The River Ladies: Grand Canyon National Park

Botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter changed the stereotype of women in botany when they found a love for not the delicate flowers, but the cacti with thorns and the vegetation that thrived in the most inhospitable environments. They set out to do something that had never been done before, to be the first women to boat the entirety of the Colorado River and map out the flora of the Grand Canyon. If successful, they would be the first women to ever survive the trip. For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodesListen to Watch Her Cook on Apple and Spotify! For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to this week’s partners! BetterHelp: National Park After Dark is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off. Smalls: For 50% off your first order, head to Smalls.com and use code NPAD. Blueland: Use our link to get 15% off your first order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  I'd like you to picture a scientist. What are they wearing? What are they doing? What equipment do they have?

• 1:11Cassandra Yahnian?

  When you first pictured that scientist, didn't you envision a man or a woman? In the year 1966, a man by the name of David Wade Chambers, who studied history and cultural sciences, began conducting an experiment that lasted until 1977. It was titled "The Draw a Scientist Test." In this experiment, Chambers asked 4,807 elementary school students in three different countries, one being the United States, to draw a picture of a scientist. He was intrigued to find that almost every image drawn depicted a bearded man working inside a laboratory, often wearing a lab coat and glasses.

• 1:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  In fact, of those 4,807 children, less than 50 of them drew a woman as a scientist, equating to less than 1% of his subjects. Those numbers have since changed. A similar study in 2016 found that 28% of children, when asked to draw a scientist, portrayed a woman. It is certainly an improvement, but now I ask you again, when I first asked you to envision a scientist, did you see a man or a woman? After hearing the story I'm about to tell you, the next time you're asked this question, maybe you will envision a woman and maybe you'll see Elzada Clover and Lois

• 2:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  Jotter. Welcome to National Park After Dark.

• 3:00Danielle LaRock?

  One of your best intros to date. I loved it. I really, it was thought provoking. And to answer that question, I envisioned the show Lessons from Chemistry, Lessons of Chemistry.

• 3:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:16Danielle LaRock?

  The book that I read it on one of our trips and then I binged the show when we got back. And so I pictured her.

• 3:22Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, okay. So you were one of the 28% who envisioned women.

• 3:27Danielle LaRock?

  But to be fair, if I didn't have that in mind, like top of mind, I probably would have envisioned a man.

• 3:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. And I was, so I actually dove kind of deep into this whole experiment just because I thought it was really interesting. And I went into some of the journals, just kind of went into a rabbit hole of this because the study has been replicated many times throughout history and not just with scientists, but with other drawings portraying people. And some of the articles went back to talk about Mary Shelley, which has been coming up kind of a lot. I feel like in our

• 4:00Danielle LaRock?

  She's everywhere.

• 4:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 4:01Danielle LaRock?

  What's going on?

• 4:02Cassandra Yahnian?

  Conversations and the podcast conversations. And it was talking about how Mary Shelley's Frankenstein influenced the view of what a scientist looks like, just because of like the frazzled, crazy scientist man in a lab coat with all of these bubbling potions around him and stuff. So that was thought to be part of the influence of this. But I just thought it was really interesting. And I also thought, also, I think Instagram knows what you're doing at all times, right?

• 4:32Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 4:33Cassandra Yahnian?

  So as I'm writing This intro, I was, I went on my phone to look up some information, some dates and it was open to Instagram and you know, Instagram like pulls you in. So then suddenly I'm on Instagram and I refresh my feed and the very first thing says that the draw scientist test has now included a much higher percent than it used to and children are drawing women more than they ever have. Yeah. Well, if you're Googling that on your Mac, it's connected somehow. It's all connected. It's all connected in the web of life and technology. I don't know how it works. But yeah, that's really interesting though. I love that you opened with that and we've been trying

• 5:14Cassandra Yahnian?

  to do intros. We didn't this time, but now five minutes in, I'm Danielle. I'm Cassie. I'm telling the story today. And you're listening to National Park After Dark. Welcome. You clicked on it. So I hope you know that. We hope you know.

• 5:30Cassandra Yahnian?

  Well, this episode is really fun today because one, we're, if you didn't get it from the intro, we're talking about women scientists and it's March, which is Women's History Month. So it feels like a really good time to highlight women in history and specifically I wanted to highlight women in science. I love it. Well, before we get started on today's episode about empowering women, we have something to tell you all because we've been keeping a secret from you and it's been really hard not to share it with you. We have been working very hard on a project behind the scenes that we're really excited for. So in the spirit of Women's History Month and in an episode encompassing the incredible capabilities of women, we have an announcement.

• 6:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  I'm so nervous, but so excited. Don't be nervous. It's so exciting. I know. It's just like, I feel bad about kind of keeping a secret. I know. Every time we've recorded, I'm like, we're lying. I know. We're lying by omission, but that time is, is done. It's over. We're ready. Because.

• 6:33Danielle LaRock?

  On April 9th of this year, right around the corner, we are launching a brand new podcast and it is titled Watch Her Cook. So this podcast, Watch Her Cook, will be a weekly podcast dedicated to showcasing the stories of women throughout history who have been shattering glass ceilings on the expectation of what women, quote unquote, should be. We're going to have everything from inventors to activists, outlaws, criminal masterminds. Watch Her Cook is going to be an ode to women everywhere who proved that their capabilities far surpass domestic duties and who have changed the world in groundbreaking ways and sometimes in some chilling ones.

• 7:14Cassandra Yahnian?

  And if you're hearing this announcement and you're like, oh my God, is NPAD ending? No, absolutely not. NPAD is here to stay. NPAD is our baby. This is just an additional project that we've been really excited about working on. And really, this has been, this has been in the works for four years because throughout the past four years of NPAD, we have been compiling these stories in the backend that we've come across in our own research that don't really fit this national park narrative. But they all have this common theme of really interesting stories involving women that seem to have been lost to the public eye. We're talking about women who have lured Nazis to their deaths, women who have revitalized the way we think about sex,

• 7:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  made huge contributions to the conservation world and were labeled a witch for doing so. There are so many stories that we don't hear about, like how a woman was actually the reason that DNA was discovered, or an infamous jailbreak that was conducted by a woman who got her pilot's license to fly helicopters to get her husband out of prison. And we could go on and on about these stories, but that's why we've created Watch Her Cook, because these are not heard of that often, but we come across them all the time in our research and we just felt we really needed to bring these to life.

• 8:29Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. And the other part of this, like kind of the flip side, was throughout our research, a lot of times we were seeing women incorporated in stories as victims, victims of violence, of circumstance, of different societal... Idol factors that it's just like a narrative that unfortunately in specifically the true crime space, it's always kind of the same story, you know? And we were just like, okay, let's flip the script a little bit and let's refocus on some other types of outcomes or circumstance and just, we needed a separate place to do that. And that's why Watch Her Cook was born.

• 9:08Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yes. So come hang out with us every Wednesday to hear these stories. Our first two episodes, we're launching two the same day are launching on April 9th. And you can listen wherever you get your podcasts and look out because we are going to be posting some really exciting sneak peeks over the next few days before it launches.

• 9:26Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. Okay. So that was a lot. It's so exciting.

• 9:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  Very exciting.

• 9:29Danielle LaRock?

  But you also have a really cool story today and one that does fit the national park narrative, which I'm so excited about. Again, let's just underline National Park After Dark. We'll be going nowhere over my dead body. So let's, let's get into it. Where, where are we headed today?

• 9:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  We're going on the Grand Canyon.

• 9:47Danielle LaRock?

  Okay. All right. All right. All right. As your man.

• 9:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yes. As Matthew McConaughey would say, all right, all right, all right. Well, I say the Grand Canyon, but we're also go, so we're doing the Colorado River. And that also includes Canyonlands, Glen Canyon Recreation Area, Lake Mead and the Grand Canyon. So this is definitely an episode where I don't have to add a tie into a national park because this is all, all the, not all the national parks, but it's very much park related.

• 10:19Danielle LaRock?

  I was never going to question it. So.

• 10:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  I appreciate that. Well, so today, just going into what I will be telling today. Today I'm going to tell the story of when Bot, when the Botany of the Grand Canyon was mapped for the very first time and the two women who did it. In the summer of 1938, Alzada Clover and Mary Lois Jotter were the first recorded women to float the entirety of the Colorado River. The only woman recorded to have attempted it prior was Bessie Hyde in 1928, who we did a story on previously like much.

• 10:51Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, it's back there.

• 10:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  Back there. It's one of the, I would say, within the first 20 episodes.

• 10:58Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 10:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  That one is, but was to this day, one of my favorite mystery stories that I've covered on the podcast. But Bessie's disappearance in 1928 on the river sparked this widespread concern that the Colorado River was too dangerous for women and that women didn't belong there. However, Elzada and Lois would prove that narrative to be incorrect.

• 11:19Danielle LaRock?

  I just think that's really funny because Bessie wasn't the only person of that party to perish.

• 11:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  No.

• 11:27Danielle LaRock?

  There was also a man there that also died. And we're not even sure if Bessie died. We're not sure.

• 11:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  We're not sure. To the episode because there's a plot twist.

• 11:36Danielle LaRock?

  There is a plot twist. And if anything, she was the one to survive. So.

• 11:40Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. So.

• 11:41Danielle LaRock?

  That's an interesting spin.

• 11:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  And I want to say she's the only, going into this, so Bessie was the first recorded women, woman to try to run the full Colorado River. But I think it's very important to note that indigenous communities were using the Colorado River for thousands of years prior. And it is very widely believed that many indigenous women have done this trek. So to say that women can't do it in general is very misleading. And historically indigenous women had done it for a very long time. But the story I'm telling today is the first recorded in our history of women doing it. Going into the women a little bit. Elzada grew up in Nebraska, but after the death of her mother, she followed her father to Texas,

• 12:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  where her love of plants began. Specifically, she was in awe of the succulents and the cacti that grew around the Rio Grande. While she had a degree and worked as a principal at a school, she was so inspired by the plant life. She decided to further her education and enrolled in the University of Michigan, where she later attained her masters and her PhD in botany. Her decision to do this raised more than a few eyebrows. First, because the United States during the 1930s, botany as a paid profession did not exist. In addition to that, while more than 40% of college students were female, most didn't go on to. Acquire jobs within their field of study or at all. College was considered a stepping stone for women to become good wives to their husbands and mothers to their children.

• 13:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  Many did not expect or want women to work. At the time, only a few hundred women in the United States had ever even received a PhD. So for her to go on and do this was like, whoa, what are you, you're making waves already. However, women who did decide to further their education, botany was considered this acceptable subject to study. Women studying flowers sat well with society as, as a whole, because women studying flowers, it symbol, flowers symbolized pleasantness, beautifulness. They were fragile and it was everything that women were supposed to be. So they're like, okay, if you have to study something, you can study flowers.

• 13:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  And I will say for a while, botany wasn't like, even though there was education about it. A lot of it was women gathering flowers and studying them. It wasn't as scientific and then it later turned into it. So at first it was kind of looked at by men as, oh, women are collecting and observing flowers. Like let them do their thing.

• 14:16Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, let them just go over there and do their little arts and crafts project with petals and flowers and things. Like that's how I am getting a vibe of this.

• 14:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 14:25Danielle LaRock?

  Whole.

• 14:26Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 14:26Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 14:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  And what was fun about Alzada is that she wasn't, of course she loved flowers. She's a botanist, but she loved cactuses. She loved things with thorns. She loved things that were hardy and lived in the desert. So there was nothing delicate and fragile about what she wanted to study, which was what people were saying botanists were, which is also fine and very interesting. But on the other end of that, that it was actually frowned upon for men to engage in these studies. And it was said that botany was for women, children and weak minded people, and that it was not a manly thing to do.

• 15:03Danielle LaRock?

  Putting boxes around things is just so, so dangerous and exclusionary and in anything. But it's like, just let people be interested in what they're interested.

• 15:13Cassandra Yahnian?

  It in like God. Why does it bother you if someone is interested in learning about plants and wildlife? And it's important. It's our environment. And now we know almost everything we use is made of plants. Any medication you've ever taken is derived from a plant. Yeah. Well, this is so this is the thirties. Is that what you said? Um, yes, this is in the thirties. Okay.

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• 16:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  So in the same breath, an article in 1871 was published that said that women should not be studying botany in hard to reach areas. So they even put this box on women as well. They're like, women, you can study botany. That's okay, because they're flowers and nice, but don't even think about traveling outside of your comfort zone. If you can't reach it by a car or it's not in your backyard, it's not for you and leave that to the men. Okay, yeah, there's like a lot of, there's a lot of stipulations. Yeah, and very specific. And yeah, right. It's like, okay, you can be a man who's interested in botany as long as you're only interested in hard to reach places. And if you're a woman, you can be interested in botany if you're only interested in places that are accessible.

• 16:54Cassandra Yahnian?

  This is so interesting. I've never heard anything about this. Yeah, me either. I was actually, I was reading a book on this and I'll get into that a little bit later. But the whole beginning of this book, it's about these women, goes into the history of botany and all these stipulations around it. Just like the history of the field and where it started and where it is and now I'm sure and things like that. Yeah. Yeah, it was really interesting and a lot that I didn't think of. And I actually, I'm about to get into it a little bit in a second because I wrote down some keynotes. But before we get into that, I just wanted. To finish this little paragraph that I have. So it was said that if they couldn't drive to or if it wasn't found in their backyards,

• 17:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  that women had no business finding plants there. And this article that was written that stated these things said, quote, "A young woman cannot safely roam at will in any place and at any distance. She must confine her walks to the vicinity of her own home and to the open fields and waysides. And in these limited excursions, she sometimes needs protection."

• 18:02Danielle LaRock?

  I've said it before, I've said it again. I would not fare well in any other timeline prior to now. I'm not even doing this right now. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, as, it's just so frustrating to, to hear about just, this isn't the distant past either.

• 18:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  No, it's less than a hundred years ago.

• 18:23Danielle LaRock?

  Right.

• 18:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  Well, I guess this article was written in 1871, but they were in the 1930s. But yeah, it's really not that, that long ago. And I just think of this author and I'm like, if only you can, you could see the places I've walked.

• 18:37Danielle LaRock?

  You could see us now.

• 18:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like you would be.

• 18:40Danielle LaRock?

  Clutching your pearls. Yeah.

• 18:42Cassandra Yahnian?

  My fragile self. How could I walk on a trail out into the woods? However, there were a lot of problems with views like this. And ideology like these led the United States to be severely behind in plant studies in comparison to other countries. Many other countries had for years been studying botany and the use of plants. However, the US's sexism and racism played a huge hindrance in education. Specifically, the eradication of indigenous people who lived off the land for thousands of years and understood the healing properties of plants caused much of this information to be lost and forgotten. Because of this, the US was essentially starting from scratch, but people like Elzada

• 19:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  and Lois were very inspired to learn more. Mary Lois Jotter, who went by the name Lois, was born in Weaverville, California in 1914. Her father worked for the US Forest Service and always encouraged both Lois and her sister to learn and engage. in sciences. She found her love of plants at a very early age when her father planted a giant sequoia tree in their front yard and she was able to watch it grow. At the age of seven, their family moved to Wisconsin for her father's new job at the Forest Service Laboratory, where he focused on conserving trees at a time that the nation was engaging in extreme logging. Her father really instilled the love of forests and botany into Lois from the walks that they would take in the woods where he would teach her about plants to his eventual

• 20:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  university job where she had access to the school's botanical gardens. It was only natural that she went on to both get her bachelor's and her master's degree in biology and botany at the University of Michigan. It was at the University of Michigan when Lois was working on her PhD that the two women eventually met. They were roommates for two years, and although Lois was 18 years younger than Alzada, they became close friends and shared a very similar love of botany. Despite their shared interests, they were very different people. Alzada was a free spirit who in her 40s had never married and had no interest to. She was also known to be intelligent, deep into her studies, loved adventuring, and she was very bold. Her fashion

• 20:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  style emulated her personality. She was always wearing bright colors and standing out in crowds. Lois was essentially the opposite. At 24 years old, she was really concerned that she wasn't married yet. At the time, the average age to get married was 21 years old, and she was in deep fear that she was missing her window of opportunity and dreamed of a family life. She was also a lot more reserved than Alzada. She was happy to stay home, go to her local botanical gardens, and bury herself in her books. She was more soft spoken, but like Alzada, very intelligent and loved botany. This description that I've just painted of her might make her sound like she's not an outdoorsy person, but that would be very far from the truth. In fact, she was more experienced in backcountry than most. She had completed a

• 21:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  six-week program inside of Yosemite National Park that was meant for backcountry rangers. She spent weeks learning to navigate the land, camp outdoors, climb, and more. So, when Alzada brought that idea to Lois that They should partake in a scientific expedition through the canyons of the green and Colorado rivers to study the flora there, a journey that would take them paddling over fourteen hundred miles. Lois was intrigued and excited. It wasn't long until their plan was underway. Elzada had met an innkeeper named Norman Nevels, who had a lot of boating experience and wanted to join. He was a young twenty-six-year-old adventurous man who loved boating and was interested in bringing whitewater tourism to his hotel. He agreed to come on the trip

• 22:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  almost immediately. Elzada was also able to recruit a twenty-five-year-old zoologist by the name of Eugene Atkinson. In addition, she brought on a boatsman named Dawn Harris and a photographer named William Gibson. All in all, there were six of them. Elzada felt it was especially important to have Lois with her because at the time, it would have been considered unladylike to adventure into the wilderness with all men. She knew that if she was the first woman to successfully run the Colorado River and botanize it with just men, the headlines wouldn't focus on her work, but instead, it would speculate on what she was doing with them. Not only was Lois the perfect choice because of her intelligence and their friendship, but she would serve as an actual important witness

• 23:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  to the work that was being done and that it wasn't this scandalous affair in the woods. Which is crazy to even have to say that because-

• 23:15Danielle LaRock?

  It's sad that you have, she had to consider that, but it's smart that she did. Because, oh my God, imagine going through this. I have no idea where this is going, but I'm guessing it's successful in some way. But to go through all of that and then have all of your hard work discredited because the focus is on something just so insignificant, but would take away and deject from like her, her true accomplishments, like that would be really difficult. So she's ahead of it and you can't blame her for, for getting on, ahead of the headlines, I guess.

• 23:49Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, and she's clearly a very intelligent woman, just to think of that. But also, she knows she doesn't want her work to be questioned. She's been facing these difficulties her whole life because she is a woman who's not married, because- She's a woman in science. She knows what to expect and she's like, I'm going to not, I'm going to cross these options off. I don't want anyone even breathing a word that this could be a possibility and I'm going to do that by having a fellow scientist with me who is a woman. And it also she chose Lois because they were roommates and she was like, if I'm going to be on a Colorado river in these hard, in these hard conditions for who knows how long I want someone who I know and trust and know that I can live with. And that was another reason why she chose Lois.

• 24:38Cassandra Yahnian?

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• 25:23Cassandra Yahnian?

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• 26:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  Just one week after the plan was officially set and all the members were recruited, a breaking headline hit the newsstands. A man named Hal Dean Buzz, who he went by Buzz Holmstrom, had successfully completed a solo expedition down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. He began in Wyoming and finished in Lake Mead. In the article interview Buzz detailed how treacherous the journey was and painted a picture of a journey that instilled nervousness in El Zeta's crew. Not only did he state how difficult the conditions of the river were, but he also specifically stated that the Colorado River was no place for a woman because it was just too dangerous. While this was definitely a slight blow to morale,

• 26:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  this didn't change their plans at all. All six of them were still rearing to go and they spent the next few months researching the river as much as they could and procuring money to help fund their trip and get supplies. It wasn't long before the media got wind of their plans and the two women were the ones who made the headlines. The Michigan Daily published an article titled Faculty Women to Face Danger on Stormy Colorado for Science. Anna Elzada was quoted saying, "There's no danger in a carefully planned expedition." However, many outlets didn't agree with her. They detailed what a dangerous mission it was and that women simply weren't capable of doing it. In addition to that Buzz, who was now a respected person for his solo journey down the Colorado,

• 27:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  also publicly made statements that these women were foolish for taking on such a journey. But again, it didn't deter them. Norm built three boats for the six of them to navigate down the river. They were made of wood and 16 feet long and five feet wide. They each weighed around 600 pounds and he used close to 2,300 screws to put it all together. He named the boats Botany, Wen, and the Mexican Hat, after the inn that he had. In his design, he had instilled in the crew that only the essentials for survival were allowed on his boats and nothing else. "It was built for safety, not for comfort," he told them. But despite this, both El Zeta and Lois snuck on some of their lotions for their skincare routines along with their makeup.

• 28:13Danielle LaRock?

  God, sounds like you.

• 28:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  You know, like go off queens. Skincare is important. Don't let a man tell you not to bring your skincare.

• 28:21Danielle LaRock?

  Cassie will sacrifice very valuable luggage space for her skincare. Like she has like a portable.

• 28:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  Red light.

• 28:30Danielle LaRock?

  Thank you. You knew exactly what I was saying. And it's like, it vibrates and also like beeps and stuff. And I can always tell when she's up in the morning because I hear that thing. It's like bleep. And it's like.

• 28:40Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like, oh, she's contouring her face with her red light. I'm like, oh, she's awake.

• 28:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  Like, good morning. My skincare routine is happening. Well, I can appreciate a woman who likes skincare. So Lois and Alzada, I feel like we would have been good friends and I would have been right there with them. So they sneak on their makeup and all that good stuff. But it's funny because they snuck on this lotion and skincare and they were really mindful about how much they should be packing for their trip. And then they got there and all met up to begin and the guys had packed so much stuff and they realized that they had packed twice, that the men had packed twice as much as they had.

• 29:21Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, okay. So they sort of.

• 29:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  They could have added so much skincare and the guys wouldn't have even known. Lois, however, had something that was slightly different than the rest of them. She brought with her this bright yellow helmet for the paddling down the river. And just in case you hit your head on rocks or anything like that, it was this bright yellow helmet that really stood out. And she had everyone in the crew sign it as kind of this memento of the trip. So that kind of stood out for things to bring. It was June 20th, 1938, my birthday, when they officially, not 1938.

• 29:53Danielle LaRock?

  I was gonna say wow.

• 29:56Danielle LaRock?

  Your skincare is working.

• 29:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, thank you. I'm over, I'm almost 100 years old.

• 30:02Cassandra Yahnian?

  But it was June 20th, 1938, when they officially launched their boats into the Green River, which would eventually lead them to the Colorado River. News media outlets stood by and took photos and they signed some last minute autographs for people before they took off down the river, waving to the audience on shore. And this was undoubtedly an interesting sight. They packed one boat with all of their gear where two of them squeezed into the only remaining spots that they could fit, for them to sit while the other two boats were mostly empty with. Two people in each. They had detailed their plans to friends and the media. They would arrive at Lee's Ferry on June 4th. Lee's Ferry is the only place in over 700 miles of the Colorado River where people can reach by car. It is located within Glen Canyon National Recreation Area

• 30:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  and is a common launch point for whitewater trips and fly fishing today. It also served as a great point for the media and friends and family to check in with the expedition team and get an update on how everything was going with their trip. It also served as a spot where they could re-up on supplies if needed. Their journey had begun and the first three days down the Green River, Norm taught the women better rowing skills. Lois and Elzada collected plants to bring back with them to study and they spent the nights camping on the shores. Lois and Elzada were assigned the duties of cooking and cleaning for the crew and especially in the beginning, found the men to be rather lazy in the mornings. The women would wake up at sunrise, wash their faces, put their makeup on, get all done up, then cook a meal for the crew.

• 31:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  They found themselves having to force the four men to get up out of their tents. They found it kind of funny and they found humor in playing harmonicas really loudly in the mornings until the men would eventually stumble out sleepy-faced and confused. It was June 23rd when they officially finished the Green River and paddled onto the Colorado River. While the river had been much higher than normal and were muddy with sediment from recent rain, everything had been going beautifully. The river was fast-moving, but otherwise it was calm. They were in awe of the giant cliff dwellings above them and spent the days singing together, playing the harmonica and jumping into the river to cool off. While the paddling itself had gone smoothly, the temperatures rose to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit or 38 degrees Celsius during the day

• 32:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  and they spent a lot of time trying to cool off. At night, the temperatures would dip down to the low 40s and they would huddle by the fires to stay warm. How smoothly the trip had been going had instilled a false sense of security in much of the crew, though. Before departing, they had been so discouraged by the public and told what a dangerous journey this would be that they had been fearful, but so far it had been this pleasant escape into nature. That feeling of safety would Soon come to an end, though. Leaving the Green River meant entering Cataract Canyon, a forty-six mile or seventy-four kilometer long canyon that is located within Canyonlands National Park in Utah. This section of the river contains fourteen miles, or twenty-two point five kilometers, of rapids that range in difficulty up to class five.

• 33:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  Class five rapids are classified as extremely difficult, long, and very violent rapids with highly congested routes. It is highly recommended that before partaking in these, that they are scouted from the shorelines because rescue conditions are very difficult and they're a significant hazard to life in the event of mishaps. The crew had heard about the difficulties of this section of the Colorado, and anxiety of the group grew as they got closer, and rightfully so. It was here, for the first time, they saw firsthand just how dangerous whitewater could be.

• 33:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  The crew had pulled onto the shore so Lois and Alzada could collect some plant species that they had seen growing on the cliff walls. While they were busy gathering samples, the water suddenly began to rise, and with it, snatched their boat that they had named Mexican Hat from the shore, and with it, all of their survival gear they had been carrying. Dawn and Lois jumped into action, hopping into another boat and paddling down the river into the rapids. The Mexican Hat was soon completely out of sight, and Dawn and Lois found themselves fighting through rapids that they had never experienced before. They attempted to bail out of the rapids and boat to shore, but they couldn't. Quickly, they were pulled into even more rapids, before they too were out of sight of the rest of the crew.

• 34:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  Miraculously, the water slowed, and they found the Mexican Hat had been pushed onto shore with all of their gear inside. Everything had been soaked, but it was safe. Unfortunately, the whitewater had brought them four miles downstream of where they had originally stopped to collect plants, and they were now completely separated from their crew. Dawn told Lois to wait with the boats while he hiked back upstream to find the rest of their team, leaving Lois completely alone. Upstream, Norman, Eugene, and William had gotten into their boat and attempted to follow them. They had told Alzada to walk downstream instead of paddling because of how dangerous the rapids were. Eventually, Norman, William, Dawn, Eugene, and Alzada were reunited on the shores upstream of Lois. By the time they had reached each

• 35:10Cassandra Yahnian?

  other, though, the sun was setting and the river was still rising. It was decided that they couldn't make the trek downstream in the dark to be with Lois, and she had to sleep alone that night. She did, however, have the advantage that inside the Mexican hat boat was all of their supplies. She was able to dry out her sleeping equipment and made a fire, and that night she wrote in her journal that she wasn't afraid and that she had a lovely time before she fell asleep under the stars. Periodically throughout the night, she awoke to the water rising closer to where she was sleeping, and she had to move her whole camp. Outside of that, though, she really enjoyed the quiet of sleeping alone in the canyon. The next morning, the rest of the crew paddled down to Lois, and everyone was reunited

• 35:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  again. All of them were safe and uninjured, but that experience in Cataract Canyon had shaken the expedition. The security blanket they had felt in the Green River was gone. The crew were really nervous to continue to go over rapids and instead found themselves walking the shorelines whenever they appeared. They would strap the boats to ropes and let them float the rapids without any passengers inside of them. Sometimes, they would even unload all of their supplies and hike with it on their backs in 100-degree temperatures. It was grueling and difficult work and made the days go by slowly, but it felt like a better option than paddling some of the rapids while these water levels were so high. Lois and Alzada were dedicated to their work throughout, though. Even though the travel through the canyon made them exhausted, they would wake up earlier than everyone

• 36:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  else to gather plants and make notes of what they were finding. In the evenings, after dinner, they would go back to collecting specimens. Alzada would detail notes about the plants in her journal, while Lois would focus more on the novelties of river life. She detailed what it was like cooking over campfires and washing her clothes in the river. She also wrote of her trying to bathe and change in privacy from the men and how it was expected. Did of the women to still partake in domestic duties while on the river. They were primarily tasked with all the cooking and cleaning, sometimes even doing the men's laundry for them.

• 37:11Danielle LaRock?

  It's like, okay, by default, I guess I'm doing this. What the hell?

• 37:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. And it's kind of like, okay, I'm here as a scientist studying and now I have to take care of you as well.

• 37:23Danielle LaRock?

  It's it's weird how like weird is the wrong word, but how that translated into this scientific expedition.

• 37:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, we're still domestic household rules being put on you in the middle of the wilderness.

• 37:37Danielle LaRock?

  Yes.

• 37:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  On the Colorado River. And I don't mention it too much in here, but there were some things that the men were doing that I guess you could be considered like the man jobs. You know, they were doing most of the heavy lifting when they had the gear, they were putting it on their backs. If they had to go into the water for something, they were the ones going into it because the water was strong. If they had to steer the boats through hard rapids, they were trying to do it because they're considered stronger. So there was definitely this male female dynamic that was going on that's more traditional. But the women definitely did know a lot, like, why am I doing domestic duties out here?

• 38:17Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, it's just a great question.

• 38:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  It is. It's valid. Yeah.

• 38:21Danielle LaRock?

  It's like, I am not your wife.

• 38:22Cassandra Yahnian?

  On the Colorado River. That too. Yeah. Well, there's that. They're not dating any of them.

• 38:27Danielle LaRock?

  Right. It's like, even if that was the direct translation of like, okay, well, in our house, if we're married, this is usually the division of labor. So we're gonna copy that and implement it here in this situation, which is one thing, whatever. But it's like, we are not in a partnership. Like, why am I, you know what I mean?

• 38:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  Why am I doing this? Yeah. Why am I?

• 38:50Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 38:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  Caretaker in in these moments.

• 38:53Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, it seems like you would you would assume that you just kind of either have a discussion and that's agreed upon because it has to be done, right? Whether you do it, somebody else does it, the team, you know, you split it up. How many camping trips have we been on with groups? You know, it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. It's like, okay, this night you're doing the dishes, next night I'll do them. You know, it's just.

• 39:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, everyone's cooking and cleaning. It's not.

• 39:17Danielle LaRock?

  Everyone's at an equal level. Yeah.

• 39:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, yeah. So that was happening on the trip, but going back into the story a little bit, they had been walking a lot of the river, but they weren't only walking it. So there were rapids that they couldn't avoid and they had to still do them. Their whole mission here is to be on the river and they can't walk everything. So even though they were shaken up by it, they couldn't avoid it. And they did find themselves still boating through rapids. They did find themselves in trouble again when they entered the Gypsum Canyon Rapid, although it wasn't intentional. Norm and Alzada were leading the line in the Wen boat. And now here's what I'm gonna, just to make it, I was trying to make this a little less confusing because a lot happens here. I'm gonna identify the boats. So there's

• 40:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  the Wen boat, the Botany boat, and the Mexican hat. And I refer to those. Norm and Alzada were leading the line in the Wen boat, and they attempted to get on shore, but the current was too strong and pulled them in. William and Eugene's boat, the Botany, was pulled in quickly after, and soon they all found themselves boating over a steep drop. The drop launched William out of the Botany before capsizing in the water. Eugene somehow was able to keep a hold on the hull and stay above water, but William disappeared. Norm and Alzada attempted a rescue, pulling Eugene onto their boat. Alzada grabbed a rope attached to the Botany, and Norm jumped out into the river grabbing the rope on their own boat. He attempted to get to shore to secure them to land, but the ropes were wet and slipped

• 40:49Cassandra Yahnian?

  through his fingers. Instead, both the Wen and the Botany were released and sent down river with Eugene and Alzada still with them. As they were pulled into the rapids, Norm lost his balance standing in the river and was pulled into the raging waters himself. Somehow, when Lois and Dawn arrived in that same area in the Mexican hat, they ran the rapids without issue. At the other end of them, they found William exhausted and swimming, barely able to keep his head above water. They were able to pull him to safety onto their boat. Downstream, they also found Norm, who had managed to swim onto the riverbank. The problem now was that Alzada and Eugene were still missing. Of them piled into the Mexican hat and slowly paddled their way downstream in

• 41:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  search of them. It took a while, but eventually they found them sitting around a fire with the two other boats tied up beside them. They cheered and hugged when they were all reunited again. Overall, the team was feeling really grateful that the outcome had not been worse. Eugene had a deep gash on his leg from hitting a rock in the rapids, and Elzada had a giant purple bruise forming on her thigh. But outside of that, no one was injured. All of their belongings were intact, but soaking wet, including their food supplies. Norm, however, wasn't feeling so grateful. He was discouraged and upset at how the river run was going. He was out there in attempts to advertise the possibilities of whitewater rafting tourism, and now with

• 42:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  this hiccup in the trip and how slow they had been moving previously, there was no way that they were going to make it to Lee's Ferry on July 4. They were significantly behind schedule, and the waters were proving to be more dangerous than he had expected. He was so upset that he stated to the crew, "This is the end of my career as a river man." Fair to feel that way. When they headed out the next day to continue their journey, it wasn't long before they were reminded of just how dangerous of a situation they were in. While paddling down the river, they looked up onto the canyon walls to see painted names of all those who had done this route before them. In badly faded white paint, the word Hyde,

• 42:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  with a date below it, November 1, 1928, sat on the wall. It was a painful reminder of the river trip that Glenn and Bessie Hyde had done just 10 years prior, but they had never been seen again. Shortly after they had painted that date, November 1, they disappeared. Despite the looming feeling of dread looking at those words, the crew pulled off onto the riverbank, and like tradition of the other people of the river, they pulled out white paint and added, quote, "Neville's Expedition," which Norm Neville, to the cliffside and signed all their names. They couldn't help but wonder if this was possibly the last evidence anyone would ever see of them before they too succumbed to the Colorado River. But another thought

• 43:40Cassandra Yahnian?

  also crossed their minds. This would be evidence of history when Lois and Elzada became the first documented women to survive it.

• 43:55Cassandra Yahnian?

  July 4th came and went with the media waiting at Lee's Ferry, but the group didn't arrive. News reports, who had highly been skeptical of the women on the river, smugly reported their likely demise. They wrote about the high water levels and condemned the trip, saying they were probably smashed to bits on jagged rocks of the Colorado. Often, they stated that the women shouldn't be on the river, and that no woman had conquered the Colorado before. And keep in mind, they're writing things that literally said smashed to bits on jagged rocks, and their families are reading this. And their families hadn't heard of them either. Like, that's very insensitive to a group of people who you don't even know what happened to them yet.

• 44:36Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, it's all conjecture. You have no clue. And you're just, yeah, you're speculating is what you're doing.

• 44:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  You're speculating and you're making an assumption because you don't think women can do it. After a few days, when the crew still didn't arrive at Lee's Ferry, a search was initiated. The US Coast Guard dispatched a plane to do an aerial search in hopes to find them. They began in the early hours of July 7th and flew all day without any sign of them. It wasn't until that evening that they were finally spotted on the shore, cooking dinner over a fire. The plane circled above, dropping leaflets with notes on them. The boaters scrambled from their seats and climbed the rock walls and ran down the banks, catching the papers the plane had dropped. Written on these pieces of paper was a note that read, quote, "We are the US Coast Guard plane, searching for a party of six University of

• 45:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  Michigan geologists, reportedly late at Lee's Ferry. If you are they, lie down all in a row and then stand up. If in need of food, sit up. If members of the party are all okay, extend arms horizontally. It is imperative that we know who you are, so identify yourself by first signal first." The group followed the instructions, identifying that they were indeed the people that the plane were searching for. And then, very happily, they extended their arms horizontally and showed them that the group was doing just fine. The plane received the message and flew away. Alzada and Lois couldn't help but be ecstatic at the messages they knew would be sent back to the

• 46:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  media that the women on the river who didn't belong there were in fact just fine. The following day on July 8th, they arrived during the night at Lee's Ferry. Reporters had holed up on the beach awaiting their arrival and were asleep in the sand as they pushed onto the shore. Waking up at the sounds of them on land, they begged the crew to go back to the water and redo their entrance so they could get it on camera for their news outlets. They agreed only after the journalists bribed them with fresh fruit and nice food. After redoing their entrance so they could get a picture, they ate the food they offered instead of answering any of their questions. They're like, you only get one or the other.

• 46:45Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, we want some snacks.

• 46:47Cassandra Yahnian?

  We want some snacks. It's tired. I'm tired. We just did all this. I'll eat some food and go to bed and I'll talk to you later. Over that next week, they stayed at the Marble Canyon Lodge, close to Lee's Ferry, to rest and resupply, during which they talked to the media and detailed their story, which they in turn turned into headlines. And they wrote headlines like "Girl Left Alone", where they told a very dramatic retelling of Lois spending a night alone camping.

• 47:13Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, right. Forgot about that.

• 47:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, they're like, they wrote it.

• 47:18Danielle LaRock?

  Fine.

• 47:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. She was just like, yeah, I was alone one night. And then they turned it into this dramatic retelling of animals howling in the distance and she was afraid for her life and she was alone with the river rising and she was almost dying a woman by herself. She just read it and was like, no, I mean, this kind of happened, but not, not really.

• 47:42Danielle LaRock?

  Well, it's like how little have, how little things have changed, you know, since then. And regarding what the media does with like snippets and clips of taking things out of context and inflating them and making them this big thing. I mean, it's kind of like.

• 47:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  Clickbait, but it was newspapers before.

• 48:01Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, I don't really ever foresee it changing, to be honest.

• 48:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  No, me either, just because that's how you get people to read your articles.

• 48:10Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, and pay attention and.

• 48:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. Yeah, but sometimes the people who actually experience it look at it and are like, that's not, that's not how that went down. Well, they're here, they're staying, they're relaxing. And during their stay at the hotel, both Dawn and Eugene decided that they were done with the trip. Eugene, who was a zoologist, had hoped to collect some animals that he could, he wanted to kill some birds essentially, and he wanted to be able to sell them as trophies to make for money after. But he hadn't gotten a single thing on the entire trip, and it was pretty grueling. So he was like, I'm, I'm kind of out of here. I'm good. And Dawn had another job lined up that he wanted to get to, and he was also kind of done with the river. So they were like, this is our, this is our chance.

• 48:55Cassandra Yahnian?

  After we get back onto the river, we're gonna have to do the whole thing. So this is our chance to dip out. However, this left them two people short for the remainder of the 280 miles to Lake Mead, and they needed those people. Alzada and Norm borrowed a truck and drove back to the Mexican Hat Inn in search of volunteers to come with them to finish the journey. Meanwhile, back at the hotel, Lois had a very unlikely visitor, Buzz Holmstrom, the man who had completed a solo trip down the Colorado, and had been very vocal in the media of his opposition of the women on the river, came to speak with Lois. Admittedly, he said that he had come to Lee's Ferry when he heard that they were missing,

• 49:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  and he was there to not only boast that he was right, but brought his boat to go in to rescue them. But now he was there speaking to Lois as not a woman he didn't think capable, but as a fellow whitewater boater. When Lois asked if he thought she should continue on to Lake Mead, he told her that she should. From then on, he was very supportive of the whole idea. He gave advice and told her of his own struggles on the water. He even gave Lois his good luck charm to help her with her own journey. It was his waterproof match case with a compass attached to one end. In a letter that Lois wrote to her father, she told him of the exchange and that she had accepted this gift and felt no bad ill towards Buzz for his original feelings towards women on the river. Actually, quite the opposite.

• 50:22Cassandra Yahnian?

  She respected him a lot and enjoyed his company. In her letter, she told her father that if Buzz was taller than her, she would have considered dating him. Lois herself was almost six feet tall and she wanted a man who was taller than her and Buzz was not it.

• 50:36Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, I was just gonna say, tell me they get married or at least fall in love or at least have a wild love affair.

• 50:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  Not that I'm aware of for it. However, there is speculation that at least they do end up forming this deep friendship for your, for the rest of their lives, pretty much. And there are rumors that Buzz was deeply in love with her.

• 50:58Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, nice. The old enemies to lovers trope.

• 51:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yep. It's a classic.

• 51:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  Meanwhile, in Alzada and Norm's journey to find volunteers, they were able to recruit a 24 year old Navajo man named Lauren Bell and a 44 year old gold prospector Dell Reed to finish their boat trip with them. Alzada was also able to arrange the first of three shipments back to the University of Michigan that included all of the plants that her and Lois had been able to collect on the trip so far. By July 13th, they were back on the river again, and even with two new people, they adjusted to river life quickly and the next few days were smooth. It had helped in their week off the river that the water had lowered significantly, making it much easier to paddle. On July 16th, Lois and Alzada had the most scientifically important day of their entire trip.

• 51:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  They made a stop at Vasey's Paradise inside of Grand Canyon National Park. This area is a highly sensitive environment that can only be accessed from the river and is characterized by its cascading waterfalls over the red rocks and its lush vegetation. There were plants there that were found nowhere else in the Grand Canyon. Ferns, poison ivy, mosses, desert paintbrush, cacti, succulents, red monkey flower and more. There were even hummingbirds and beetles and things they hadn't noticed anywhere else along the trip. Alzada and Lois were in awe of the amount of life that they found in the middle of the desert. They collected as many species of plants that they could find being unconscious of not taking too much and harming the environment.

• 52:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  They wrote notes on everything they found and marveled at their discoveries. They were so excited about their finds that a few days later, Alzada arranged for someone to hike down the Bright Angel Trail to them and carry their plant findings back up it. The trail lowered over 4,000 feet into the canyon and was over 15 miles out and back, but it was important and she didn't want to risk losing any of their research in the river rapids. The person who came then shipped it back to Michigan for her. But not everything Lois and Alzada discovered was good. In their research, they realized how much European influence had affected the canyon. They found several invasive species that were taking over the riverbanks. There were also feral burrows and cattle that had been left behind

• 53:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  that were grazing on the fragile plants of the canyon. In addition to that, they found non-native fish that had previously been introduced by the government to support commercial fishing. They wrote down and later reported all of their findings. But as the days went on, there was a solemn mood that fell over the group. The closer they got to Lake Mead, sadness came over them. The trip had gone by quickly and they had really enjoyed it. There was also guilt that they felt for all the people who had attempted to do the same trip as they did prior, but didn't survive. They had been on the river a total of 43 days when they finally entered Lake Mead. They were surprised that not long after their arrival, a motorboat approached them waving and excited to welcome them. The driver was Buzz.

• 54:03Cassandra Yahnian?

  The crew tied their three boats behind his and hopped aboard. Shortly after, a larger boat from a Lake Mead tour company, carrying park officials and cameramen, arrived. They drove them to the far end of Lake Mead to Boulder City, Nevada, and that day, the headlines read, "Women Make Perilous Trip Through Colorado Gorges." Alzada and Lois officially became the first non-indigenous women to make the journey all the way down the Colorado River. They also became the first people to map the botany of the Grand Canyon. After a few days of rest, they made the trip back to Michigan and began reporting and writing down their scientific findings. They opened a whole new view of flora and desert areas and allowed the national parks

• 54:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  to make decisions that would help preserve the landscape better. After the trip, Elzada continued to travel and to give lectures about her adventures. Eventually, after years, she retired in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where she later died in 1980 at the age of 83. Norm began a whitewater rafting business after his trip with his wife. He was well-known for his boat design and for being the first river guide to take women down the Colorado River. Him and his wife continued the business until their untimely deaths in 1949 after a plane crash. A few years after the expedition, Lois married a botanist and had children with him. She moved to North Carolina, where she also became an advocate for the equal treatment of women in the workplace.

• 55:30Cassandra Yahnian?

  She traveled all over the world, including the Amazon rainforest, to study flora. Also, she made her way back to the Grand Canyon to paddle the river for a second time. However, this time, it was 1994 and she was 80 years old. She had been invited by some ecologists for a scientific expedition. The purpose was to study the environmental changes of the canyon since her original trip, where they found the canyon to be much more lush with vegetation than it had been the first time that she was there. Lois passed away in 2013 at the age of 99 years old. Throughout the remainder of her life, she kept just two mementos from her first river trip: the match case from Buzz and the yellow helmet she had worn that her comrades had signed.

• 56:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  Most of the signatures and writings were illegible and had faded throughout the years, except for one. Buzz had also signed her helmet, and with it, he wrote her a small note that read, "To the girl who proved me badly mistaken." And that is the end of my story.

• 56:32Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, I know you really want me to like, really love these women, and I do so much, but Buzz is my unexpected favorite.

• 56:40Cassandra Yahnian?

  He's an unexpected hero, for sure. And there actually was another detail of the story that I didn't jump super into, but I think is important just because we're talking kindly about Buzz, is that actually the Women, when they came back up from their trip, they realized they had actually forgotten one of their boxes of plants that they really wanted to study. And they were planning a trip to go back to get it because that was how important it was. And Buzz actually went down there, got it and shipped it back to Michigan for them.

• 57:08Danielle LaRock?

  Wow. Yeah. He just seems like there's something to be said about somebody who is open to having your mind changed about whatever, you know, not being married to certain thoughts, opinions, or biases that you may have and just being open to learning and changing and growing with more information. And he just embodies that totally. And he wasn't ashamed or prideful about his original, you know, that switch.

• 57:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  And he was really honest about it, too.

• 57:39Danielle LaRock?

  It just makes him so lovable, you know, it's like people change and it's okay, like to, to fess up to like, I was wrong and you proved me wrong and I'm sorry and let's go, let's move forward. And that's great.

• 57:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. And I love that not only did the, I don't think the women needed to prove themselves, but they clearly did. And then some, not only did they prove themselves, but they were recognized for it. You know, this Buzz, not only was he like, hey, my whole intention here, I was coming here to boast and gloat that I was right and women can't do this. And not only did you prove me wrong, but I respect you. I like you. I want to have a friendship with you and I support everything you're doing from here on. And totally made that switch. And a lot of the headlines switched too. The headlines after they finished were like, women did this. This is incredible. This is amazing. And so everything kind of switched for them. And I just thought it was such an incredible story and it influenced

• 58:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  a lot of things, you know, before they did this, Botany was considered this, how we spoke about at the beginning, it was this girly, fragile thing that women did because it was easy and it wasn't scary. And then you have these two women who with a crew floated, paddled the whole Colorado River and some of the scariest rapids you can go. Through and not only did they make it through it, but they were doing scientific studies while while they did it, they were working, which is incredible.

• 59:10Danielle LaRock?

  Well, shout out the book because I know you read one and you mentioned it very briefly in the beginning.

• 59:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yes, I did. And thank you for bringing that up. It is Brave the Wild River, The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon by Melissa L. I don't know how to say her last name. It's seventy, seventy, I think. But it's a really, I really enjoyed this book and it has a really good balance of knowledge, science, history, and the women themselves. And this author really dived into the story of these women. She actually read all of their journal entries and the journal entries of other people on the expedition to put together a historic telling of their story, which I thought was really interesting.

• 59:54Danielle LaRock?

  Well, I know you'd been waiting to do it for quite some time. I know it's been kind of like on your shelf for a little while. And I think wrapping up Women's History Month with that story was just perfect timing. So thank you for sharing it.

• 1:00:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  Thanks for hanging out and listening to it.

• 1:00:10Danielle LaRock?

  I love listening, even if it's on the phone.

• 1:00:11Cassandra Yahnian?

  You are on the phone, which was the first for the podcast.

• 1:00:17Danielle LaRock?

  All right. Well, thank you, everyone for joining us. We will see you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the view.

• 1:00:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  But watch your back.

• 1:00:25Danielle LaRock?

  Bye, everyone.

• 1:00:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  Bye.

• 1:00:26Danielle LaRock?

  Thank you for joining us again this week. If you love National Park After Dark and want to hear exclusive bonus stories, join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Patreon subscribers have access to our National Park After Dark Book Club, live streams, Discord, and much more. If you prefer to watch our episodes, video episodes are now available on YouTube. If you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform. And to follow along with all our adventures, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and X at National Park After Dark.

• 1:01:10Speaker 04

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