Goodman was a young Englishman.
Hawkins had been a soldier in the late war, and Andrew Hall was a Scotch boy nineteen years old.
The spring was chosen for the beginning of the voyage because the Green then is at flood and there would be less trouble about floating the boats through the shoal places and amongst the rocks.

The river in some respects is safer at a lower stage of water, but the work is harder.
This, however, was not known then, and Powell had to take his chances at the flood.

On May 24, 1869, the boats were manned and soon were carried out of sight of the haphazard group of houses which at that time constituted this frontier settlement of Green River.

They were heavily laden, for ten months' rations were carried, as Powell expected when winter came to be obliged to halt and make a permanent camp till spring.
He calculated the river might be filled with ice.

It has since been ascertained, however, that the Colorado proper rarely has any ice in it.
I remember once hearing that a great many years ago it was frozen over in the neighbourhood of Lee's Ferry, where for a little distance the current is not rapid.