[Paddlewise] Just an observation ---

From: <Jack_Martin_at_jtif.webfld.navy.mil>
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1998 13:24:38 -0500
     In the interest of saving baby ducks from trampling --- a worthwhile 
     cause, certainly --- it appears that some of us on this list will 
     leave no tern unstoned.
     
     Wasn't planning to get into this maelstrom, but two items came to 
     mind; my son, daughter and I ran the Alsek and Tatshenshini Rivers two 
     summers ago on a private trip permit.  This run, starting in the Yukon 
     and ending in Alaska, is closely regulated by permits.  Most trips are 
     commerical, but some are private.  
     
        -  in the ten days we spent on that incredibly beautiful, totally 
     remote 170 mile set of rivers, none of us ever saw one piece of 
     human-generated detritus.  Not a granola bar wrapper, not a single 
     Coke can!  Once, when one of our group lost a cellophane candy wrapper 
     overboard, we accepted considerable physical risk in recovering the 
     tiny piece of flotsam, such was our concern for the sanctity of this 
     waterway.  We left behind only the ashes of a fellow paddler, for whom 
     this trip was a memorial.  Don't think the river minded that.
     
        -  another non-commercial trip left a day after ours: four Asian 
     tourists with "some" raft experience.  The first day has the biggest 
     whitewater, mostly some class four-ish stuff, and, to ensure 
     stability, the four tourists 'binered their two rafts together.  
     Predictably, this did not offset but caused the flip, and the two men 
     and one of the women were recovered.  Darwin claimed the other woman 
     for the river.
     
     Lessons-learned?  Permits and natural selection <can> work.
     
     Joq
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Received on Thu Apr 23 1998 - 10:42:25 PDT

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