Quartzite's Fall: A Wilderness Tale by Kristin Atwell

Synopsis

The destruction of a Class V+ white water rapid is investigated in QUARTZITE'S FALL: A WILDERNESS TALE. Federal agents arrest eight men for blowing up Quartzite Falls, the most dangerous rapid in Arizona's Salt River Canyon. As the story behind their crime unravels, their alibi -- to make a deadly place safer -- sparks debate about the meaning of wilderness.

Director

Kristin Atwell is an independent producer, editor and writer who trained with Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Dorothy Fadiman while working on Ms. Fadiman's award-winning PBS series, FROM the BACK ALLEYS to the SUPREME COURT & BEYOND. Kristin is currently producing and directing her first documentary, QUARTZITE'S FALL: A Wilderness Tale, in which a dramatic series of events shed light on a Wilderness river's value to the human spirit. Kristi and Ventana have worked closely together on many projects since 1995.

The film screened at the Banff Mountain Film Festival 2000.

Review

In the Shadow of Quartzite -- by Eugene Buchanan

By the time I neared the eddy, everyone else had already climbed up the steep, cactus-lined slope to the vantage point overlooking the falls. Angling my boat, I ferried towards shore, crossed the eddyline and ran my bow up on the cobblestone beach.

As if to remind me why we were all here, a large "Danger--Falls 1/4-mile!" sign, painted in faded white letters, rose out of the eddy on a cliff above the pool, catching my attention like a Surgeon General's warning on a pack of cigarettes. Unlike the ever-present dangers of nicotine, however, the falls didn't need to carry a cautionary message anymore. They were destroyed in the fall of 1993 in an act of environmental vandalism even the Monkey Wrench Gang would have a hard time condoning.

This, of course, is exactly why I found myself scrambling up an innocuous, saguaro-filled slope above Quartzite Falls on Arizona's Salt River. At the top was the rest of the party, an odd consortium of river runners lured here by filmmaker Kristin Atwell, 27, who is making a documentary on the life and death of the falls. She had already taken several journeys down the river for her project, most recently with cinematographers Gordon Brown and Allison Chase, each trip adding new insights to the film. This time she stacked the trip with interviewees she thought would add more color to the production: Mark Dubois, co-founder of California's Friends of the River (FOR) and Oregon's International Rivers Network (IRN); Pam Hyde, director of Southwest Programs for American Rivers, a Washington, D.C.-based river conservation organization; Roger Saba, a long-time private rafter from Phoenix. I was here to explain what the falls' destruction meant for paddlers, and my friend Pete Foster, a hydrologist from Flagstaff, Ariz., was here to explain the basics of hydrodynamics.

At the top of the ridge, Paul Atkinson, a cameraman from Channel 8, Phoenix's PBS station, focused on Pam, the falls barely visible in the background. "I feel violated," she said, the tone of concern easily readable in her voice. Atwell, holding a reflective shield, shifted it so a faint beam of light caressed her face. "Not only for the loss of the falls," continued Pam, "but because it happened in a wilderness area. To do something like this defeats the whole purpose of what a wilderness area stands for." Hers was a stirring performance--far more than mine on what the falls meant to paddlers and Pete's on how reversals trap their victims. After Pam's soliloquy, which caused even the neighboring saguaro to bend an ear, Paul Mischud, president of the 150-member Central Arizona Paddlers Club, took the stage, echoing sentiments expressed by others. "It's a travesty," he said, blinking into the lens. "I feel like a part of me is gone."

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