Interest still swirls around ol' river runner

Boatman-turned-author Brad Dimock will be at Ken Sanders bookstore in downtown Salt Lake Saturday at 7 p.m. to talk about "The Forrest Gump of river running."

Salt Lake City is the 12th stop on a two-state, 20-day, 15-town whirlwind book tour that began in Flagstaff, Ariz., Dimock's hometown, and will conclude Tuesday in Springdale.

The featured book is "The Very Hard Way, Bert Loper and the Colorado River," and even though Loper died almost 58 years ago, apparently no one has grown tired of talking about him.

That much became clear when the Loper Book Tour stopped in tiny Bluff, Utah, and was met by a standing-room-only crowd.

Asked who was there, Dimock responded: "Uh, all of them I think.

"This story has a strong connection in a lot of places," the author added.

Though he was born in Missouri, Bert Loper spent the majority of his life in Utah. In his younger days he was a hermit gold prospector near Glen Canyon, and in his older days he was a resident caretaker in the basement of the Salt Lake City Masonic Lodge. In between he bedded down briefly in places ranging from Bluff to Hanksville to Hite to Green River.

But it's the time he spent on boats and in rivers that made him the subject of Dimock's book.

Dimock, a veteran river runner himself who began writing river stories about 10 years ago, compares Loper to the omnipresent Forrest Gump of movie fame because "he's a simple man who is in everyone's story. Everywhere you look, no matter who you talk to, he's all over the San Juan, the Green, the Upper Colorado, the Grand Canyon."

Loper died in the Grand Canyon in July 1949 when he suffered an apparent heart attack while rowing through a series of Colorado River rapids at Mile 24 1/2. He was three weeks shy of turning 80.

Some say he went into those rapids with a frail heart and in declining health knowing he'd never come out.

Even Dimock's still not sure.

"He said if he knew when he was going to die, he'd get in his boat and go down the Grand Canyon," said Dimock, "so he almost predicted what happened, and yet at the same time he was making plans for future trips, too. It was a very fatalistic move, I think. He knew the risks, he knew he had a bad heart...."

You have to hand it to a man who managed to die so controversially that it's being talked about into the next century.

Whether you think Bert Loper's life warrants a 450-page book is more debatable. Most of the things he did on the river are special only because so few did them before he did. And he was no visionary. He foresaw neither the potential of white-water rivers as a commercial recreation treasure nor the need to protect them environmentally. He was basically and always Old Bert, going with the flow.

But those were less complicated times, and probably it's best to absorb everything about Bert Loper in that perspective. That's what his mates did on that ill-fated Grand Canyon river run of '49. Once Old Bert was gone downriver they did not abandon their trip. They simply said so long and kept floating until they hit Lake Mead.

---

Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.