Customer Reviews

Deep Black

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Told from a refreshingly honest and unjaded viewpoint - unlike many adventure travel writers, this author does not try to impress us mere readers by mentioning other trips he may have taken in exotic foreign countries. The book explores Magley's relationship with the Black Canyon in Colorado and the research he undertakes to find out more about the first explorers there, but Magley takes the reader on many other side adventures - what do we (the paying public) really expect from National Parks? How does that differ from what our ancesters expected from the same area 200 years ago? And, what do the author and his friend do when exploring the river turns life threatening? This is a great read.

Deep Black: An Adventure Through The Black Canyon by travel and nature writer Robb Magley is both an extensively researched history and a thrilling saga of personal challenge. Magley recounts the history of Colorado's Black Canyon, a part of the Colorado country whose dangerous rapids were not conquered until 1901. In addition to thorough archival research, the author's own journey on foot through all thirty-three miles of a canyon that is steeper and narrower than the more famous Grand Canyon, the reader is deftly introduced to seventy-six river crossings, and informed of a brush with death that forcefully illustrates the power, majesty, and danger of this great natural resource and wonder.

Deep Black was great reading, one of those books you don't want to put down until it is finished. Having been acquainted with Black Canyon for many years this book answered questions that had been a puzzle to me for a long time. Robb's diligence in learning about the history relating to the trip made by A.L. Fellows and W. Torrence was much appreciated and it was interesting to learn that even writers in the early 1900's could not refrain from spicing up their stories. The first hand account the reader gets of the experience Robb and Michael had in traveling through the canyon makes one appreciate even more the task undertaken by Fellows and Torrence.

Where do I get my money back? My girlfriend bought the worthless thing for me to help enhance a paddle down the Gunnison river in the Black Canyon. I suffered through it only because I thought it just got off to a slow start. The author goes on for like the first ten chapters about the excitement of -- get this!---doing research in a library. You call this adventure? This is like writing a book about writing a term paper. There are a couple of chapters at the end (fortunately it's only about 100 pages, most of it quotes from others) where the guy does discuss a HIKE along the beginning of the river, but it covers almost none of the river because the author and his buddy, both of whom clearly were fish out of water at the bottom of a canyon, didn't know anything about the power of moving water, and bailed after just three days of an "adventure" that would have otherwise taken weeks. If you are a Park Ranger, yakker, or involved in any search and rescue team, you might get a good laugh out of the part about how all their gear boofed a rock without them during what had to be the most senseless river crossing ever. If there were no stories like this, we would have fewer laughs around the campfire at night when we're drying out. The book is too bad to be a teaching tool about what not to do on a river run, useless as a guidebook, and too shallow and dull to be at all entertaining.