"I think Greg said it was about an hour to the top."
Erika considered the information. "So an hour up and an hour down. That's two hours out of the water. What if I die?"
Julie laughed. "Going down shouldn't take as long as hiking up. Although, I guess if we rest for a while at the top, we might still be out of the water for two hours."
Erika rolled her eyes.
Julie pointed toward the houseboat. "That's why Greg's making us leave so early in the morning. We'll get up there and hike it before it gets too hot, and be back by noon."
"I think Darlene has the right idea," Erika said.
"There will be plenty of time during the week to sit around and read," Julie argued.
Max and Darlene had elected to stay behind the next morning. Darlene said she was too fat to climb the hill. The other two couples had argued with them, but to no avail. Darlene could stand to lose a few pounds and the hike was just what she needed. It would do her good. Greg had even suggested they modify the plan to go someplace less strenuous, like some of the rock cathedrals up the Escalante Branch of the lake, but both Max and Darlene had declined, insisting that the two younger couples needed some time together. Julie suspected that Darlene was already absorbed in her book, a romance novel.
"And we're stopping at Rainbow after?" Erica asked.
Julie shook her head. "No, before. On the way."
Since the trip to Hole in the Rock ran right past Rainbow Bridge, they planned on a quick stop to see the huge rock arch as part of the next morning's activities. Rainbow was by far the most famous attraction at Lake Powell, and was visited by almost two hundred thousand tourists every year.
"Wouldn't the hike be cooler if we did it first, before Rainbow?"
Julie had wondered the same thing. "Yeah. I agree. But Greg says if we try to stop on the way back, the tour boats will already be there and it'll be too crowded. Plus we would be all sweaty."
In the summer, large boats from Wahweap and Bullfrog Marinas arrived at Rainbow Bridge by 10 a.m., spilling tourists out and changing the serene atmosphere to one more like Disneyland. Julie had been there at the same time as the big boats before and agreed that it ruined the experience.
Erika nodded as if that made sense. "Are we going to ski on the way?"
"We could, but it would take longer. Ya know, all the stops and everything. Besides, it's no fun to ski in the main channel. It's too rough."
Erika flicked some hair off her face. "I remember Rainbow being huge. How tall is it?"
"I don't remember the exact dimensions; I think around three hundred feet high. They say you could fly a 747 through it."
Erika reached down in the water then ran her fingers through her hair. "Isn't it one of the seven natural wonders of the world?"
"I don't know about that, but I read that before Glen Canyon was flooded, only a couple thousand people ever saw it, not counting the Navajos. It was so remote. The hike down to it was over twenty miles in burning heat. Many of them rode mules. When environmentalists protested the flooding of Glen Canyon, the government pointed out that most of the protesters had never even seen the arch. The environmentalists couldn't even argue. Now, supposedly, over a hundred thousand people see it every year."
"Not as remote as it used to be, huh?" Erika said.
Julie slid over and let herself drop off the kayak into the water. Erika followed. While Erika held on, Julie dove underwater to wet her hair.
Julie swam back and draped her arms over the kayak like Erika. "You'd think the environmentalists would be happy that the area is more accessible. I mean, I understand they covered up some stuff with the water, but at least now, people can get there."
Erika cocked her head. "That's not the way they think. They don't want people to see it, or enjoy it. Didn't you hear? They want to eliminate cars from Yosemite, and snowmobiles from Yellowstone. They want to ban motorcycles from the desert. They use words like undisturbed, and pristine. They think that only they should be able to see it. The rest of us should be satisfied with pictures."
Julie smiled. "Wow, I didn't know you felt so strong about it."
Erika continued, "You know why it pisses me off? Because I consider myself an environmentalist. I'm against big businesses dumping garbage into the rivers, air pollution, and all that other stuff. But the environmentalists in the news are over the top. Shutting down logging over an owl, sleeping in trees, lying in front of bulldozers and trains. They're nuts. They believe we should pretend there aren't millions of people in America. Environmentalists are giving environmentalism a bad name."
Julie laughed. "Ya know, I never looked at it like that. But, when it comes down to it, I feel the same way. I don't litter. I recycle. Aren't I an environmentalist?"
Erika laughed. "Not in their minds. You're a heathen. You drive a car; actually, worse — a pickup. You live in a neighborhood." She gasped and cupped her hand over her mouth. "You eat meat, you sicko. And worst of all, you take hot showers with soap and scented shampoos, every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Don't you know that to be a true environmentalist you have to wear one of those dyed tee-shirts with weird colors, use a blue bandana to tie up your unwashed, uncombed hair, and let the hair grow out in your armpits and on your legs?" Erika wagged her finger. "No. You are not, and never will be, a true environmentalist."
Julie held up her arm and looked at her cleanly shaved armpit. "No, I guess not."
Fred Grainger stood behind the computer technician in the control room at Hoover Dam. The control room was located on the downstream side of the dam just above river level. Fred, the site supervisor, had worked there for twenty-two years. At 53, he was the oldest guy at Hoover. Actually, that was only true if you counted the people who took care of the dam and were employed by the Bureau of Reclamation. There were many others, guides and even a few security guards that were older than Fred. But Fred considered them another group.
Jeremy Rottingham, the technician in front of Fred, stopped typing and turned around. "Just got a down request from California Edison. Want me to turn down Arizona or Nevada?"
Fred's group was responsible for monitoring power needs from locations throughout the western United States and adjusting electricity generation accordingly. Basically, all major dam controls at Hoover were his responsibility. There were two generation plants, one on the Nevada side of the river, and one on the Arizona side, hence Jeremy's question of which plant to throttle down.
"Which one is hotter?"
"Nevada, but not by much."
"Let's take it out of Arizona, then; she carried the load yesterday."
Jeremy made the necessary adjustments with the keyboard. The computer handled the rest of the job. Most of the controls at Hoover had been automated. The technicians set the amount of power that they wanted from each plant and the computer did the rest. The rest entailed adjusting water flow through the penstocks to each generator to determine power output. Penstocks were the huge tubes that carried water to each generator. At Hoover, each penstock was thirteen feet in diameter. Nine generators were housed in the Arizona plant and eight in the Nevada plant. Each generator rose over seven stories high and was capable of powering 100,000 homes. With all seventeen generators running, Hoover could power a respectable portion of the West.