Outside Online: Adventure Ethics

Eventually you and your gear started the float. You were a professional river guide for many years, but it sounds like the Yukon kept you on your toes.

You hear how quickly the weather can change but I'm one of those people where I don't believe it until I see it. There was a night where I was sailing—I had a big hoop sail by this company called Wind Paddle, so a lot of days I could sail downstream—with a beautiful tailwind, and I was wearing surf trunks and a short-sleeve shirt. And literally I came around a 90-degree bend in the river and I encountered a thunderstorm. It was raining instantly, the river suddenly had six- to eight-foot waves. I was looking at these beams of light shooting through these clouds and these little beam rainbows, and it was the first spot where I saw King salmon coming up the river and there were hundreds of them rolling in this eddy.

The river creates its own weather. You've got a huge 150,000cfs of very cold water—it transports more sediment than any watershed in the world—coming through this very dry interior. It creates its own weather and thunderstorms and wind. So seeing that, all the salmon rolling, I was like, yeah, I want to be a part of this one last time. I'm going to have my ashes put on Lake Bennett so I can make one last trip to the ocean.


I am pleased to have an opportunity to interview with Mary Catherine O'Connor of Outside Online.  Of all of the journalists I have worked with I like her writing the best simply because of her focus on adventure and the environment.  These two subjects resonate with me obviously.  I first became acquainted with Mary Catherine via this article she was writing about the instillation of solar arrays on public lands right here in Nevada.  I did a follow up article here.  I am still working on several more leads to get the story out about the BLC to Bering Sea trip.  On top of that, I was working on a trailer for the documentary of the trip again and that is getting close to being done.  I will share that soon I hope here on FSTPKR.  If you get a chance though, please check out: Adam Bradley on Floating the Mighty Yukon River.