Entering Flaming Gorge, we quickly run through it on a swift current and
emerge into a little park. Half a mile below, the river wheels sharply
to the left and enters another canyon cut into the mountain. We enter
the narrow passage. On either side the walls rapidly increase in
altitude. On the left are overhanging ledges and cliffs,--500, 1,000,
1,500 feet high.

On the right the rocks are broken and ragged, and the water fills the
channel from cliff to cliff. Now the river turns abruptly around a point
to the right, and the waters plunge swiftly down among great rocks; and
here we have our first experience with canyon rapids. I stand up on the
deck of my boat to seek a way among the wave-beaten rocks. All untried
as we are with such waters, the moments are filled with intense anxiety.
Soon our boats reach the swift current; a stroke or two, now on this.
side, now on that, and we thread the narrow passage with exhilarating
Velocity, mounting the high waves, whose foaming crests dash over us,
and plunging into the troughs, until we reach the quiet water below.
Then comes a feeling of great relief. Our first rapid is run. Another
mile, and we come into the valley again.

Let me explain this canyon. Where the river turns to the left above, it
takes a course directly into the mountain, penetrating to its very
heart, then wheels back upon itself, and runs out into the valley from
which it started only half a mile below the point at which it entered;
so the canyon is in the form of an elongated letter U, with the apex in
the center of the mountain. We name it Horseshoe Canyon.

Soon we leave the valley and enter another short canyon, very narrow at
first, but widening below as the canyon walls increase in height. Here