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<br /> <br />Figure 2. Badger Creek Rapid (mile 8.0)(continued). <br /> <br />.. <br /> <br />B. October 1968. Nichols approximately matched his earlier photograph and documents an increase in the <br />sand bars and tamarisk growth. The increased sand likely was deposited during the summer 1965, high <br />releases from Glen Canyon Dam. The rapid is unchanged (Tad Nichols, no number, courtesy of the <br />photographer). <br /> <br />gravel on his trip in early October 1963; it made his <br />portage of Lava Falls Rapid much easier. Our <br />photographic evidence of this debris flow suggested <br />that it occurred between August and September 22, <br />1963; Jones' recollection corroborates our independent <br />estimate. <br />The occurrence of five of the six debris flows at <br />Prospect Canyon in the 20th century were known only <br />from photographs taken by river runners or scattered <br />observations. The movies and photographs taken <br />during Harris' trip in July 1939 show what Lava Falls <br />Rapid looked like before the September 1939 debris <br />flow, which was the largest of the 20th century (Webb <br />and others, 1999b). Reilly's photographs span the three <br />debris flows of 1954, 1955, and 1963. He observed the <br />effects of the debris flow of 1955 in Prospect Canyon <br />(mile 179.4-L) and wrote that the 1956 high water had <br />sliced into the newly deposited debris fan, leaving a 15- <br />foot-high bank. This observation was verified in <br />Nichols' photographs, which show the boats of a <br /> <br />Mexican Hat Expeditions trip being portaged over that <br />bank. Finally, during an August 1967 trip with Georgie <br />White, passenger Gretchen Luepke photographed the <br />1966 debris-flow deposits at both Lava Falls Rapid <br />(mile 179.5) and Bright Angel Creek (mile 87.8-R). <br />Her photographs verify what John Cross II observed in <br />March 1967 on the first trip to experience Lava Falls <br />after the 1966 debris flow. <br />Other river runners did not observe or did not <br />choose to record debris-flow deposits. Frank Wright <br />wrote detailed trip logs (Table 1), yet he failed to <br />record either the Boucher Creek deposition or th~ two <br />debris flows at Prospect Canyon, despite the fact that <br />others on his trip either remembered them, wrote about <br />them, or photographed them. <br />P. T. Reilly meticulously noted the signs of recent <br />flooding in tributary canyons. Most of what he <br />observed can be attributed to streamflow floods, not <br />debris flows. He observed new mud and silt in the <br />mouth of Shinumo Creek (mile 108.6-R) in 1949. In <br /> <br />~ <br /> <br />10 OBSERVATIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN GRAND CANYON <br />