How tough are you? I don't mean how many times you can bench press a Ford, or how far you can run with a bank safe balanced on your head. I was thinking more of inner strength.

Could you keep going when all seems lost? How far would you be willing to go to get yourself or someone else out of a jam?

Lately, I've had to consider the possibility of doing just that. I'm somewhere in Desolation Canyon right now. If all is going well, I'm floating along without a care in the world.

On the other hand, I could be limping along half-drowned, with a couple of broken bones and dressed only in someone else's too-small underpants — the only thing I managed to scavenge from the wreck of a raft.

I haven't seen anyone else in two days. It's 60 miles of deadfalls, boulders and a raging torrent of mud between me and a hamburger at Ray's Tavern in Green River. Should I just lay down and die?

Lots of people have. Desolation Canyon is about as remote a place as you can get. No phones, no radio and no food. Just me and whatever inner strength I can summon.

Just before we left, this paper ran an "Idiots Beware" notice from the BLM. The Green was running high and fast and treacherous.

In 1971, a group of 25 Boy Scouts were swamped at Steer Rapids. The river stripped them of everything including all their food. They huddled on the shore for two days before being rescued by a helicopter from Hill Air Force Base.

During that disaster, two Scouts clutching a single life preserver between them were carried 30 miles downstream. Jim Bernardoni, 13, a slight, bespectacled kid, managed to make it to shore. His friend Peter McCarthy drowned.

Alone, Bernardoni wandered for two days. Word of the calamity reached Green River in the form of McCarthy's body. Only then was a rescue operation launched.

In 1949, another group of Scouts lost everything to the river near Rock Creek Ranch. For two days, they climbed 5,000 feet up the Van Deusen trail, some of them without shoes and wearing only T-shirts.

When they finally reached a cabin at the top, they had to take food back down the trail to their leader, who had collapsed. Fortunately, no one died.

Brothers Renny and Terry Sumner weren't so lucky in the summer of 1965. When their raft capsized, Terry drowned. Renny made it to shore with just a pair of pants.

Renny wandered downstream calling for his brother until he came upon an abandoned ranch. There he found an old pair of shoes and a jar of peanut butter.

With that and some berries he discovered, Renny hiked 70 miles down the canyon to Green River and help. His brother's body was pulled from the river a week later.

The most startling example was the run for help made by Scott Parish in 1974. When a girl in his group suffered a head injury near the Range Creek confluence, Parish set off on foot in the late afternoon.

Twelve hours later, Parish arrived in Green River, having covered 31 miles of the roughest country in Utah — much of it in the dark. The injured girl was airlifted to a hospital and survived.

We never know how much strength we have in us, or what motivates us to call upon it. If I'm lucky, I won't have to find out this week.

If I'm not, please know that my last conscious thoughts were of a cheeseburger.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/notpatbagley.