This will seem like an appeal to my Vanity, but actually it isn't. As some have read before, I am working on a non-fiction book about my 12 years as a whitewater canoe guide/instructor, and I've just finished the rough draft. The book is primarily humorous, (or its supposed to be) and one of the chapters I talk about all the ways to attain fame in the whitewater world, and how I have managed to avoid all of them. I then go on to tell a funny story about how many times I went into the drink on a really bad day of paddling an open boat on a very technical class III-IV run with some kayakers.
I let a friend read part of the story and he said I might have been the first open boater to ever try that particular run in an open canoe. It would be funny to put in the story that I actually did attain a 'first descent' but did it so sloppily I didn't want anyone to know.
So, in April of 2000, I took a Dagger Encore through Box Canyon on the Upper Sacramento River. Does anyone know of anyone else who did 'The Box' (not merely the Upper Sacramento as they are different runs) prior to April of 2000? Is there anyplace online that keeps track of first descents? Incidentally, I still talk to the kayakers who watched me get creamed that day, so they can back me up as to the dates.
Oh, and as a final note, if you ever make it out to the 'Box'...take a shorter boat.
-Rob
Canoeing isn't a sport...its an art. Unfortunately, I am not exactly Michelangelo.
I guess it's possible because that run can be hard to catch with water, but i would think it was run. people around here were running class five like giant gap, cherry creek, 49 to bridgeport, burnt ranch, in the eighties-nineties. They just didn't broadcast it.
I know some open boaters were running big stuff in the 80's/90's, and I have no misconceptions about my special skills (or lack thereof) being necessary for running the Box. I have some photos somewhere of a guy running the CAL Salmon in a Blue Hole OCA in the early 80's, and that is far tougher than Box Canyon. I've done the CAL Salmon and the Scott, too, but on both of those I have first-hand knowledge of open boaters who did them before. Ditto Burnt Ranch Gorge. Maybe I'll just write that I MIGHT have been the first, and ask for anyone who ran it before me to feel free to drop me a line to amend my education.
-Rob
Canoeing isn't a sport...its an art. Unfortunately, I am not exactly Michelangelo.
This is actually a great place to post such a question (it's been done in the past), as you'll reach a lot of folks. Not ALL of them though, as a lot of the epic old school boaters aren't on the internet....
Well, I asked a buddy of mine who was open boating a lot of class four before I even started and yes, he ran it in the late eighties in a blue hole. And he figures he was nowhere near the first. He knows of a couple guys that were years ahead of him.
