for the final run that would take us out of Lodore Canyon. No doubt it
was a beautiful and a wonderful place, but none of us seemed sorry to
leave it behind. For ten days we had not had a single day entirely
free from rain, and instead of having a chance to run rapids, it
seemed as if we had spent an entire week in carrying our loads, or in
lining our boats through the canyon. The canyon walls lost much of
their precipitous character as we neared the end of the canyon.

A short run took us over the few rapids that remained, and at a turn
ahead we saw a 300-foot ridge, brilliantly tinted in many
colours,--light and golden yellows, orange and red, purple and
lavender,--and composed of numberless wafer-like layers of rock,
uptilted, so that the broken ends looked like the spines of a gigantic
fish's back. A sharp turn to the left soon brought us to the end of
this ridge, close to the bottom of a smooth, sheer wall. Across a
wide, level point of sand we could see a large stream, the Yampa
River, flowing from the East to join its waters with those of the
Green. This was the end of Lodore Canyon.




CHAPTER VII



JIMMY GOES OVER THE MOUNTAIN

The Yampa, or Bear River, was a welcome sight to us in spite of its
disagreeable whitish yellow, clay colour; quite different from the red