All photos by Leon Werdinger/Ottertrack Productions.

As a former professional whitewater guide I believe there’s no better way to travel than on a river—whether you’re after a white-knuckle adventure or a floating meditation.  If you’re searching for an international escapade that involves more than visiting crumbling churches, and want to combine thrills and culture on your next vacation, a river outing might just be your E-ride ticket.

According to Leon Werdinger, a professional outdoor photographer and long-time river guide, there are several great reasons for floating— and paddling— beyond our borders.         “On some outings, it’s a great way to connect with local cultures and meet villagers or sheepherders,” Werdinger says.  “And river trips allow you to reach locations where you can see exotic wildlife— on Africa’s Zambezi, fore example, you’re definitely going to see hippos and crocodiles— and to access places that you couldn’t reach even trekking or backpacking.  These trips also often feature an international clientele, which makes them even more interesting.”

If you’re considering an international river trip but don’t want to end up like Meryl Streep in the movie The River Wild, make sure to do your homework up front.  For many folks, choosing the right river can be more difficult than paddling through foaming whitewater. There are a number of factors to consider that might affect your safety as well as your enjoyment.

Rivers are a lot like people— formed by their surroundings and exhibiting personalities that run the gamut from frolicky to ferocious.  Rapids— the behavior manifested by these personalities— are rated according to their potential for upset and injury on a scale of Class I to Class VI.  A Class I rapid resembles, say, the water in a swimming pool when George Foreman wades in; a Class VI looks more like a frothing smoothie in a blender, and is essentially unnavigable.  Most active folks with an adventurous spirit will be comfortable on Class III and even Class IV whitewater.  Only real adrenaline addicts— and probably only those with previous river experience— should sign up for Class V whitewater.

Because these trips involve far more variables than a stroll through an art museum, be careful in choosing who takes you to— and on— the river.  Martha Gaughen, Vice President of Sterling Brownell, an upscale leisure travel agency specializing in soft adventure, offers this advice.  “It’s critical that you pick the right outfitter, and the more challenging the river, the more critical.  Perform your due diligence: find out what sort of equipment the outfitter uses.  Who are their guides?  What’s their experience level?  How long have they been in business?  What safety measures are in place?  Are helmets and life jackets required?  What’s their medical backup?  A lot of these trips are to very remote places, so every expedition needs to have a plan and a person on the trip who’s wilderness certified. Ask a lot of questions and get feedback from actual clients.”

Finally, the very styles of these trips, and the level of service offered, can vary widely.  On some expeditions you can practically get a pedicure while your guides are busy whipping up a seven-course dinner.  Other outings are more participatory.  As Lonnie Hutson, owner of Sundog Expeditions in Deary, Idaho explains, “I find people have a better time on our trips if they really contribute.  People like to get involved, whether that means helping with gear or chopping vegetables in the kitchen.  Passengers and guides really bond when they work side by side.”

From Canada to China to Costa Rica, here are ten international river trip choices that shouldn’t land you in hot water.

Tatshenshini River, Alaska, British Columbia, The Yukon

Hatha Callis, owner of Skeena Valley Expeditions, in British Columbia, recommends this relatively calm 10-day international trip closer to home.  “It runs through the planet’s largest UNESCO World Heritage Site, and two national and one provincial park.  You’ll see the world’s largest non-polar ice caps, lakes full of icebergs, as well as glacier bears, grizzly bears, and bald eagles.  And you can drink your evening scotch with 10,000-year-old ice.”  The Tat also incorporates layover days for great hiking.

Karnali River, Nepal

The fact that just reaching the Karnali requires an overland trek with porters should give some idea of how remote this big-volume Class IV-V waterway is.  The week-long trip flows through a series of narrow, forested canyons and ends in Bardia National Park.  Most of the gnarly whitewater occurs in the first few days.

Zambezi River, Africa

The day-long section at the top of Africa’s Zambezi river offers what photographer/guide Leon Werdinger calls “gnar gnar whitewater, with five gnars.  If your raft flips you’re instructed to stay in the main current, because the eddies along the sides have crocs and hippos— and they do flip rafts there.”  The overnight stretch farther downriver is mellower, and floats through rural villages.

Pacuare, Costa Rica

Martha Gaughen calls the Pacuare’s whitewater “fun but never threatening.  You can take 1, 2, or 3-day trips and combine them with other eco-tours to volcanoes or in the rainforest canopy.”  Highlights include the chance to see toucans and sloths and swim beneath waterfalls.

Upper Yangtze River, Tibet

Eric Hertz, President of Earth River Expeditions, describes the Yangtze as one of the most culturally interesting river trips in the world.  “The scenery is pretty— high, rolling, green hills— but the untouched Tibetan culture is unbelievable.  We see monks in red robes in stone villages cut out of cliff walls, amazing temples with paintings, and the people are really welcoming and thrilled to see us.  This is one of the all time great river trips.”

Upper Navua River, Fiji

An unusual island river trip, this one-day outing on the Upper Navua cuts through a gorge of black lava overgrown with ferns, vines, and other jungle flora.  The easy Class II whitewater is perfect for family outings.  Riverside waterfalls await around nearly every bend.

Shotover River, New Zealand

New Zealand’s fun, technical Shotover River is most often run as a day trip from Queensland in the company of Kiwi guides with ‘no-worries’ attitudes.  Highlights include a rapid that flows through a tunnel and then pours right into a Class IV drop back out in daylight.  Leon Werdinger rates the shuttle drive to the Shotover, on an eroding hillside, as “a Class V—it’s the scariest road I’ve ever been on.”

Futeleufu River, Chile

Describing the hard-core whitewater of the Futeleufu, Martha Gaughen quotes a client who told her, “If you swallowed a piece of coal before this trip it would come out as a diamond.”  The intense, challenging Class V river is often run as a day-trip in combination with such other adventure sports as rappelling and zip lines.  The river cuts through a beautiful mountain valley.

Magpie River, Quebec, Canada

Eric Hertz calls the Magpie the second best multi-day whitewater river trip in North America— and that’s saying something.  Guests are flown in by float-plane for a week of warm-water boating in a pristine area that “looks like Siberia.”  The Magpie has been run so seldom that the rapids don’t even have names.  One highlight is camping across from a 100-ft waterfall with a powerful volume of water.

Tombopata River, Peru

Ten- to twelve-day trips on the Tombopata carry travelers from the Andes to the Amazon along a river boiling with Class III-Class IV rapids.  It passes through two national parks.  Some expeditions are joined by a naturalist who points out such wildlife as monkeys, tapirs, macaws, and even jaguars.  Guests stay at lodges and camp out en route.

Just downstream from us, where the Marias joined with the Missouri River, Lewis and Clark made one of the toughest decisions of their western journey.  As Lewis wrote in his journal in June, 1805, “Which of these rivers was the Missouri? To mistake the stream at this period of the season and then be obliged to return and take the other stream would not only lose us the whole of this season but might defeat the expedition altogether.”

Nearly 200 years after Lewis and Clark, Albers and I were embarking upon our own exploration of this rugged and largely untouched topography.  But our expedition faced very different decisions.  Looking downriver as thunderclouds gathered above cottonwoods clustered along the banks I was deciding whether to bail out and hole up in a cozy hotel in nearby Fort Benton.  And after one of my first paddle strokes doused Albers with cold river, he had to decide whether it made sense to continue traveling in my company.

Ultimately, we set out in a purple 16-foot canoe on a three-day float through 68 miles of the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument, which President Clinton created in 2001 to protect the historic, scenic, and environmental treasures of this area that looks much as it did when the Corps of Discovery passed through.  A 149-mile stretch of the river is included in the monument’s 377,000 acres.  We meant to hide out in it much as Butch Cassidy once did, avoiding all contacts and letting the river work its calming magic.

Although not an adventurous whitewater trip, this section or river carves through a mostly-inaccessible wilderness and offers glimpses of millions of years of geology as well as several centuries of history– including Native American sites, Lewis and Clark Campsites, and remnants from periods of fur trading, the steamboat era, Indian wars, and waves of homesteaders and ranchers.  It provides the kind of solitude that has become rare even in the wide west.  And though grizzlies, wolves and bison have disappeared, the water, land, and sky still teem with hundreds of species.  Peter Grubb, owner of ROW outfitters which runs commercial trips along the Missouri, calls this stretch “not so much a physical adrenaline trip as an intellectual one.” During our journey, Albers and I experienced the river much as Lewis and Clark had– just with far more beer.

Of course, the river’s not exactly like when Lewis and Clark visited, which is why Mark Albers is showing me the topography.  He’s out to protect the natural ecosystem, particularly the cottonwoods, an indicator of river health.  He says, “We need to alter current grazing practices and restore more natural flows to preserve this last remnant of river that Lewis and Clark would recognize.”

Albers has been successful in effecting a change in BLM policy that eliminated hot weather grazing along the entire 149 miles of river in the National Monument.  He also spearheaded two large projects in which private landowners agreed to graze their stock away from the river corridor.  Ongoing challenges include working with the Bureau of Reclamation to restore periodic high flows (through ample dam release) to ensure the health of cottonwoods and other native species.

That first day, Albers and I paddled 35 miles around grassy islands through a wide, deserty landscape of flat scrublands and black shale hills capped by yellow sandstone. For awhile, a handsome coyote accompanied us downstream along the banks.  Occasional sprinkles freshened the air with the smells of sage and copper.  It made for a long but meditative day– the kind where your mind drifts, where you remember glossy moments from childhood, and then you eat a humongous steak cooked over an open fire.

At around 30 miles, Pilot Rock– a towering black igneous intrusion– marked our entry into the White Cliffs, which prompted Lewis to describe “eligant ranges of lofty freestone buildings having their parapets well stocked with statuary.”  To me the cliffs– one of the most striking and most photographed sections of river–  looked like gleaming Moroccan palaces with spires and facades of clean white stone carved into the ends of rolling bluffs and decorated with stands of Douglas fir, pine, and juniper.  In the stormy light they looked absolutely epic.

Late that first afternoon, when we glided up to the bank at the primitive Eagle Creek Campground, we were joyful and hungry.  After riding out a sudden windstorm huddled against the leeward concrete walls of an outhouse (the only structure here), I called for an extra dram for the men.  Albers promised to administer fewer lashings.  Tired as we were, it was worth considering that Lewis and Clark had traveled these waters upstream, by poling, dragging their boats with ropes, and occasionally sailing or rowing if wind and current were agreeable.

For the next two days we interrupted the hypnotic pleasure of flatwater paddling with the terrestrial satisfaction of hiking up into the cliffs and breaks that rolled back from the river.  Behind our first campsite we climbed through an unexpected slot canyon into a labyrinth of white sandstone formations.  On the flatlands above, we discovered tipi rings left by Blackfeet Indians a century ago.

The boat ramp at Judith Landing came as a shock; having only seen a couple of other canoeists in three days of travel, we’d nearly forgotten that the west had, in fact, been settled.  At least the Corps of Discovery didn’t have to ride in Albers’s fishtailing pickup over 40 miles of rain-slick dirt roads on the way home.

Notes

“Montana’s Wild and Scenic Upper Missouri River”, by Glen Monahan, provides a solid guidebook to the river. Stephen Ambrose’s “Undaunted Courage” offers a gripping account of the L&C Expedition. For outfitted trips of 3-7 days, call River Odysseys West (800-451-6034, www.rowinc.com) or Upper Missouri River Guides (406-563-2770).  The Grand Union Hotel, in Fort Benton (an alternate put-in for river trips), offers 27 rooms restored to 1882 grandeur (888-838-1882).  To help American Rivers preserve the Missouri and countless other waterways, contact them at 877-RIVERS or www.amrivers.org.

Although this may seem obvious, the one essential ingredient of a great river trip is an adequate river. Paddling an inflatable kayak down a stream without enough water, I’ve discovered, demands the combined skills of mogul skiing, skateboarding, stick fighting, pole vaulting, and bobsledding.

My friend Leon and I faced this riparian pentathlon one April on southern Utah’s Escalante River. When we reached the Escalante after driving one of the most dramatic routes in America, down Utah Highway 12 from Boulder Mountain–where bare aspens waited patiently for spring and a lone coyote stared at us from a snowfield–we searched for any sign of a river moving between its banks.

“It’s certainly well camouflaged,” I said.

Leon just whistled, then looked up at the sky as if expecting rain.

At the highway put-in, neither of us mentioned the obvious water shortage. I paced amid our chaos of kayaking and backpacking gear while Leon sat on the hood of his truck performing surgery on a pair of Teva sandals with dental floss, pliers, a sewing needle, and a spoon. We ate three-day-old sourdough bread, hard as a tire iron, and imagined mighty rivers: the Mississippi, the Columbia, the Colorado. Beside us, the Escalante doddered like a friendly drunk, just able to muster the energy to slide over shallow stones.

“I’ve seen more water flowing across my kitchen floor,” Leon finally said, “one time when the washing machine backed up.”

If you consult a highway map of Utah and place your finger on the point farthest from an interstate, you’ll end up either on a missile-testing range or in the Escalante River. Named for a Spanish cleric who got nowhere near the river while searching for a new route between Santa Fe and Monterey, California, in 1776, the Escalante defied discovery by whites for another 100 years. John Wesley Powell twice floated past its mouth while exploring the Colorado River in 1869 and 1871, but never realized it was a major tributary. A year later, the Thompson-Dellenbaugh party mistook the Escalante for the Dirty Devil River and then, recognizing their error, claimed credit for finding it. It was the last river to be discovered in the contiguous United States.

Bordered by the Circle Cliffs and Waterpocket Fold to the east, the Straight Cliffs of the Kaiparowits Plateau to the west, and the Aquarius Plateau to the north–and offering rim views of Navajo and Boulder mountains, and the solitary Henry range–the Escalante canyon is difficult to reach and well protected from sight. Before being uplifted some 60 million years ago, much of the region lay under an inland sea, collecting the colorful sediments that running water has since carved into fins, domes, alcoves, arches, and natural bridges, in shades of red, brown, purple, gray, and green. Side canyons branch off side canyons as if in some geologic pyramid scheme.

Every year, millions of visitors to Bryce, Zion, Arches, and Canyonlands national parks follow the examples of Father Escalante and Major Powell in bypassing these canyons on their way to other places. Yet a few backpackers do find their way here, and unfortunately that’s all it takes to shatter the isolation of the river and its tributaries–the visiting of which Leon and I selfishly, whole-heartedly, and hypocritically discourage. We worked hard to devise a way of having the Escalante to ourselves: the hanging gardens of purple columbine clustered around seeps in deep-red rock, the whispers of perfume from sage and desert holly, the rounded streambed stones that feel so smooth in your hands. And above it all, the slices of star-flaked sky viewed from sandy alcove camps, illuminated by a goofy, lopsided moon.

The Escalante is nearly always too shallow for rafts or canoes, and hard-shell river kayaks would have been too small for gear and too clumsy to pack out at the end. So we opted for inflatable kayaks, which seemed to us, planning from afar, to be custom-made for this trip. They would enable us to get to our designated take-out at Coyote Gulch, 80 miles downstream, far faster than if we went on foot, maximizing the amount of time that we could spend hiking the deepest sections of the Escalante’s otherwise inaccessible side canyons.

But the most compelling argument for this particular scheme was that we’d never actually heard of anyone traveling the Escalante by boat.

Yes, information on floating the river does exist, but it’s scarce; simply finding it constituted the first stage of our expedition. In his 1978 book Canyon Country Paddles, Verne Huser reports that “the Escalante has probably not been run by more than a dozen parties to date. It is a real wilderness river, tough to get out of once you are in it or on it… totally isolated most of the time. It is only for the adventuresome.” Many years after admonishing his readers to treat the Escalante “with reverence,” Huser still hadn’t gotten around to it himself.

Huser’s warnings were and remain on target: since the Escalante descends nearly 2,000 feet between the Highway 12 bridge and Lake Powell, river runners must either portage and paddle down to and then across the reservoir, or climb out from the depths, lugging their crafts through one of only two negotiable side canyons. In the event of a minor injury sustained by a person, or an irreparable one suffered by a kayak, the hike back to civilization could take days: the sheer walls would dictate a circuitous route, and once out of the canyon one might have to trudge as much as 50 miles on the desolate, dead-end Hole-in-the-Rock Road west of the river to Escalante, the nearest town. Because Leon had borrowed our $700 kayaks from the river outfitter he guides for, leaving them behind would be an option only in the most life-threatening emergency. We knew we’d have to lug the boats up to the canyon rim eventually, but treated this fact like an inevitable root canal, putting it out of our minds until we had to confront it.

The only other information I uncovered was a two-page pamphlet bearing the logos of the Department of the Interior, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. That so many government agencies even knew about floating the Escalante was discouraging, but I thoroughly approved of the text’s pessimistic tone: “The river’s potential for river running is of a limited nature,” it reads. “It will be extremely important to plan your float to catch high-water periods. This will require flexibility in your schedule and frequent updating of river conditions.”