Grand Canyon Boaters Surf the Internet

The Grand Canyon Boaters' List has several purposes:

• To provide a place where worldwide friends of the Canyon can meet;
• To help persons with non-commercial river trip permits find other qualified private boaters to assist in putting together their Canyon trips;
• To provide an information resource for people interested in river trips in the Grand Canyon;
• To provide a forum for discussion of issues concerning the Canyon, the River, and the Park;
• To further goodwill among all types of river runners, and friends of the Canyon;
• And finally, it's here for fun.

This list is intended for private boaters, commercial guides and outfitters, National Park Service personnel, and people who love the Canyon. But please note the following guidelines:

Impolite behavior and flaming are strongly discouraged. The temptation for unpleasant words most frequently comes up in discussions of the politics of access to the Grand Canyon, but harsh words in any context are suspect. Direct and personal verbal attacks are grounds for immediate removal from the list, regardless of topic and regardless of provocation. The list is partially moderated -- spam, flames, email viruses, posts contrary to list rules, and other dementia may not be forwarded to the list.

There are a number of political issues concerning the Grand Canyon. People come down on different sides in these issues, and sometimes they have very strong feelings. The gcboaters list is NOT a good place to stand and shout at your political opponents. Polite discussions of Grand Canyon politics are OK, but there are other lists you should use if that is a primary concern, in particular the riveraccess@multi.hydrosphere.com list. Subscription information for riveraccess is at the bottom of this page.

This list is not intended for advertising of commercial river trips in the Grand Canyon. (A List of Commerical Outfitters is available on the Grand Canyon River Running site, and information on commercial trips can be obtained by calling the river office at Grand Canyon National Park, 1-800-959-9164.)

However, information about private equipment for sale or trade is OK and encouraged. Ads may also be submitted to the GCBoaters Classified Ads. You can fill out our online form to submit an ad, as well.

More important, this list is definitely not to be used for private permit holders to sell spaces on their trips. This is against National Park Service (NPS) policy and rules. Breaking this rule would damage one of the most valuable uses of this list, so this rule is strictly enforced. Subscribers interested in arranging trips through this list should be familiar with all applicable National Park Service (NPS) rules and regulations regarding non-commercial river running in the Grand Canyon. The list and its logs are available to the NPS for use in the regulation of non-commercial river running and the enforcement of federal law.

Subscription information

If you are new to Internet mail lists the process can be a little confusing, so we describe the steps in considerable detail. If this kind of stuff is unfamiliar to you it is probably worth reading over the following steps fairly carefully. According to the logs about a quarter of the subscription attempts fail; if you don't receive email from "majordomo" something went wrong, and you should carefully check back through what you did, and try again, if necessary.

1. You fill in the blanks in the form below, and click on the "Send Message" button.
2. The list software will then send you two email messages. One is a direct response to the subscribe request, the other will be a confirmation message, requesting that you confirm your subscription. The messages will come from "majordomo@songbird.com" -- "majordomo" is the name of the software that processes subscription requests. (This step is necessary to be sure that you haven't mistyped your email address. If you don't get these messages, then you are not subscribed, and you will need to try again!)
3. You must send a reply to the confirmation message back to majordomo@songbird.com. If majordomo does not receive this reply, it will assume that the email address you provided doesn't work, and will forget about you. When you get the confirmation message it will contain detailed instructions on how to reply, but briefly, you email a single line message back to majordomo that looks something like this:

   auth 154f1340 subscribe gcboaters mailuser@hotmail.com

   Majordomo won't know that you got the message it sent you until it receives this reply. This may seem overly elaborate and complex, but perhaps as many as 25% of subscription requests have incorrect email addresses in them, or have delivery problems.

Important Note: Many people use email software that will send HTML versions of their messages. Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and Netscape Communicator, among others, will send their messages as HTML. This causes problems for message recipients who are not using this software. Perhaps more importantly, HTML will cause problems with Majordomo. Please configure your email software to not send HTML to gcboaters.

In Netscape Communicator, go to Edit -> Preferences -> Mail&Newsgroups -> Formatting, and select

"Use the plain text editor to compose messages"

"Ask me what to do if the message has HTML formatting, otherwise send 
plain text"

In Microsoft Outlook, go to Tools Menu -> Options -> Mail Format Tab -> In the Message Format drop-down box, select "Plain Text".

Note that the above change will also remove the "winmail.dat" attachements, which will cause majordomo to choke, as well...

Further discussion of how to deal with this problem can be found here.

AOL users may have a special problem -- we've never tried the following recipe, but it may work for you:

How to send plain text from AOL V6.0: 
===================================== 

1. Make sure your font is set to Arial 10, the AOL default. 

2. Create a message using only default Arial 10 type. Any 
   quoted text pasted in from another message must also be 
   in Arial 10 type (no bold, other sizes or colors). Note: 
   if you paste a message that was received in HTML format, 
   it will probably cause you to send in HTML. 

3. Hit Control-A to highlight the entire message. 

4. Right click anywhere in the message itself: A 'popup menu' 
   will appear. Move the cursor to "text" and another menu 
   will appear. Move the cursor to "normal" and click on it. 

5. Send the message. 

Subscription Form

Common Problems

1. Incorrect mail address. Joe may have an email address like "joe@aol.com", but in filling out the form, Joe inadvertently puts "joe@aol". A human being is smart enough to figure out what to do about this, but majordomo isn't. Since it doesn't have the correct address for Joe, it can't even send an error message to Joe telling him what went wrong. Remember -- if you don't get a confirm message within a day or less, you aren't subscribed.
2. Mangled confirm message. Your mail software may wrap lines, so instead of seeing

    auth 154f1340 subscribe gcboaters mailuser@hotmail.com
   

   you see

   auth 154f1340 subscribe gcboaters
   mailuser@hotmail.com
   

   You carefully follow the directions and only send a single line, but unfortunately, the line was modified by the software. The confirm line you send back should have 4 "words": "auth", an authorization code (154f1340 in the example), the word "subscribe", the word "gcboaters", and the simplest complete form of your email address. Nothing more, nothing less.
3. Mangled confirm reply. Even if you receive the email correctly, if you have HTML turned on the confirm replay may be adorned with HTML formating codes. If you are viewing the message with an HTML-enabled mail reader you won't notice the codes -- you will just see the nice fonts and formatting. But Majordomo doesn't know fonts and formatting, and will choke.
4. Confirm reply sent to wrong address. As mentioned above, there are two (2) email addresses involved: majordomo@songbird.com, and gcboaters@songbird.com. "majordomo" is a software robot that reads mail messages and manages email several lists (more than just gcboaters). "gcboaters", on the other hand, is a very large list of email addresses of people who love the Grand Canyon. If you want to talk to people about the Grand Canyon, you send mail to gcboaters. If you want to subscribe to gcboaters, you sendm mail to majordomo.

   You may want to check another reference for majordomo commands or meet the list administrators. If you have problems using this form, try sending mail to the webmaster.

Sites of interest to Grand Canyon Boaters:

Grand Canyon River Guides

Grand Canyon Private Boaters Association

Grand Canyon River Running

Grand Canyon National Park page with river options menu

Grand Canyon River Outfitters Association

Other Email Lists:

To join the riveraccess list, send a message to

list.manager@multi.hydrosphere.com

containing:

subscribe riveraccess
end

Another very interesting list hosted by hydrosphere.com is the rivers list. It is low volume, but has occasional fascinating discussions of hydrology, ecology, and other scientific and technical aspects of rivers. Subscribe as you do to "riveraccess", except substitute "rivers" for "riveraccess".