The Emerald Cove: The Jewel of Las Vegas

“The last time I went kayaking in a canyon, I had to be choppered out. If there’s any sign of rain, get the Hell out of there!”. My friend’s words echo through my mind as I look out past the neon-coloured, flash flood warning signs that line our launch site at Willow Beach Marina, Arizona. In the near distance dark clouds start to gather above the 600-foot terracotta walls of the threateningly named Black Canyon where soon I would be paddling, water level, in a tiny, fragile canoe. 

In an adventurous moment, anticipating I might need some respite from the temptations of the Las Vegas strip during my stay, I had booked a three-hour kayaking tour on the Colorado River to the Emerald Cove. I had seen pictures of an Insta-perfect grotto, the sun illuminating the bright green algae on the riverbed, where I could imagine I’d found Ali Baba’s treasure (I suspected my luck wouldn’t translate into any real treasure at the Vegas casinos). River Dogz, a canine-accommodating adventure tour company, seemed confident in taking complete beginners such as myself, and after a quick 10-minute briefing, I find myself furiously paddling against the current as the wind pushes me towards the dusty yellow banks, knitted through with arrowweed. 

My initial trepidation isn’t waning as cold splashes start to fall with increasingly frequency on my already tired arms. I had images of being swept the 10 miles downstream into the intimidating large-scale engineering of the Hoover Dam, my final legacy being known as the woman responsible for causing a half-day power outage across northern Phoenix. Our tour guide, Preston, notices my unease. Rescuing me from my reed-based entanglement (for probably the third time that day), he looks at me with a mix of concern and pity. “Look, I can see there’s a lot going on here…” he says, noting my agitation. “Tell me, what are you scared of?”. I try not to evoke too much of my latent paranoia and a little reticently respond, “That a giant tidal wave is going to whoosh down this valley any minute and sweep me away into the water!”. Preston shrugs, and replies breezily, “So, you’ll be a little chilly for a minute. It’s okay… no biggie…”. I find Preston’s laid-back, attitude perversely reassuring and resolve to put my apocalyptic musings to the back of my mind. Instead, I concentrate on trying to remember to take big, long strokes with the paddle, something both our professional guide, and also my fellow amateurs, are having to keep reminding me to do. The chunky life-jacket we’re required to wear for both health and safety and also, more importantly, insurance purposes is drowning my tiny 5-foot frame and hindering my kayaking prowess (at least, that’s my excuse). I suspect I look a little like one of those wind-up toy drumming monkeys, my hands making tiny circles as the paddles barely break the choppy surface of the water. 

A little further along the canyon, Preston suggests we stop for some power snacks and take a short hike up to see the old Gauging Station, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and only accessible by water. We clumsily steer our kayaks towards a small sandy bank that already has four or five empty kayaks clinging onto it precariously. Heaving our own boats out of the water far enough to stop them floating away and leaving us marooned, but not too far so as to scrape the delicate undersides on errant river stones, we tuck in to a banquet of energy bars and bananas and start up the dusty track to the station. 

No sooner had I reconfigured my sea legs to face the land-based incline to the station, the owners of the abandoned kayaks appear excitedly from behind a large collection of desert mahogany and sagebrush and declare, without hint of panic, that they’d just seen a rattlesnake squirming its way across the path. Forgetting my river terrors, I now had a new earth-based concern about the ability of my flimsy swim shoes, bought specially for the occasion, to withstand a sudden viper strike. I decide not to consult with Preston on this one, and instead quickly develop an all-encompassing interest in the ground-level flora and fauna for the remainder of the hike. 

After 15 terrifying minutes of concealing my nervousness of every brown, rope-looking branch on the path, we reach the remains of the Gauger’s Home, a small, 2-foot high concrete rectangle on a ledge high above the river, now filled with shrubs and the odd discarded remains of a previous life. Finished in 1935 to house those responsible for measuring the flow of water from the newly completed Hoover Dam, it was only occupied for a few years before being damaged by fire and then demolished. The information plaque tells us it was put out of use in 1939 when a new station was constructed further upstream closer to the dam. However, I suspect the commute, via a rickety, wooden, hand-operated cable car clutching desperately to the rock, all higgledy-piggledy high on the canyon wall, may have played a part in this decision. 

We return to the beach to find our canoes guarded by a troupe of jealous and vocal ducks. They sat atop the small boats squawking at us like tiny water valets we had forgotten to tip. We quickly manage to free ourselves from their entrepreneurial tyranny and continue upstream to the cove. 

The dusty yellow-grey amiability of the banks and small beaches gradually disappears, to be replaced with confronting, burnt-orange, jagged walls of rock starting in a place silhouetted against white clouds and deep diving into the, now calm, blue-green waters. A small opening appears, interrupting the relentless march of the cliff into the river. We have reached the Emerald Cove. 

The grotto itself would be described by an estate agent as ‘bijou’. At only a few metres wide, we just about manage to fit our group of six, carefully maneuvering ourselves against the walls so that we all face the entrance. At that moment, as if to reward all our efforts, the sun theatrically reveals itself from behind the clouds like it had been hiding so as not to spoil the ‘main event’. As the rays hit the clear water of the cove, it glows a bright, fluorescent, lime-green under us, like a Disney water feature of Peter Pan. I couldn’t help feel a tinge of patriotism as I was reminded of the Chicago River on St Patrick’s Day. We sit in silence, the only sounds the crisp lapping of the water and the hollow knocks as our fiberglass kayaks gently bump each other. 

As quickly as it appeared, the sun skulks off behind another group of clouds and the water returns to its more leafy hue. We once again resume the hard paddle, this time against the current, back down the canyon. 

Just before we make it back to Willow Beach, I notice a bald eagle perched proudly on a craggy rock at the top of the canyon. I wondered if I’d missed him earlier, in my flood-led panic. Maybe he had been there the whole time, a reassuring symbol from my hosts that, in America, THIS is how you get “choppered out”.