TD, you are correct – the Cheat Canyon descent was in the mid-1970’s and protocols on leashing paddles have changed a lot since then. No doubt that was largely due to the accumulated damage from entanglement misadventures that did not turn out as luckily as mine: going through rapids head first while trapped supine underneath an occupied raft was not fun and I was fortunate to be wearing a helmet and that the gauge level was high enough that I did not get keelhauled by the incident.
I wonder why my mentor and protector George did not consider the walk out option. However, since he was the “sweep” and all the drivers were already way ahead of us a walk out would have meant that I had to sit, soaked and lonesome with nothing but my water bottle and waterlogged sandwich, for 8 or more hours beside the locked shuttle vehicles. Plus my partner in the two man raft would have been on his own (though it turned out that he was and even more incompetent rafter than I was.) So George probably weighed that option and made the best decision – he really did shepherd me through that trip. I doubt anyone else could have done it the way he did. And obviously he was the only participant in the trip who was attentive enough to check in with me on my experience once he noticed I was amongst the paddlers.
George Bogel was the most audacious and determined outdoorsman I ever knew, oblivious to fear or discomfort, though a responsible trip leader and instructor and not someone I considered reckless where others were concerned. In 1971, the year before I joined the Explorers Club of Pittsburgh and met him, was the first climber to successfully scale the 3,212’ vertical rock face of the Venezuelan tepui from which Angel Falls descends, the tallest waterfall in the world. There is a book about that, “Angels Four”, and a movie is in the works.
He blew out his ankle skydiving in his twenties but had it fused and continued to engage in rock and ice climbing, alpine style mountaineering, downhill skiing, vertical caving, scuba diving and white water paddling at the highest level. I mostly knew him from rock and ice climbing instruction and as a fellow winter backpacker, as well as socially – he was a very smart and witty guy, a professional electrical engineer and wild man who mentored everybody and was very well loved.
Among my fond memories of him were on a wintry evening at the end of a day when several of us had spent the day in ice-climbing practice on frozen Pittsburgh highway road cuts. We were starved and scruffy and George suggested the four of us stop at a tiny Chinese restaurant near his house where he was friends with the chef owner, a former Taiwanese Air Force officer. There were 4 of us, George, his best friend, my boyfriend at the time (all 3 of them excellent climbers) and me, the only girl. But “boys will be boys”, and it was not hard for George to coax the other two guys into a pissing match of sorts as to which of them had the highest tolerance for hot peppers. As I sat there nibbling my wimpy “hotness scale 0” Canton style lo mein, the three amigos were chomping down torrid Sichuan dishes with increasingly fiery garnishes.
Though it was about 5 below zero F outside that night, with a howling blizzard, as they ate the guys were all red-faced, with bloodshot eyes and with sweat soaking their “mountain man” beards and beading up on their bald spots (George was completely bald on top with a long tonsorial fringe around the edges and a lush and long black beard.) I knew they were all hurting but not one of them was going to “give”. The competition seemed locked in a tie until the chef, who had been tending to us with amusement (by then we were the only parties in the room) announced that, since he and George were such good friends, he would share his personal stash of VERY special snack peppers. He brought out a jar of tiny shriveled vegetal shards marinated in an ominous looking thick blackish orange oil of some kind. Each of the competitors took one and placed it on their tongue. George’s buddy was the first to bolt, gasping and spitting it into his napkin. I saw George swallow it but there were tears streaming down his cheeks. When I looked to my boyfriend, Jay, a flaxen-haired blue-eyed Nordic type, his face and eyes were flaming hot pink and his own beard was literally dripping sweat onto his plate. But he not only did not flinch but pronounced the proffered pepper “delightful” and requested a second helping. At that point George finally conceded and dove for his water glass. (postscript to that tale: I don’t think my beau actually enjoyed his “victory” much in the end, and I mean “end” literally, since I heard his groans from my bathroom the following morning once digestive peristalsis had taken its course, apparently with little impact on the devil’s own garnishes.)
Tragically, George died not long after that (though doing what he best loved) in his early 30’s when an avalanche on the steep Diamir Face of Nanga Parbat in Pakistan, the 9th highest mountain in the world, swept through a precarious high camp high up on the face, instantly killing him and another climber during an Explorers Club expedition in 1977.
I learned a lot from George in the 6 years I knew him, in wilderness sports techniques as well as by example in leadership skills, calm courage in adversity, encouragement of others and personal mental determination. And also how to have fun and love life, even when conditions might seem miserable and circumstances absurd. I have a lot of great memories of him and am sorry we lost him so soon.