Fifty Places to Paddle Before You Die

Santella Chris

Description

In Fifty Places to Paddle Before You Die, the newest addition to the Fifty Places series, Chris Santella explores the best destinations for the diverse sport of paddling. The book features the world's top spots for kayaking, rafting, canoeing, and stand-up paddleboarding. Destinations include the Grand Canyon, Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, Baja California, Indonesia's Komodo Islands, and the Antarctic Peninsula, as recommended by paddling experts. Compelling travelogues are complemented by beautiful and vibrant photographs of the locations and travel tips to help readers experience the destinations for themselves.

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 16 septembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781613127216
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

This book is for my girls, Cassidy, Annabel, and Deidre. I hope we ll have many fun days ahead on the water.

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Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
THE DESTINATIONS
Alaska: Kenai Fjords
RECOMMENDED BY DAVID WENDY DOUGHTY
Antarctica: Antarctic Peninsula
RECOMMENDED BY AL BAKKER
Arizona: Grand Canyon (Colorado River)
RECOMMENDED BY BRECK POULSON
Australia: Tasmania (Southwest Coast)
RECOMMENDED BY MARK GRUNDY
Belize: Ambergris Caye
RECOMMENDED BY LORI-ANN MURPHY
Bhutan: Paro Chhu and Beyond
RECOMMENDED BY ZACHARY COLLIER
British Columbia: Johnstone Strait
RECOMMENDED BY GRAHAM VAUGHAN
British Columbia/Yukon/Alaska: Tatshenshini/Alsek Rivers
RECOMMENDED BY MELANIE SIEBERT
California: Tuolumne River
RECOMMENDED BY NELSON MATHEWS
Chile-Chilo : Chilo Archipelago
RECOMMENDED BY FRANCISCO VALLE GOMEZ
Chile-Palena: Futaleuf River
RECOMMENDED BY ROBERT CURRIE
Ecuador: Gal pagos
RECOMMENDED BY MORAG PROSSER
Fiji: Upper Navua River
RECOMMENDED BY GEORGE WENDT
Florida: Florida Keys
RECOMMENDED BY CAPTAIN BILL KEOGH
Greece-Crete: Crete (the South Coast)
RECOMMENDED BY KEITH HEGER
Greece-Milos: Milos
RECOMMENDED BY ROD FELDTMANN
Hawaii: Na Pali Coast
RECOMMENDED BY JOSH COMSTOCK
Honduras: R o Pl tano
RECOMMENDED BY DR. CHRISTOPHER BEGLEY
Iceland: Hornstrandir (and Beyond)
RECOMMENDED BY R NAR KARLSSON
Idaho: Middle Fork of the Salmon
RECOMMENDED BY AL BUKOWSKY
Idaho/Nevada/Oregon: Owyhee River
RECOMMENDED BY PETER GRUBB
Indonesia: Komodo Islands
RECOMMENDED BY PETER MILLER
Italy: Elba
RECOMMENDED BY BARBARA KOSSY
Laos: Mekong River
RECOMMENDED BY BRAD LUDDEN
Maine-Bristol: Greater Damariscotta River
RECOMMENDED BY TOM ARMSTRONG
Maine-Princeton: St. Croix River
RECOMMENDED BY ROB SCRIBNER
Mexico-Campeche: Campeche
RECOMMENDED BY MICHELLE BOWMAN
Mexico-Loreto: Sea of Cortez
RECOMMENDED BY NANCY MERTZ
Minnesota: Boundary Waters
RECOMMENDED BY BILL FORSBERG
Montana: Upper Middle Fork Flathead River
RECOMMENDED BY MIKE COONEY
New Zealand: Abel Tasman National Park
RECOMMENDED BY JACK KELLY
Northwest Territories: Nahanni River
RECOMMENDED BY NEIL HARTLING
Ontario: Cape Gargantua (Lake Superior)
RECOMMENDED BY JOANIE MCGUFFIN
Ontario/Quebec: Ottawa River
RECOMMENDED BY JIM COFFEY
Oregon/Idaho: Hells Canyon
RECOMMENDED BY PAUL ARENTSEN
Oregon: Rogue River
RECOMMENDED BY BRAD NIVA
Panama: San Blas Archipelago
RECOMMENDED BY JAVIER ROMERO GERBAUD
Peru: Tambopata River
RECOMMENDED BY KEN JOHNSON
Quebec: Magpie River
RECOMMENDED BY ERIC HERTZ
Russia: Kaa-Khem River
RECOMMENDED BY VLADIMIR GAVRILOV
Scotland: The Shetland Islands
RECOMMENDED BY ANGUS NICOL
Texas: Devils River
RECOMMENDED BY MARC McCORD
Thailand: Phang Nga Bay and Beyond
RECOMMENDED BY DAVID WILLIAMS
Tonga: Ha apai Vava u
RECOMMENDED BY SHARON SPENCE
United Kingdom: South Georgia Island
RECOMMENDED BY RICK SWEITZER
Vietnam: Ha Long Bay
RECOMMENDED BY PATRICK MORRIS
Washington-Cook: Little White Salmon River
RECOMMENDED BY NICOLE MANSFIELD
Washington-Friday Harbor: San Juan Islands
RECOMMENDED BY TOM MURPHY
West Virginia: New and Gauley Rivers
RECOMMENDED BY RICK JOHNSON
Zambia/Zimbabwe: Zambezi River
RECOMMENDED BY JOHN BERRY
When paddling the marine-life-rich water around the Komodo islands, half of the attraction is below the surface.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the generous assistance of the expert paddlers-kayakers, rafters, canoeists, and SUPers-who shared their time and experience to help bring these fifty great alpine venues to life. To these men and women, I offer the most heartfelt thanks. I also wish to acknowledge the fine efforts of my agent, Stephanie Kip Rostan; my editors, Samantha Weiner and David Blatty; the designer Anna Christian; and the copyeditor Suzanne Pettypiece, who helped bring the book into being. Finally, I want to extend a special thanks to my wife, Deidre, and my daughters, Cassidy and Annabel, who ve humored my absence during seemingly endless deadlines . . . and to my parents, Tina and Andy Santella, who are not paddlers, but always encouraged me to pursue my passions.
FOREWORD
Paddling gets in your blood, flows to your core, and changes your life. Propelling yourself through water allows you to get intimate with a unique landscape, and every river trip has some impact on how you view your place in the world. From the peaceful solitude of kayaking a pristine creek or cove, to the special bonds you create with people you ve shared an adventure with, each paddling experience solidifies the value of wild places.
Writing a list of fifty places to paddle before you die is a challenging undertaking. I ve been a part of creating many Top Ten Rivers of the World lists that tend to get skewed by clever marketers with an agenda. It s hard to pick a mere ten locations when there are so many factors that converge to make a river trip truly incredible: accessibility, length of trip, difficulty, scenery, fishing, and wilderness character. Some of the places, like the Little White Salmon, are hair-raising and only accessible to the best paddlers in the world. Others, like the Grand Canyon, Middle Fork of the Salmon, or Rogue require experienced, but not expert, river runners. And there are also those great waters accessible by anyone with desire and a kayak, canoe, raft, stand-up paddleboard, inner tube, or inflatable whale.
I have had the privilege to paddle rivers all over the world, including nine of the rivers in this book. I can attest that every one of those nine is a world-class, bucket-list place to paddle. Chris Santella has interviewed some of the most knowledgeable paddlers on the planet to come up with the most comprehensive and accurate list of destinations I ve ever seen. This book has reawakened my excitement and imagination for all of the paddling possibilities out there, and I look forward to paddling the forty-one places I have yet to experience.
-Z ACHARY C OLLIER , N ORTHWEST R AFTING C OMPANY
INTRODUCTION
Starting from the very moment we re born, so many of us are drawn to water, be it rivers, oceans, or lakes. Propelling ourselves along by our own power adds an extra dimension to this time spent on the water.
I wrote Fifty Places to Paddle Before You Die for those who appreciate the exhilaration of running a rapid and the special sense of solitude that can be found paddling a secluded bay or river.
What makes a destination a place you have to paddle before you die? you might ask. The chance to take in incredible mountain or coastal scenery? To push your skills to the limit on long endurance paddles or gnarly rapids? To encounter iconic animals that call the isolated places that can only be reached by raft or kayak home? The answer would be yes to all of the above, and an abundance of other criteria as well. One thing I knew when I began this project: I was not the person to assemble this list. So I followed a recipe that served me well in my first ten Fifty Places books-to seek the advice of some professionals. To write Fifty Places to Paddle Before You Die , I interviewed a host of people closely connected with the paddling world-white-water rafters and kayakers, sea kayakers, SUPers, and canoeists-and asked them to share some of their favorite experiences. These experts range from competitive paddlers (like Zachary Collier and Nicole Mansfield) to travel specialists (like George Wendt and Peter Grubb) to adventurers (like Joanie McGuffin and Rick Sweitzer). Some spoke of venues that are near and dear to their hearts, places where they ve built their professional reputations; others spoke of places they ve only visited once, but that made a profound impression. People appreciate paddling for many different reasons, and this range of attractions is evidenced here. (To give a sense of the breadth of the interviewees backgrounds, a bio of each individual is included after each essay.)
Paddling means different things to different people. For some, it may mean a three-hour excursion on bathtub-like calm/warm waters, with a late afternoon return to a shower and fine dinner; for others, it may mean running Class IVs in a northern wilderness, where the nearest shower may be the melt-off of a glacier. Fifty Places to Paddle Before You Die attempts to capture the spectrum of paddling experiences. While the book collects fifty great venues, it by no means attempts to rank the places discussed or the quality of the experiences afforded there. Such ranking is, of course, la