Kayak Addicts

With apologies to the potato, Idaho is arguably most famous for its rivers. Fantastic drainages that tumble from high in the Rocky Mountains and cut through the most rugged, uninhabited terrain in the continental United States. These wild rivers, like the Salmon, Selway and Payette, have bred generations of whitewater kayakers–adventurers who’ve helped to define Idaho’s outdoor lifestyle. Many of these paddlers have traveled around the world, making their marks on the history of river exploration in the process. Others are just getting started. Regardless of where they’ve wandered with boat and paddle, their paddling careers started in Idaho—the Whitewater State. Here, we profile some of the Gem State’s best paddlers.

WildWater North Fork Payette Teaser from Anson Fogel on Vimeo.

Erik Boomer [pg. 2]

Henry Munter [pg. 3]

Sean Glaccum [pg. 4]

Gerry Moffatt [pg. 5]

The Voorhees [pg. 6]

Devon Barker [pg. 7]

Ryan Casey [pg. 8]

ERIK BOOMER
Age: 26
Hometown: American Falls, ID
Current Location: Hood River, OR
First Descent: Outlet Falls, WA

Erik Boomer is sitting in his kayak looking down on a calm pool that feeds into an 80-foot waterfall as his buddies lower him down with a rope tied to the tail end of his boat. The entrance to the falls is unrunnable so this is the only way he can get to the drop. Without a second thought, Boomer leans back and severs the rope with his river knife, sending him plunging toward the water. As he’s falling the 15 feet toward the pool, he leans forward and grabs his paddle with both hands. His first stroke plummets him over the falls. Aside from a cut to his head, he styles the drop. Calmly, and quietly, as if all this chaos was normal.

That’s pretty much how Erik Boomer, 26, rolls. He’s like an unassuming rock star, if that’s even possible. He’s a ridiculously good boater but talking big isn’t his thing (think Slash—the Guns & Roses version), going big is (think Robert Plant with Jack Johnson’s attitude). He’s been the first to huck monstrous waterfalls from Hood River, Oregon, to Michigan’s North Shore to Quebec. He’s been featured in countless high-end whitewater videos and been part of some fantastic exploratory teams all over North America. But still, he’s just an unassuming kid from Idaho, who learned to boat from a family friend in junior high when he was living in American Falls.

Boomer is still running some of the biggest whitewater in the world but he’s developing other aspects of his life now. His photography has taken off and he’s able to support himself off his work. Plus he’s looking at new projects. This summer, he’ll embark on one of his most ambitious expeditions to date: circumnavigating Ellesmere Island, directly north of Baffin Island near Greenland, basically the starting point for North Pole Expeditions. Along withworld waterfall record holder Tyler Bradt and celebrated sea kayaker Jon Turk, Boomer will drag his kayak 600 miles before paddling. The trip will take an estimated three months. “I love the big drop thing and running hard whitewater but I want to raise the bar in other areas to a similar level,” he says. “Extreme conditions. Extreme survival. It all appeals to me.”

It’s a trip that shows the ultimate maturity as a paddler. Most upper echelon kayakers simply quit boating once they’ve finished their Class V careers, unable to replicate that amped feeling with less hazardous strains of boating. “But there’s so much to enjoy in kayaking,” Boomer says. “Life’s about the adventure and you’ve just got to embrace it and go for it. And there’s nothing like living out of your kayak for days on end.”

HAYMAKER Sneak Peak from Huckin Huge on Vimeo.

HENRY MUNTER
Age: 29
Hometown: Ketchum, ID
Current Location: Girdwood, AK
Favorite Descent: Murtaugh section of the Snake River, ID

When Henry Munter was 16, he showed up at the North Fork (of the Payette River) Race with his dad on the river’s upper five miles. His heavily used Perception Dancer was tied to the top of the truck, the bow roped to the bumper the stern attached to the rear of the vehicle. To judge a book by its cover, he looked like a rookie. “I went up to the organizer and he was kind of like, ‘you can wait in the back and somebody can show you down the river,’” he says.

The North Fork tends to make people nervous (especially event organizers) when they think someone who’s inexperienced is trying to jump on the frothing monster. But Munter assured the organizer he knew what he was doing, grabbed his gear and headed for the starting line. Forty-five minutes later, the young Ketchum native had won the race.

The radar is something Munter, now 29, is accustomed to flying far beneath. He hasn’t appeared in any big name videos, his name isn’t the first to come up in conversations referencing elite expedition paddlers. But it should. Ecuador, Peru, Nepal, Canada’s Stikine—twice. He’s been there, done that. And somehow, he’s managed to avoid any deserved media attention while simply doing what matters most to him: paddling.

But in 2008, Munter left an indelible mark on the expedition world with good friends Matt Wilson and Evan Ross. The trio had heard stories about Madagascar and its healthy dose of granite bedrock drainages that had yet to see paddlers. So they made a contact in the island nation, located off the eastern coast of Africa, and in paddling terms, “went for s*&%*.” They completed two full first descents and finished a third river that had only been partially explored–each required nearly seven days of living out of their kayaks. “We’d heard it was stacked over there,” Munter says. “Every one of those rivers required technical scouting and rope work. But the whitewater was awesome.”

A gifted skier, Munter works the winter season in Alaska, heli guiding for Chugach Powder Guides. He also works summers as a river guide for trips on the Main and Middle Fork of the Salmon. This leaves the shoulder seasons for boating. “I’ve got a really good setup right now,” Munter says. “I’ve got a bunch of rivers I’d like to do. I want to get back down to Peru. That place is just magic. I guess I’d just like to be running whitewater for the rest of my life.”

SEAN GLACCUM
Age: 33
Hometown: Ketchum, ID
Favorite Descent: Raughat Khola in the Himalayas

In the fall of 2002, Sean Glaccum trudged up a side creek that fed the Modi Kola, a raging river that drains Annapurna, one of 10 peaks more than 26,000-feet high in the Himalaya. Accompanied by a porter and German friend, Andy Sommer, the group climbed above a beautiful series of runnable waterfalls, the crucible a 40-footer that spat out at an odd angle toward a vertical granite wall. The waterfall didn’t crash into the rock but it was darned close. A dicey landing zone for sure.

But Glaccum saw a line. So the 6’4” paddler, with long blonde hair wrapped in a ponytail, slipped into his plastic “creek” boat­–which seemed small considering the drop he was about to run–pulled the neoprene skirt over his cockpit to seal out the water and pushed off the bank into the eddy. A couple of strokes and he was plunging over the falls, doing his best to tuck forward and protect himself. He landed violently in the aerated water below, his boat slamming against the wall. But he easily rolled up and his hoots and hollering could be heard echoing off the tight canyon walls.

The modern era has seen many great paddling explorers, some have run tougher whitewater, but none have become as adept at navigating the Himalayan river scene as Glaccum, 33, a Wood River High alum who has spent over a decade paddling in Nepal and northern India each fall, first as a raft guide, then on his soulful mission to try and paddle the rivers draining those 10 monstrous peaks. He’s completed eight so far, including an epic trip below Everest that was a first descent of the rowdy Cho Oyu Bode Kosi. His attempts to run rivers off K2 and Nanga Parbat in Pakistan were thwarted by the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York.

These days, Glaccum has turned his attention back to rafting (he and wife Ginger own the Payette River Company on the South Fork of the Payette), and completing as many first descents as possible. “I guess first descents aren’t the most important thing,” he says. “But rafting is a good way to push the envelope because there’s still a lot of things that haven’t been done in them.” Glaccum and his paddle rafting team plan to return to Nepal this year for an expedition on the Dudh Kosi, the main river draining Everest. Maravia, a Boise-based raft company, has sponsored the expedition with a custom raft.

Glaccum’s yearly missions have always included trips to local orphanages, where he brings supplies and money donated by sponsors. “But I wasn’t always sure the money was going to the kids,” Glaccum says. So this year, his team will work on the cholera epidemic. “Basically, people die from diarrhea,” he says. “They’re likely to survive if they simply rehydrate. So we’ll be transporting rehydration salts out to the boonies.” He might not be running any big drops this trip. But he hopes to be a big help to the local people of Nepal he’s come to love.

Aside from paddling, Glaccum recently released Idaho’s newest guidebook, The Idaho Paddler: Whitewater Gems, and is working on a new guide to Himalayan rivers.

GERRY MOFFATT
Age: 46
Hometown: Edinburgh, Scotland
Current Location: Ketchum, ID
Favorite Descent: The Grand Canyon of the Stikine, BC

Gerry Moffatt learned to kayak as a schoolboy in Scotland during the wet, cold winters, back when wool was a paddling accessory. He’s paddled rivers all over the world but one particular river brought him to Idaho: the North Fork of the Payette. “It’s just a legendary run,” says the now 46-year-old. “I’d heard so much about it, I had to paddle it.”

So the enterprising Scot landed a job guiding rafts and ran the North Fork daily. The sport’s ultimate testing ground, the North Fork is a place where aficionados do anything they can to live near it, eking out a living so they can lose themselves in the 15 miles of relentless rapids every single day. And they become world-class paddlers in the process.

Moffatt eventually settled in Ketchum because of its easy-going community and easier access to skiing. But not before he paddled extensively in the Himalaya where he’s kayaked every major drainage. Each fall he’d travel to Nepal and guide, eventually investing in a rafting operation, Equator Expeditions, and training local guides to lead tourists down world-renowned classics like the Sun Kosi, Kali Gandaki and Marsyangdi. When Nepal’s season ended, Gerry would venture overland through the Karakorum Mountains spanning India, China and Pakistan and into Afghanistan looking for new rivers.

Along the way, Moffatt became an expert cameraman, documenting most of his river exploits on film. One of his most ambitious filming endeavors was the “Triple Crown,” an unprecedented project he lined up for Men’s Journal and the Outdoor Life Network. In 1998, Moffatt, along with Sun Valley’s Reggie Crist and a group of talented paddlers, including Whitewater Hall of Famer Rob Lesser, ran three of the biggest whitewater runs in North America—Canada’s Grand Canyon of the Stikine and Susitna and Alaska’s Alsek—in one pressure-packed, four-week period.

Gerry continued his work in Nepal, but political unrest in the country sent him looking elsewhere in Asia for adventure. Neighboring Bhutan, tucked into the Himalaya, which for centuries acted as a barrier to invasion, is one of the most pristine river-running destinations in the world and Moffatt has developed inroads there. In the last decade he’s opened up countless Bhutanese rivers while working closely with the government to build a sustainable adventure tourism industry; training guides and building a lodge in the idyllic Punakha Valley for visiting river runners. “Bhutan has really taken a mindful approach to developing tourism,” he says. “They’re embracing commercialism in an environmentally conscious way. They don’t want it to impact their culture the way it has in other Asian countries.”

This mindful approach affected Moffatt. After years of pushing the envelope on hard whitewater, he’s at ease just teaching others to love the river. He no longer has to run death-defying rapids to have fun. “It’s a different focus for me,” Moffatt expresses in a calm Scottish brogue. “I want to promote participation. So much of the sport’s marketing is focused on the extreme. Floating a river is about the most fun thing you could do on the planet. You want people to have fun.”

Still, he’s proud of the paddlers he’s influenced but says he’s just part of a chain of paddling heroes who taught him the same thing: to love the river—and to protect it for future generations.