•	Features
•	Hotline
•	First Descents
•	Gear
•	Skills
•	Paddle People

< July/August 2002
	Features
Triple Crown: Explorer, Paddler, Humanitarian Gery Moffatt scouts a unique line Joseph Carberry

Gerry Moffatt sits in a kayak rising and falling with the rhythm of the powerful eddy, just above a huge rapid on the Alsek River’s Turnback Canyon. Holding onto a rock, he looks up at Doug Ammons, who’s scouting. Ammons yells to Moffatt over the roar, "I think we can punch the left side!"

"That’s not good enough," Moffatt yells back.

Suddenly Ammons loses his footing and tumbles into the river. He reaches out and grabs Moffatt’s boat, swinging into the bubbling eddy at the last possible moment. Moffatt gets out of his kayak to take a look at the hole he needs to punch. The Scottish paddler jumps into his cockpit and pulls his skirt on.

"Follow me," he yells to Reggie Crist, also in the surging eddy. Moffatt peels out and punches through the hole, disappearing around the corner. Ammons and the rest of the crew smile at one another on the bank. It’s just one more line that has taken Moffatt from Alaska to Asia to South America, from the role of raft guide and business owner to that of humanitarian.

At 37, Moffatt is one of the premier expedition paddlers in the world. He has set an example for the likes of Scott Lindgren and Johnnie Kern, just as he has followed the leads of paddling explorers like Rob Lesser, Walt Blackadar and Peter Knowles. But "expedition leader" only begins to describe a man who has created a game out of making the world his home. He’s not only a kayaker but also a filmmaker, teacher, skier, climber, guide and conscientious champion of sustainable development. While his talents are as diverse as his experience, his roots can still be found in a paddle blade and Scottish Highlands, where he hardened himself in the mountains’ blustery winds and constant downpours.

"Outdoor pursuits were a big part of our education system in Scotland," he says. "My math teacher was this crazy guy with tons of energy who created a paddling club with six of us. We developed a tough mentality from growing up in a hard environment and paddling in zip-up rain jackets and wool sweaters in the rain and snow." At 18, Moffatt had grown tired of peeling ice off of his dry top and was ready to explore whitewater beyond Scotland. While working as an outdoor education instructor he hooked up with British expedition guru Peter Knowles, who asked the rowdy Scot along on an expedition to Nepal’s Berugandaki. "He was a right tear-away," Knowles says. "He was a real street kid."

Upon returning to Kathmandu, Moffatt landed a job with Encounter Overland and ended up in Asia for eight years. "I was 12 hours away from going back to Scotland," he says. Encounter Overland ran overland trips from London to Kathmandu in 14 weeks and London to Johannesburg, South Africa, in 28 weeks. In between these epic journeys Moffatt explored Nepal and central Asia and began mapping Himalayan rivers. "Everything we were doing was pioneering," he says. "Or we would get a small piece of information from someone who had been before."

Moffatt’s name quickly became synonymous with kayak exploration. "He’s one of the major explorers in kayaking," says Ammons, also an accomplished expedition kayaker. Moffatt and his British partner, Guy Robbins, packed rafts, kayaks and mountain bikes on top of busses and tumbled along the dirt roads of the Himalayas, running rivers and making cash guiding hardcore travelers on rafting trips. In the summer of 1989 Robbins and Moffatt carried enough gear to the Indus, which drains the Karakorum Mountains, to outfit six people.

"We set up in a place called Gilgit where the Himalayas meet the Karakorum in Pakistan," says Moffatt. "We got our little raft company going and we would get about 20 clients a week. We charged 15 bucks a head. Basically it paid for us to live in Gilgit and explore a bunch of different areas of the Karakorum." From there the two river rats headed to northern India. Though only 100 miles from their spot in Pakistan, the infrastructure forced them to travel to the south of India with all of their gear and then all the way back north to the Indian Himalayas.

"We got to this place called Menali where no one had ever paddled," says Moffatt. "It’s a little piece of paradise, and the Diatz River runs nearby. There were tourists coming through and we had all the gear we needed, so we got off the bus and set up shop." The duo made enough cash for a mountain bike trip to the Tibetan Plateau.

After their short jaunt to Tibet they made their way back to Kathmandu, where Moffatt was ready to set up a permanent company of his own. But Moffatt’s path, as it had done so many times before, led him in a unique direction. The Himalayan veteran felt a pull to the people of the region. Instead of using his knowledge to benefit himself, Moffatt did something unprecedented in rafting: He formed a 50-50 partnership in Ecuador Expeditions with Mehendra Tappa, a Nepal native. He then started a school to train Nepalese boys to run the show, guiding and safety kayaking.

"Gerry took a revolutionary step in Nepal by training Nepalese to kayak and raft and taking on a Nepalese friend as a co-owner," Ammons says. "Instead of expatriate westerners running the show from the top down, the native people could make a good living and pioneer their own rivers. I find that remarkable—the use of whitewater to improve social justice."

Ram Hari Silwal grew up on the Trisulli River in central Nepal. His family has farmed in this lush river valley outside of Kathmandu for generations. He first met Moffatt when the Scottish river bum was running trips on the Trisulli in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Silwal loved the idea of working the rivers of his Himalayan kingdom. It meant a break from the fields where his family had toiled all his life, and a chance to earn a living doing something that inspired him. He decided to bug the enthusiastic westerner for a job. In 1993, Silwal started working for the newly founded Equator Expeditions.

"Gerry really created a lot of jobs and opportunities for Nepali boys," Silwal says. "When he started the rodeo it really grabbed a lot of attention from the locals." Moffatt created the Himalayan Rodeo on the Bohte Kosi in 1994, but his contribution to the Nepalese goes far beyond kayaking and cartwheels. "He always wants to give back to the areas he explores," says Silwal. "We’ll be in some spot that has been hit hard by the monsoons and he’ll give food and supplies to the people."

Silwal has accompanied Moffatt on several expeditions and now teaches paddling to the British Army twice a year. He led an all-Nepali first descent of the Likhu Kola last year. "Gerry inspires people," he says. "He lifts people up even though it’s hard to reach his level."

But Moffatt wasn’t satisfied with his work in Nepal. He’d seen the river use there grow at an alarming rate. "When I first came to Nepal there were three or four companies," he says. "Now there are 95." Moffatt points to that traffic as part of Nepal’s problem with environmental degradation. In 1997 he was offered the opportunity to help another Asian country avoid the mistakes he’d seen in Nepal. The government of Bhutan wanted Moffatt and a team of kayakers to come to the country and act as whitewater consultants. They would map out a plan that the government could use to create a safe and sensible whitewater system. This tiny kingdom has had very little outside contact. The government charges foreign visitors $200 a day to stay in the country.

"We did something like six first descents," says Moffatt. "To go to Bhutan and work for their government was an opportunity to step back in time." Moffatt and Knowles worked on a proposal for the government to help them avoid what happened in neighboring Nepal. "It’s not that the Nepalese government has made mistakes. It’s more that adventure tourism has taken a remote mountain kingdom by storm and money and business has superseded any form of limitation and control. In the capitalist system, acquisition and greed are hard to escape without an incredible conscious effort. That is exactly what the Bhutanese government has been able to do. Slow tourism and population growth down. This is foresight."

Moffatt paddled in Bhutan three different times, helping establish a whitewater tourism industry that would develop at a reasonable pace. Furthermore, Bhutan was casting its spell on him. "I was paddling this Class IV river with waterfalls cascading in on each side," he says. "Rather than following my line down the river, I settled into the groove with a family of otters. They seemed to know the stretch fairly well so we moved in and out of eddies and currents and descended the river in perfect harmony."

Vivid memories like these inspired his film, Bhutan, Land of the Thunder Dragon. Unlike his previous films, Bhutan inspired him to start using his camera to tell stories. "The important thing for me in making films is having a subject other than yourself, because focusing on yourself is the most boring subject on the planet," he says.

Then came a windfall in the form of Rolling Stone magazine. Jan Wenner wanted him to write an article about one of his expeditions. "He said, ‘Look, I’ll give you some money to do a trip if you write about it in my magazine,’ and we said, ‘Let’s not just write about it, let’s shoot it.’"

Moffatt took filming whitewater to another level when he hooked up with Reggie Crist of Sun Valley, Idaho, and started working on the Men’s Journal expedition team, which would telecast expeditions on Outdoor Life Network. Crist, an ex-Olympic downhill racer, helped with the skiing side and Moffatt led the paddle-related adventures. In so doing, Moffatt dealt with an unprecedented budget few kayakers have seen. Along with Outdoor Life and Men’s Journal, Smith Sport Optics, Colombia, Dewar’s and Ford all contributed as sponsors. "This is our lifestyle," Crist says. "We love to do what we do. The sponsorship just adds a challenge to the expedition game. You can do an expedition but you can also film it."

Perhaps the peak of the game came with the marathon of paddling expeditions, the Triple Crown. Moffatt conceived the idea after reading about Blackadar and his solo descent of Turnback Canyon, and Lesser’s first run of the Grand Canyon of the Stikine. Moffatt combined these two big-water self-support trips with the Susitna, another big-water run, into a one-month tour that would tell part of the story of North America’s big water history. He and his team, including Doug Ammons, Charlie Munsey, Reggie Crist and Wink Jones, would hit all of these big-water epics in four weeks. When they did the Stikine section, Moffatt invited Lesser to join them.

"I was very flattered to be able to be involved in another generation’s ideas," Lesser says. "Gerry is someone who shares his experiences. He’s not one who jumps on the pedestal and says, ‘Look at me.’ His involvement in the sport is very long term and base-building. He helps the sport grow."

"It’s important to realize that he’s not making films for a couple of thousand hardcore kayakers but for a diverse audience of millions of people," adds Ammons. "That’s a different gig. He has far more responsibility and difficulty than a video maker does. I think he has a gift for convincing people of his dreams, and he’s using it to make films about things that he, his sponsors, and the audiences find interesting."

Unfortunately, when the money gets bigger, sponsors want more involvement. The man who had been in control of his path now felt he was being pulled off of it. He realized things weren’t going to work when his money was cut and he was asked to stay in North America. Bottling up an explorer is like trying to feed a 1,000-pound tiger dog food. "We reached this incredible peak of having access to all this money and when it came down to it we said screw it," says Moffatt. "It’s not worth sacrificing what we do for a financial gain. It was a lot of fun, but bottom line, it was no different selling an expedition to a bunch of suits in New York as selling a $200 raft trip to a punter in Pokhra, Nepal. It all comes down to passion."

Moffatt’s passion can take him a long way. After Sept. 11, most of his funding was gone and he was trying to put together an expedition on the Mugu Karnali in western Nepal, one of the last major drainages left for him to run in the country. Because of the turmoil created by the communist Maoist party, he needed to fly his team into the river basin. He convinced a couple of helicopter pilots doing humanitarian rice drops to let them catch a ride. "The M17 helicopter we rounded up was a retired, archaic remnant from the Afghan/Russian war," he says. "I was secretly praying that the mass of moving parts would hold together one last time." They ran the Mugu and then went on to paddle the Humla Karnali.

"One night these guys camped next to us who were celebrating the one-year anniversary of the death of one of their relatives," says expedition team member Brett Gleason. "Ram (Silwal) talked to them and found out that there were about 50 Maoist troops camped a mile up the hill. Ram told them not to let the troops know we were there and the next morning we got up early and got out of there."

Other than having to avoid troop movement, the team moved through western Nepal unscathed. On their way back to Kathmandu a bomb exploded on the road, killing a number of police. They had to move quickly to avoid getting caught up in the chaos of civil war. "I returned to so called ‘civilization’ to the news that the growing Maoist insurgency had broken off talks with the government and declared war with the elected powers that be," Moffatt says.

Moffatt made his way, as he usually does, confidently and safely—just as he did punching that blind hole on the Alsek. "He is so comfortable moving in a foreign environment," sums up Ammons. "Some people get nervous and some are perennial tourists, but Gerry steps into a new place as if he’s been there forever."