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Idaho's Lower Salmon Photo by Chad Case Photography |
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This white knuckle adventure classic by Jo Deurbrouck (pronounced doer-brock), a near-fifty-year-old healthy soul who looks to be in her thirties, white-water river guided in Idaho for 12 years. Ten years ago she looked at her life, decided that most white-water river guides didn’t guide much past the age of 50, choosing instead more security in the form of a roof over their heads and jobs with medical insurance. Deurbrouck did the same.
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Book's cover |
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Author Jo Deurbrouck |
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“I realized that I wanted to live a life with the creature comforts and security of hot water, an income, health care insurance and a roof over my head," said Deurbrouck. She left the guiding to younger people and has, instead, written a riveting book about two courageous adventurers.
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Author Jo Deurbrouck says:
"Me guiding (in the purple helmet) on Idaho's Lochsa River at a rapid called Lochsa Falls, probaby but not certainly circa 1996, the year Clancy died. That's a highwater setup called a 'stern mount paddle assist.' At lower water we'd've been in a straight paddle boat so I would not have been using oars. The guests probably have paddles in the water that you can't see, because if they weren't paddling they'd've likely been knocked back into the boat. : )" |
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Photo courtesy of ROW Adventures |
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Idaho's Lochsa River (and the company Jo used to guide for called ROW Adventures) Photo courtesy of ROW Adventures
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Watery rollercoaster: Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. Photo by Jo Deurbrouck
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As a white-water river guide on the wilderness rivers of Idaho—mostly on the Salmon, the Hells Canyon section of the Snake River, the Middle Fork and the Lochsa.—Deurbrouck heard the stories about a legendary guide, Clancy Reece. Reece was joined on his greatest adventure by another guide, Jon Barker. Barker was the source of a lot of her narrative. She paints a compassionate, intimate portrait of these two maverick adventurers who ran Reece's no-motor homemade dory from the headwaters of the Salmon in upcountry Idaho to the Pacific, 920 miles.
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Jon Barker |
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Clancy Reece |
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“I wanted to write about lives balanced between freedom and risk, lives founded on what at the time seemed to me a fantasy -- that childhood wouldn't end, that the bill would never come due,” said Deurbrouck. But as many extreme adventurers have learned, the bill does come due. These men’s final adventure: An attempt to set a 24-hour downriver speed record in extreme and dangerous big water.
Reece and Barker undertook this adventure as Reece was turning 51 with all the vagaries of a life of a river rat nomad—an aging body, poverty, no post-guiding life plans, no trust funds. This sport is a young person’s game. What happens when a committed adventurer runs out of youth?
Deurbrouck takes the reader deep into their experience and adventure and through her own personal struggle to balance the freedom of an outdoor life with its risks and costs.
http://thecurrentnews.net/salmon-river-story-wins-national-outdoor-book-award/
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"What I fear..." Idaho's Lower Salmon, May of 2010. "That's me in my kayak, floating ahead of the rafts and pretending I'm alone. :)" Photo by Barry Rabin |
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