His death while running the river was, says Brad Dimock, the way the man "who did everything the very hard way" would have wanted it. It was, perhaps, the way he even would have planned his final moments.

"He fell in love with the river. It was a main part of his life and, in the end, the river is where Bert Loper most wanted to be," said Dimock, author of the recently released The Very Hard Way: Bert Loper and the Colorado River. "He died with his mistress, not with his wife."

Less than a month from his 80th birthday, during a 1949 trip down the Grand Canyon, Loper suffered an apparent heart attack while rowing his homemade boat through a 24 1/2 -mile rapid. It was the last of an amazing run for Loper that represented the most comprehensive coverage of the Colorado River system by a single person.

"He ran more continuous miles of the Colorado than anyone," Dimock said. "There are people who have more overall miles, but they are missing huge chunks and they will never cover the places Bert did because of dams. Bert made a point of it when he was 70 to hit the chunks he missed, and he didn't write a book about it or go around beating his chest."

Some knew him as a lazy curmudgeon and others as one of the strongest human beings they ever met, but regardless of opinion, Loper made an impression on everyone.

"He was a salt-of-the-earth, homegrown, very poor, very hard-working American who, in spite of poverty, no education and no family, found what he wanted and followed his dream," Dimock said. "Bert knew people from [Major John Wesley] Powell's trip to those who became the great motorboatmen of the '50s and '60s. He is a part of everyone's story and everyone is a part of his."

Born in Missouri in 1869, Loper, an orphan who was abused as a child, fled to Colorado in 1885 to work on an uncle's farm near Cortez. When his uncle no longer needed him, Loper found employment as a mule skinner, coal miner and silver miner.

With the silver mining boom slowing, Loper decided to pursue another precious metal, hearing of the gold that had been discovered on the San Juan River of southeastern Utah.

He arrived in Bluff in 1893, and while the gold panning turned out to be a bust, Loper found the love of his life on the muddy rivers of the desert southwest.

"He found the river and it spoke to him," Dimock said.

Loper started spending much of his time in a boat, on the San Juan, traveling up and down the river in search of likely placer gold deposits. He enjoyed the pull of the oars and found a thrill in the river's sand waves and rapids.

Dimock postulates Loper began using a style of rowing - facing downstream while pulling the oars upstream to avoid obstacles - on the San Juan. Nathaniel Galloway is credited for the technique, but when Loper led an expedition through Cataract Canyon of the Colorado in 1907, he did so facing downriver not ever having known Galloway and not having received news of his rowing style.

Loper liked the Colorado so much he lived along its banks for eight years, near Red Canyon in Glen Canyon in a small cabin known as the Hermitage, which is now deep below the waters of Lake Powell.

His love for the Colorado grew, and his desire to see more of it led to his first planned expedition of Grand Canyon, in 1907. Loper was called a coward, however, when he was separated from two companions in the winter of 1907-08. They finished the adventure; Loper returned to his home in Glen Canyon.

Other planned expeditions for 1914 and 1923 never happened. Loper, however, only grew to love the West's great river even more.

He explored the tributaries of the Colorado, then was married in 1916, to Rachel Jamieson, of Torrey, who was more than 20 years his junior, and headed north to Idaho for a float on the Salmon.

On that trip in Idaho, Loper began to again entertain the thought of floating the Grand Canyon. With the help of Don Harris, who in the book is painted more as a son than a friend, Loper finally made his long-dreamed-of trip through the Grand Canyon, in 1939.

He was 69 years old, and already a recognized icon of the river-running community. The 1939 trip elevated Loper to a legend and made newspaper headlines across the country, where he was called the "Grand Old Man of the Colorado."

At the end of the trip, Loper was reflective and proud.

"And to think of the many years that I have wended my lonely way along some part of the Colorado water shed and with my blankets unrolled on some sand bar with the starry canopy of heaven over me have I dreamed not only of making this trip but of making it as we did make it with every one of those ferocious rapids conquered, and to think I had to wait until I rounded out my three score and ten before the dream came true," Loper wrote, in his journals.

Before they had even left the water, he half-jokingly suggested they do it again in another 10 years.

After heading scientific and government trips on the rivers for years, Loper became a tour guide in the 1940s, leading Boy Scouts and other paying customers on expeditions. The trips wore him out, but kept alive his new goal of floating the Colorado through Grand Canyon twice in his life.

Harris realized his mentor and old friend expected the trip to go on as planned a decade before, and on July 7, 1949, Loper was at the oars when the boat he built, Grand Canyon, was launched at Lees Ferry.

Harris had pleaded with Loper to ride on someone else's boat and, when that failed, made arrangements to have a skilled rower on Grand Canyon in case Loper needed to be spelled. Loper told them he would rather die than let another man take his oars.

On that first night around the campfire Loper told the others he had been advised by numerous doctors to stay home, that his heart couldn't take the exertions of rowing a boat down the Colorado River. He asked, should he die, that they not allow his body to be taken from the canyon and that they promise to sign an affidavit of his death so his wife could get his pension money from his time served in the Spanish-American War.

Loper wrote about his idea of death not long before it came to pass.

"If I knew that on a certain day I was to pass on I would get in my boat and would land in Grand Canyon on that day for it seems to me that it would be such a nice place to pass on to one that loves the whole set up as I do."

Dimock, a river guide for 35 years and an author of other historical books on river running - including the 2001 book Sunk Without a Sound: The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde, felt a connection to Loper, who made significant sacrifices to spend time on his beloved river.

"He lived in poverty for a chance to live on the river," Dimock said. "He is respected by boatmen of today because he, like many of them, lived for the river and day to day because of it."

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* BRETT PRETTYMAN can be contacted at brettp@ sltrib.com or 801-257-8902.

About Bert Loper

Author Brad Dimock's Utah touring schedule for his new book The Very Hard Way: Bert Loper and the Colorado River

Monday - Bluff, Comb Ridge Trading Post, 7 p.m.

March 22 - Moab, Moab Information Center, 7 p.m.

March 23 - Logan, Utah State University, Natural Resources Building, Room 217, 4:30 p.m.

March 24 - Salt Lake City, Ken Sanders Rare Books, 268 S. 200 East, 7 p.m.

March 25 - Cedar City, Braithwaite Center, 7:30 p.m.

March 26 - Kanab, Willow Canyon Books, 5:30 p.m.

March 27 - Springdale, Canyon Community Center, 7:30 p.m.