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	Features
Paddler magazine’s 15 Greatest Stories

1 Paddlers of the Century (Jan/Feb 2000)

Paddler’s role is not only to report spot news and upcoming events but to look back at the history of our sport and those who live it. To celebrate the millennium, Paddler profiled 100 American paddlers who shaped and shepherded the sport through the 20th century. Starting with Richard Bangs and ending with John Yost, the list included Olympians and outfitters, conservationists and designers, instructors and expedition leaders. Paddler’s homage to these great personalities was the best feature in our 15-year history, not because the prose was anything more than ordinary, but because these 100 people were so extraordinary.

2 The Tragic Summer of ’97 (Jan/Feb 1998)

Flags flying half-mast at the Olympic Training Center. A scale-model dory, engulfed in flames, carrying ashes down the Grand Canyon. A Chevy Chevelle, topped with flowers and kayaks, making one last shuttle to the Roaring Fork’s Slaughterhouse Rapid. A riverside service during September’s World Rodeo Championships. Rich Weiss. Dugald Bremner. Henry Filip. Chuck Kern. Four of our sport’s greatest champions, all claimed by the rivers they loved during one unforgettable summer. Paddler editor Eugene Buchanan’s tribute to them appeared in February 1998, when design innovations and a cadre of bold and talented whitewater boaters were transforming the sport. The questions his story raised are still with us, as is the memory of these four extraordinary paddlers.

3-5 The World’s Greatest Sea Kayak, River and Canoe Expeditions (May/June 2003; May/June 2001; May/June 2002)

Paddling’s history is full of extraordinary feats, and Paddler editors delighted in researching and retelling the very best of them, from Lewis and Clark’s canoe trek to the Pacific to Ed Gillet’s sea kayak crossing from Monterey, Calif., to Hawaii and the harrowing first descent of Tibet’s Tsangpo Gorge. Editors plumbed paddling’s rich history to bring readers 30 of the absolute best paddling journeys ever. Readers devoured the inaugural compilation of river trips in 2001 and asked for more, so Paddler obliged with tales of the top canoe and sea kayak expeditions, parsing these gems out to be savored, one per year. “Stories like these put Paddler on the map,” maintains Managing Editor Jeff Moag. “They’re a lot of work to research and put together, but no one else is doing it and they make for absolutely captivating reading.”

6 In the Shadow of Quartzite (March/April 1998)

Four years after former Salt River raft guide William “Ken” Stoner confessed to carrying 154 lbs. of high explosive into the wilderness river’s Class VI Quartzite Falls and blowing the rapid to smithereens, Paddler editor Eugene Buchanan floated the Salt with a group of river luminaries brought together to reflect on the historic arson. “Paul Mischud took the stage, echoing sentiments expressed by others,” Buchanan wrote. “‘It’s a travesty,’ he said, blinking into the lens. ‘I feel like a part of me is gone.’ What is gone is Rocky Balboa’s left hook, the Salt’s knock-out punch that has caused trepidation for paddlers for decades. A frothy white monster that had killed and would kill again.”

Stoner maintains he blasted the keeper hydraulic to save lives. “If we’re guilty of anything, we’re guilty of weighing out human life as being worth more than a rock,” said Stoner, who fled to Australia and was eventually extradited to spend more than five years behind bars.

Buchanan’s ambivalence toward the story was settled when he ran Quartzite. “Until now I hadn’t truly been able to sympathize with those mourning Quartzite’s loss,” he wrote. “Now my sympathies were flowing as freely as the river. I had kayaked Quartzite Falls. But it seemed as hollow as the canyon walls which would never echo with its roar again.”

7 The Nation’s Top Whitewater Towns (March/April 1993)

Best-of lists have become a Paddler trademark. The format may have been born to help Cosmo girls hold on to their men, but Paddler has perfected it to honor the best of all things paddling, from playspots to portages. Kicking off the trend was our “Nation’s Top Whitewater Towns” in 1993. When the article appeared, whitewater was booming, thanks to its first Olympic appearance in 20 years (with an American gold in C-2) and the debut of the World Freestyle Championships on the Ocoee. While boat designs and paddling techniques have changed over the past 12 years, most of the featured towns have not. Here they are again, in case you’re thinking of moving: Arcata, Calif.; Bryson City, N.C.; Durango, Colo.; Flagstaff, Ariz.; Friendsville, Md.; Fayetteville/Summersville, W.V.; Kernville, Calif.; Lotus/Coloma, Calif.; McCall, Idaho; and Salida, Colo.

8 20 All-time Greatest Paddling Books (Jan/Feb 2004)

Writing about writing can be a self-indulgent exercise, especially when Paddler editors turn their attention to their two favorite subjects: paddling and great literature. We spent weeks immersed in old favorites and new, all in the name of researching the 20 greatest paddling books of all time. Some of the entries are obvious ringers—Huckleberry Finn, Deliverance and Running the Amazon—while others, like The Starship and the Canoe, Great Heart and An Inland Voyage, are a trifle more obscure. All share excellent writing and that quality that marks all great literature: They stand the test of time.

9 The World’s Best Kayaker (May/June 2003)

We were warned. “That’s a pretty subjective topic,” some said. “You’re going to create a lot of controversy,” noted others. Still, we forged ahead with our plan to crown the world’s best kayaker. Guided by the principles of objective journalism and spurred on by the adage that controversy sells magazines, we weighed the exploits of the planet’s best whitewater paddlers and anointed one of them kayaking’s reigning king. The choice was difficult between Eric Jackson’s freestyle dominance, Scott Shipley’s slalom mastery, Tao Berman’s creeking prowess and Mike Abbott’s expedition savvy. We looked for well-rounded paddlers who surpass their peers in competition and river running, and we rewarded those who pioneer difficult whitewater. Most importantly, we wanted to determine the world’s best paddler the moment we went to press in May 2003. To narrow the field we compiled a list of each candidate’s competition results and descents; talked to experts and the candidates themselves; and even polled the paddling public on our Web site. The Winnah? If you subscribed, you’d know.

10 Deliverance Turns 30 (Sept/Oct 2002)

“You don’t beat the river,” maintains Lewis (Burt Reynolds) in this timeless classic. And you don’t beat Paddler’s coverage of the movie’s 30th anniversary by contributor Jim Moodie. Both a commercial and critical success—it was nominated for Best Picture in 1972, and might have won in a year that didn’t include The Godfather—the film grips viewers with its whitewater sequences, taut storyline and stark violence. It made a star out of Burt Reynolds, a hit out of an obscure banjo tune, and a legend out of James Dickey, the hard-drinking Southerner who adapted his own bestselling book. It also put the Chattooga River—standing in for the novel’s fictional Cahulawassee—on the map; ensured people would never think of a pig’s squeal the same way again; and almost singlehandedly sparked the 1970s explosion in water sports. Its impact on the wilds of the Southeast, in particular, was immediate. “Paddling was taking off already, but it definitely got a big boost from Deliverance,” says Nantahala Outdoor Center founder Payson Kennedy.

11 Cape Horn: Once More with Feeling (Jan/Feb 1998)

Frequent contributor Jon Turk had dreamed of rounding Cape Horn at the tip of South America for more than two decades. He nearly wrecked a 46-foot sailboat in his first try—“I sold the yacht, bought a 1964 Plymouth Valiant and headed to Colorado to ski,” he wrote—and ended his second attempt on the beach with a dislocated shoulder and a few survival essentials salvaged from his battered kayak. The tale of his successful third try, when he was nearly 50 years old, is a classic Paddler adventure story. “Each day we rationalized our actions by saying we had to get to a protected camp, or the wind caught us by surprise, or it would be safer to push on a few miles to make tomorrow’s crossing during the early morning calm. We never admitted to ourselves—although I suspect it’s true—that we broke expedition protocol and paddled the big water simply because the boating was so much fun.”

12 In the Land of White Death (March/April 2003)

Eighty-nine years after Russian explorers Valerian Albanov and Alexander Konrad used homemade kayaks and sledges to escape their ice-bound ship, Paddler was the first magazine to publish their epic survival tale in English. In 1912 their ship was trapped in the ice north of Siberia. The Saint Anna and her crew of 26 was icebound for two winters before Albanov led a group of 13 sailors in a desperate bid to cross the ice in the spring of 1914. “All this work was carried out deep in the ship’s hold, where the temperature dipped to minus 36 degrees Fahrenheit,” Albanov wrote of his team’s months-long struggle to build seven kayaks from scrap wood and sailcloth. “Most of the work was delicate and painstaking, done with bare hands despite the terrible cold.” Three months later, after enduring shifting ice floes, snow blindness, malnutrition, charging walruses and plunges into the freezing water, Albanov and Konrad were rescued from an abandoned arctic outpost. All the others died en route, and no trace was found of the Saint Anna or the 13 sailors who remained with her.

13 Upping the Ante (March/April 1999)

Whitewater paddlers have always pushed the limits of the sport, but 1998 was a breakthrough year. The revolution was fueled by new boat designs and the emergence of professional kayakers—a new class of dirtbag boaters able to scrounge enough sponsorship money to cover gas and food on an endless paddling road trip. After 20-year-old Shannon Carroll dropped 78-foot Sahalie Falls on Oregon’s MacKenzie River in July 1998, and Tao Berman followed suit with his 98-foot plunge off Alberta’s Upper Johnstone Falls, the sport would never be the same. In Upping the Ante, Paddler provided a sober analysis of the trend, describing 11 extraordinary first descents and profiling 10 of the boaters at the vanguard of the hair revolution. “We’re by no means glamorizing such accomplishments,” Paddler editors wrote. “But we also can’t ignore them, and they’ll continue to happen whether we write about them or not.”

14 Passage of Time (May/June 2004)

New York to Nome. That alliterative phrase inspired two depression-era scribes, age 22 and 24, to quit their jobs and paddle more than 7,000 miles from Manhattan to Alaska’s west coast. Sixty-one years later another young man read of the exploit and determined to repeat it, solo.

Frequent Paddler contributor Jim Moodie weaved the tale of both expeditions into an account that captured masterfully the spirit of adventure that linked three very different men across the span of decades. “Whereas the two Depression-era adventurers had drummed up a lot of media attention for their trip—they got a huge send-off in New York, with dozens of reporters on hand—and fantasized constantly about the fame and accolades that would come their way later, [modern explorer Tod] Marder was just quietly setting off to do this on his own, for himself,” Moodie wrote.

15 100 Things That Matter in Paddlesports (Sept/Oct 2000)

Why do we paddle? Ask 100 different paddlers and you’re likely to get as many answers, all of them good. With that in mind we compiled a list of 100 Things That Matter in our sport. From number 3 (Your first combat roll) to number 21 (Canoeing with your dog), we included those special things that define the paddling experience for everyone. Number 33 (Flipping a raft in a really big wave with a team of paddlers who don’t have a clue) was a favorite with raft guides. Number 37 (Guitars—and people who know how to play them) was our shout-out to campfire crooners. And what sea kayaker couldn’t agree with number 59? (Touring amid tidewater glaciers.)