30 percent more powerful than gelatin dynamite. At first, even that was not enough. "The first two explosions--28 pounds the first time, 30 pounds the next--there wasn't a whole lot of damage," Stoner continued. "The third was 68 pounds."
The third time proved to be the charm. Subsequent detonations were simply a matter of fine-tuning. "We definitely worked pretty hard to blow that thing up," admitted Scott, one of seven accomplices Stoner brought on board to carry out the task. In all, various members of the "Quartzite Eight," as they were dubbed by the media, hiked in on four occasions, detonating 154 lbs. of dynamite over three months in the fall of '93. With a drought coming to the Salt the next spring, no one noticed the change until March 1994 when a rafter reported the falls had all but disappeared. A portion of a fuse left at the site led investigators to Scott, and fingers soon pointed to Stoner.
"I kind of knew we were doing something wrong, but I had no idea you could go to jail for it," Stoner told Dean. "But I made something safer and lives will be saved. That outweighs the destruction of a natural resource in my mind. We removed a rock, we didn't obliterate a pretty waterfall. Sure this may have taken something away from a very few people who were qualified to run it, but we had a purpose that will benefit people for years to come, and ultimately save lives. And if we're guilty of anything, we're probably guilty of weighing out human life as being worth more than a rock."
To this day, Dean believes Stoner was speaking from the heart. "After decades in this business, I'm a pretty good judge of character," he said. "And he surprised me in that I was initially quite impressed with him. I like the guy. He seemed to be a person of genuine emotions. I'd certainly go down a river with him, and I'd certainly go have a beer with him. The major sense I got from him was that he didn't realize this was going to get out of control and that he could go to jail for it. I don't think he bargained for that. But this isn't the first time in the history of crime, major or minor, that people didn't realize the consequences of their actions."
Although Dean painted an objective picture by reporting Stoner's side of the story (to the point where letters of criticism streamed into the Times), Stoner wasn't ready to deal with the publicity--or consequences of his actions. In fact, after Dean's story appeared in the LA Times, the Arizona Republic picked it up and ran it in Stoner's hometown of Phoenix under the front-page headline, "Ecoterrorist or Hero?" According to rumors heard by Atwell, Stoner reportedly stole it from his construction company's meeting room before any of his co-workers had a chance to see it.
To this day, Stoner maintains he did the Forest Service a favor by ridding it of a potential liability. Forest Service officials, however, aren't so sure. After a similar drowning in Quartzite in the early '70s, the public asked it to correct the problem. "People said the obvious solution was to destroy it," said Pete Weinel, co-author of Tonto National Forest's guidebook to the Upper Salt. "We looked at it and said, 'No, that's not really the solution. The solution is to be careful and be warned.'" Besides, Quartzite wasn't the only rapid that had killed: Island Rapid killed someone in 1973 and Reforma Rapid did so in 1986. Stoner's plan of "doing the Forest Service a favor" might well have backfired. Now that the Salt's main obstacle is out of the way, and fearing increased use in an already fragile ecosystem, the Forest Service issued a permit system for the river a year later, introducing the same logistical problems and paperwork that accompany all permitted rivers. The new permit policy has also created new headaches for private users. Although Quartzite's disappearance makes the run easier, many long-time regulars are now finding they can't get on the river at all. The current filming expedition with Atwell was the only river trip private boater Roger Saba--who has been running the Salt privately for 25 years--could get on last year. "No one I know got a permit this year," said Saba, still perched on his vantage point overlooking the falls. "And all of my friends applied. We used to be able to run it whenever we wanted."
Some suspect that Stoner--who has worked for three different Salt River outfitters--had other motives as well. Outfitters can now make better time by not having to deal with an arduous portage, and some believe it was Stoner's two-day marathons down the canyon, and the frustration and time delays the portage caused, that led to the falls' demise. "He came up with that line of BS that he was trying to save lives, but the problem was overcrowding," said George Marsic of Phoenix's Sun Country Rafting, one of two outfitters running the wilderness section of the Salt. "If there's anything good to be said of it, it served as an awakening for the Forest Service as to the need for a permit system. You used to have up to 20 trips going into the wilderness area at one time, with up to six different parties trying to portage Quartzite at the same time. Now it's regulated." Marsha Blumm of Phoenix's Desert Voyagers, whom Stoner worked for while running trips in the wilderness area, feels the portages weren't that much of a problem. "Our guides knew how to portage and had a system where they could get through in 20 minutes," she said. "That's why we never suspected him (Stoner)." The relationship between Stoner and these various outfitters was not lost on investigators, who beat the streets looking for a connection between the area's outfitters and the culprits only to come up empty handed. Stoner and Scott denied any such connection, and passed polygraph tests to prove so.
One of the main issues, it seems, regarding Quartzite's fall (the working title of Atwell's documentary) is what kind of price tag can you put on the value of wilderness? According to the Forest Service's restitution report, it was $313,000, the amount it figured it would cost to "replace" the falls (which Scott claimed could be done with concrete and reebar for about $30,000). Calling the Forest Service's pricing methods "antiquated," in late 1994 Judge Earl Carroll reduced the restitution amount to $75,000. For those who ventured to the Salt for its wilderness values, it's not that cut and dry. No formula can replace its loss. "Quartzite gave you the opportunity to find out how you dealt with adversity and fear," said kayaker Mike Stamps, a Salt River regular. "It gave you the opportunity to die. And there's no replacing that. When you take emotional experiences away from people, you can't measure what you've removed from their lives."
Just like many of those who decided to run Quartzite, Stoner and the rest of the Quartzite Eight have had to pay for their actions. The maximum sentence for repeatedly blasting in a wilderness area is five to 20 years in jail and $250,000 in fines. James Lewus, who helped on two of the trips in to the falls, received a $6,000 fine and 36 months of parole. For his help in hiking into the falls three times, Michael Meehl received three months in a work-release rehabilitation program, a $15,000 fine and had his truck impounded. For helping with the explosives, Scott was sentenced to 366 days in prison, a $15,000 fine and, along with Meehl and Lewus, is responsible for the $75,000 restitution. The four who made only one trip--Stephen Cortwright, William Kelley, and Chris and Mark Meehl--slipped felony charges by completing 120 hours of community service.
Stoner, meanwhile, who pleaded guilty to Destruction of Federal Property by Means of an Explosive and was due to be sentenced in March 1995, broke his plea agreement by fleeing the country to Australia. After working for various outfitters Down Under, he was picked up by Australian Federal Police in Sydney in April 1996 and was detained for eight months before being extradited back to the U.S. in December 1996--where he faced a 29-count indictment for everything from destruction of federal property to bank, mail, passport and federal home loan fraud. "He clearly made it worse for himself," said Paul Charlton, Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona. "It's a unique case in that it is an individual who was once a professional and who would have probably served out his sentence by now."
Stoner spent the next 11 months in a Florence, Ariz., correctional facility--where fellow inmates adorned him with the nickname "Dynamite"--before pleading guilty to seven of the 29 charges in a plea bargain: mail fraud, bank fraud, interstate transportation of stolen goods, failure to appear in court, passport fraud, and Conspiracy and Destruction of Federal Property by Means of an Explosive. On Nov. 17, 1997, U.S District Judge Earl Carroll sentenced Stoner--who was brought to the courthouse in handcuffs and a green prison suit--to three and a half years in prison (out of a maximum five), recommending he be placed in a minimum security facility. The court is still out on whether the 19 months Stoner spent in custody in Australia and the U.S. prior to his sentencing will be deducted from his term. Stoner was also slapped with $20,000 in fines from the U.S. District Court and another $10,000 from Australian courts, and was ordered to pay $10,000 towards Quartzite's $75,000 restitution to Tonto National Forest. He was also ordered to pay $58,000 in back taxes and return more than $140,000 to banks and other institutions he committed fraud against before fleeing to Australia.
As he left the courtroom, Stoner allegedly turned to Assistant U.S. Attorney Charlton and said, "You won this time." Charlton, as quoted in a story the next day in The Arizona Republic, disagreed. "There are no winners in a case where we lose a great natural resource," he said. "My hope is that there is no next time, and that the lesson learned from this case is to leave the wilderness wild."
"I remember hiking up here with Stoner after he blew up the falls," said Atwell, referring to a hike she took up Phoenix's Camelback Mountain with Stoner in the fall of 1994. "He offered to take me down to the falls to show me how he had blown them up. My mom thought I was crazy to accompany him into the desert, and that I shouldn't be spending my time with an indicted terrorist."
Dusk brought the flickering lights of Phoenix and the mountain's blood red slabs of granite to life as we made our way down Camelback, a lone spire rising out of the city's swimming-pooled suburbs. Despite objections from her mom, Atwell and her father, Salt River guide Bob Finkbine, took Stoner up on his offer and journeyed with him to the depths of the canyon to the scene of the crime. Once there she videotaped his confession in front of Quartzite's remains to help tell the story of what happened.
After we finished our hike, we hopped in Atwell's borrowed Isuzu Trooper and drove to the local Price Club to shop for our upcoming trip. From there we headed back to her dad's house to sort gear and pack coolers for the next day's departure. Atwell's dad had guided with Stoner on several occasions, and even had him over to his house a few times during river guide parties (with a volleyball net strung outside and metal rocket boxes littering the yard, the house looked as if it had just hosted another.) It was at one of these parties that word got out as to who destroyed the falls. "They (members of the Quartzite Eight) couldn't help but start talking about it," said Finkbine, 68, a retired history professor who guides on the Salt and Rio Grande. "We all knew who did it pretty quickly. It's too bad...it caused a lot of problems for commercial trips, but it was a great rapid and I looked forward to dealing with it every time I went down the river."
Quartzite aside, the rest of the river is unchanged. Located in the Upper Salt River Canyon Wilderness Area 100 miles from Phoenix, the Salt still flows unimpeded from Mt. Baldy in Arizona's White Mountains to Roosevelt Lake. Although a Class V-VI kayak run exists on its upper stretch above Apache Falls, the main whitewater run starts at U.S. Hwy. 60 and flows through a quagmire of different political regions, from the White Mountain Apache Reservation to Tonto National Forest and the Upper Salt River Canyon Wilderness Area. During the 58-mile bridge-to-bridge run from Hwy. 60 to Hwy. 288 lie more than 20 rapids rated Class III or above.
At the put-in, we paid our $10 a day user fee to the White Mountain Apache Reservation and began rigging the boats while waiting for the rest of our party. The Salt lapped at each craft as we lowered the rafts to the water. Although we were in the middle of a desert, cold temperatures caused runoff to dwindle and forced us to break out apparel normally reserved for trips farther north. By noon the rest of the group arrived, and I quickly introduced myself to Mark Dubois, the trip's token environmentalist. Dressed in homemade conveyor-belt sandals, cut-off bluejeans and a brown wool sweater whose knitting was coming undone at the shoulders, his attire was about what you would expect from someone who chained himself to a tree for eight days to stop the damming of California's Stanislaus River. While we continued rigging, he hopped in an 11-foot AIRE Super Puma and solo paddled it across the river, his experience evident in every stroke.
That afternoon gave us our first taste of the Salt's rapids and landscape. The canyon's infamous salt banks--orange and yellow sculptures complete with saline springs--showed themselves on river right, as did fields of saguaro cactus, standing like sentries with arms raised high. Protected as Arizona's state flower, many of the cactus reach weights of more than 10,000 pounds--nearly 100 times more than the amount of dynamite used to destroy Quartzite. At camp, perched on a beach across the river from a series of Indian granaries high on a cliff, talk around the fire centered on the river's beauty and its fragility as a wilderness area. "Wilderness is meant to be wilderness," said Dubois. "Some of its danger is exactly what makes it a wilderness. The underlying question is how do we live with nature, and can we live with it as it is? The tough thing to get a handle on is that Stoner was a river guide, and river guides are usually sympathetic to the wilderness. To have river guides blasting away a rapid like Quartzite is kind of an oxymoron. I remember people, river guides, on the Stanislaus years ago going in at low water and chiseling the sharp razors off a rapid called Razor Back, and people were aghast.
"The debate hasn't happened enough," he added, the fire crackling off the canyon walls. "Do we let nature be what it is and live with what's there, or do we put handrails on everything?"
Dubois paused only long enough to reach down and, with the same poise he showed while chaining himself to a tree, brush a scorpion--as if it were nothing more than a ladybug--from halfway up his bare calf back to the desert sand. We would count three more scorpions as our campmates by morning, most of which had burrowed under sleeping pads to escape the cold of the desert night. After Atkinson and Atwell's interview with Dubois the next morning, interrupted briefly by a rattlesnake slithering onto the set, we shoved off to face the Salt's rapids that have remained intact. Rat Trap, Eye of the Needle and Black Rock, all in their natural form, all unmolested by man. As their roars came and went, the current carried us deeper and deeper into the Salt's fragile ecosystem. At one point, while waiting for the rest of the group to catch up, Dubois counted 20 flower species in a patch of ground no bigger than a 7-11 parking lot.
We reached Quartzite the next day on our final afternoon in the canyon. While Atwell finished with her interviews, I climbed back down to the river, pulled on my sprayskirt--dried from the desert air--and pushed off into the river. Quartzite was about a quarter-mile distant, but its horizon line appeared quickly. I tried to envision what used to lay beyond the horizon line, a deadly, churning hydraulic that commanded respect from everyone traveling the river. Then I tried to envision the explosions that rocked the waterfall to headlines nationwide. Images filled my mind. A fuse sparkling at the end. A series of resounding thunderclaps. A vein of quartzite, older than the surrounding desert walls, buckling up and yielding to something stronger than anything Mother Nature had ever thrown at it. A loud roar echoing off the canyon walls, pieces of quartzite flying through the air.
Paddling to the lip, I felt a tingle of anticipation, the same feeling earlier river runners must have felt every time they approached the falls. I have felt this feeling on other rivers when approaching crux moves. A tightening in the stomach, senses primed and ready. Until now I hadn't truly been able to sympathize with those mourning Quartzite's loss. I had never seen it nor its surrounding wilderness. Now my sympathies were flowing as freely as the river. Like waking from a bad dream before things get out of hand, however, I knew the tightening in my stomach was unwarranted. What had once killed without prejudice was now a simple Class III. Before its destruction, I would have been greeted by a line of people portaging on the left bank above the falls. Now the only line came from where the empty eddy met the river.
Pointing my bow towards the right hand channel, I dug in with my paddle and soon found myself sailing through Quartzite's remains, riding a tongue of water to an innocent eddy below. I had done it. I had kayaked Quartzite Falls. But it seemed as hollow as the canyon walls which will never echo with its roar again.
--Kristin Atwell's documentary, Quartzite's Fall, Demolition of a Wilderness, will be shown as a benefit for conservation organizations starting in the spring on 1999. For more information, contact Watershed Productions at (650) 813-9926.