Whitewater First Descents
ABC television hovering over Entry Rapid during an
abridged first descent, 1981. PHOTO COURTESY OF ROB LESSER
B.C. THE STIKINE RIVER carves a 700-kilo- metre path toward the ocean through B.C.’s rugged north country and the dangling leg of Alaska, about 240 kilo- metres south of the Yukon border. The tail end of a transcontinental highway for the Hudson’s Bay Company’s canoes, she fed the fur trade and the Klondike gold rush. Her crowning glory, the Grand Can-
GRAND CANYON of the STIKINE,
yon of the Stikine, towers sentinel over a narrow 80-kilometre stretch of vicious class V+ that even after a handful of de- scents, the surrounding provincial park advertises as strictly unrunnable. When the first bridge crossed the
river’s banks in the early 1970s, pad- dlers began to imagine the possibilities. British paddlers scouted a portion of the river in the mid-’70s and even ran the river below the canyon (mostly class III), but were unsure of the upper reaches. Around the same time, Rob Lesser
was frequently planning and running expeditions in remote rivers throughout B.C. and Alaska. The famed whitewater expedition paddler and 2005 inductee to the International Whitewater Hall of Fame was running the highway back and forth during several years in the late ‘70s from his home state of Idaho, to his park ranger job in Alaska, keeping his eyes open for prime spots. He shared a few notes with the British paddlers and started plotting in earnest. River information was scarce; this was
not the enlightened Internet age. There was some information through B.C.’s hy- dro company and it appeared to Lesser the gradient was reasonable, even if flows for most of the year were not. Finally, in August 1981, an all-star
cast including Lesser, Lars Holbeck, John Wasson, Rick Fernald, Don Ban- ducci and an ABC Sports television crew, complete with helicopter, slipped into the Stikine. The levels were so intense the televi-
sion crew quickly had all the glorious and jaw-dropping footage they needed, cutting the trip short and flying the pad- dlers to the mouth for final shots. It left a good portion of the canyon unrun. In 1985, Lesser and Holbeck, along
with Bob McDougall, did what had been building for nearly a decade and re- turned to make a full descent. —NE
32
RAPID
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52