The World About Us

The Great Unknown (4x11)

: 12, 1970

Grand Canyon by Kayak and Raft 'We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown. We are three-quarters of a mile in the depths of the earth. What rocks beset the channel, what falls there are, we know not.' The words are those of John Wesley Powell who, in 1869, became the first man to navigate the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. A hundred years later a dozen of the world's top canoeists, backed by three rescue rafts, retraced Powell's voyage into uncertainty. And though for them the dangers were no longer completely unknown, they were still real enough: 250 miles of river studded with over 200 rapids, some with great breaking waves up to 20 feet high, others with vast whirlpools that could suck down both man and kayak: this at the bottom of a canyon up to eight miles wide, over a mile deep - and from which escape was virtually impossible.