Up early the next morning, sitting on the bank of the river, it is still cold. I sip warmed-up goat stew and, looking around, am reminded of one reason we had come to China. As the stars fade and the sun creeps into the canyon, a delft-blue sky is revealed. Pillowy clouds hover over golden peaks at valley's end and a single arc of sunlight spotlights the the densely forested slopes. A flock of starlings rises, wings silvered by the morning's brightness.

As Paulo and Joe prepare to take the cataraft across, the sun still hadn't hit the inside of the canyon. I overhear Paulo tell his partner, "As soon as we bump a rock, jump off and pull us in. I don't want to have to bump a second one." Chief cook and safety kayaker Marco Gressi and I sit on an immense rock overlooking the scene. Knowing that he would kayak across the powerful river next, he admits, "I can't wait to be on the other side, stirring the soup."
There is nothing we can do but watch. While the cataraft is rigged -- every rope tightened, pontoons pumped and re-pumped -- I see Paulo slipping into a wetsuit and running shoes. A California-born river-rat, this is a sure sign he's taking the crossing seriously. In the years I've watched him on rivers I've seen him suit up maybe once before and never before seen him wear shoes on the river.

After a big up-river push, Joe mounts the front of the cataraft like a bronco-rider. The sun now glistening off the river highlights the red-and-yellow climbing rope hung over his shoulder. The crystal-blue river, pulsing at nearly 20 miles per hour, pours in a smooth tongue between a handful of giant rocks at the top of the falls.

While still in the safety of calm water, Paulo strokes hard upriver to set himself up to cross. He makes a couple false starts, testing the current, making sure he has enough room once into the meat of the river to get full, powerful strokes without banging his oars on exposed rocks. With no warning the boat drifts into the current. It looks like they're heading fast down the left side -- the wrong side. But with a half-dozen strong pushes the boat is across and into the rock-laden eddy on the opposite shore. Joe leaps off the front, stumbling briefly as he pulls the banana-boat to safety. Whoops of relief shower the air. The nerve-wracking crossing took all of 20 seconds. It then takes five hours to secure the triangle of ropes and pulleys needed to safely drag the rest of us across the river.

At 4 o'clock on our fifth day on-river, we are still moving downriver. But getting around the falls proves as arduous as skirting them from above. As twilight sets in we stagger through a two-hour portage-from-hell, hacking a trail through the brush that lines the shore, lugging everything -- bags, propane tank, kayaks -- 100 feet at a time by fire line. Dressed in wetsuits, helmets and life jackets -- no one wants to fall in the river, or crack a skull at this juncture -- means raising a powerful sweat in the heat of the late afternoon.

Ironically, we do see some cracked skulls as we portage. The first belongs to a Chinese man who our pair of doctors estimate has been dead for about a month. We discover him as we pass bags along the riverside; his body is draped violently over a log, crammed between two rocks. The back of his head has been caved in by a rock. His pants and belt are intact, but his shirt has been stripped by the rushing water. We guess he's gotten too close to the river during monsoon season, and been swept away. Within a hundred yards we find the bodies of two more men who'd suffered similar fates. Finding dead bodies in the river was auspicious for us all, a powerful reminder of just how unrelenting a powerful river can be.

Our seventh day on the river is relaxed. After portaging the boats around a narrow, "frowning" hole -- the kind that swallows you and doesn't spit you out -- we spend the rest of the day smoothly running Class II, III, and IV rapids beneath a bronzing sun. As we progress the valleys grow more broad and we pass one gentle tributary after another. The wide-open skies are a welcome sight after a week spent in the tight confines of the narrow canyon.

"Finding dead bodies in the river was auspicious for us all, a powerful reminder of just how unrelenting a powerful river can be..."

At lunch we park on a sandy beach across from a small, busy gold mining camp. Afterwards, as we peel out the workers line the banks and wave. Some hold seining baskets, others shovels. Behind them men cut wood to fuel the engines that suck up river water and, hopefully, spit out gold flakes.

Despite all the physical difficulties of the trip, the first real conflicts emerge that night. Joe, prompted by Eric, explains over a roaring fire that the decision has been made to end the trip roughly 25 miles from where we are camped, at the only village on the river, called Beiyong Ping. From there, we could climb to the last road marked on the map. That would leave us 30 miles short of the Yangtze. "We just think this is the safest way to go," said Joe. "We're all a little disappointed we won't dip our toes into the Yangtze, but realistically, if we hit another gorge or two, it could take us 10 more days. And we can't afford that." We had food enough for three or four more days.

For the next 15 hours small meetings were held up and down the sandy beach, as the decision was debated. Joe had floated the idea of a small group -- one raft and two kayaks -- continuing. But by the middle of the next day he'd withdrawn that idea. "Bad call," he admitted. "We've got very little Chinese money and only one Chinese speaker. We've got to stick together. We came in as a team, I think we should go out a team." While there was some dissent, led by Jon Dragan who confided "I've never quit anything I've started," the logic in hiking out ultimately made sense. We'd dropped 2,000 feet and covered 45 miles, very similar to first descents we'd made on the Futaleufu and the Colca. Inside the tight canyon walls of the Shuilo He we'd seen a part of the globe no man had seen before.

The biggest hassle was that the trail leading to a logging road was on river left, which meant we were at best a hard three day drive away from Lijiang. That's if we could find vehicles willing to pick up 18 hitchhikers and more than a ton of gear. As Dragan cheerfully pointed out, "Now the adventure begins."

Our last night on the Shuilo He was spent sleeping on sand brightened by the glimmer of gold flakes. On a sunny morning we rolled up the boats, loaded them onto pack mules hired from a nearby mining camp, and climbed 3,000 feet straight up from the river. As we crossed the narrow bridge over the Shuilo He we looked thankfully upriver and somewhat longingly downriver. Beneath us the river twisted and narrowed before disappearing into another canyon. As we climbed, we each to ourselves wondered exactly what lay beyond.