Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico

In 1911, two brothers with a handmade movie camera and a death wish pushed wooden boats into the Green River, bound for the Grand Canyon and a destination no one had successfully navigated. Ellsworth and Emery Kolb weren't the first to attempt the Colorado River, but they were the first to capture it on film, documenting rapids that would kill explorers for decades to come. This is the account of that journey: the preparations in Green River City, Wyoming, where locals warned them they'd never return. The launch into treacherous waters. The capsized boats, the frozen nights, the moments when the canyon walls closed around them and the only way was forward. What emerges is a portrait of an America still wild enough to reward audacity with spectacle, and of two men who brought that wildness home to audiences who had never seen anything like it.