Why POWDER Magazine Used To Feature Whitewater Kayaking

Look at a topographic map of your favorite ski mountains in the western U.S.. Odds are high that somewhere nearby there’s a river that fills with snowmelt as it cascades down from the peaks each summer.

It’s only natural that those who longed to explore the mountains in the winter would find a way to experience all that snowmelt in its liquid form come warmer weather. But the army surplus rafts of the 1950s and '60s were too heavy and cumbersome to truly be used as tools of exploration on the steepest and most formidable sections of the river.

So those looking for a nimble tool in river exploration turned to kayaks. The first plastic whitewater kayak hit the market in 1973, just one year after the movie Deliverance was released, which, believe it or not, contributed hugely to the popularity of river running.

The sport, which, among other things, requires a certain amount of natural athleticism, a cool head in chaotic environments, and a willingness to rough it, quickly enticed outdoor enthusiasts of all kinds. It’s hard to say exactly how the link shook out before this, but in the Spring of 1977 issue of POWDER Magazine, David Freeman wrote a feature on whitewater kayaking.

"Those serious about the powder experience haul out their kayaks and follow the water cycle out of the mountains and down through the canyons and valleys. To its adepts, kayaking is a natural continuation of skiing, for the similarities go far beyond the obvious one of common elements in which each sport is played," laments the article, in the characteristic narrative voice of old POWDER issues.

According to this 1977 issue, these similarities include the sensuous feeling of floating and falling at the same time, the fine balance of gravity experienced in both powder and water, and the indescribable feeling of the perfect turn on skis, characterized by a perfect eddy turn in a kayak, both feelings of which I can attest to.

The piece also says that the kayak itself is the equivalent of both a ski boot and ski as the "turning vehicle" rooted in connection with the doer’s body, and that, as a primarily upper body sport, it offers a nice complement to the lower body emphasis of skiing.

The best part? No lift tickets, lift lines, crowds or tracks when you’re on the river.

Was this 1977 feature an outlier, a moment or trend in the connection of the two sports? Not even close. The spring 1978 issue of POWDER took things a little more commercial with a feature on whitewater rafting and several ads for a Utah-based raft outfitter that’s still in operation today.

But in 1979, Tom Derrer chronicled an experience paddling the formidable Class V waters of Tumwater Canyon on the Wenatchee River.

Draining from the eastern slopes of Stevens Pass, the river cascades through the Wenatchee Valley as it passes Highway 2. To this day, Tumwater Canyon is one of the most well-known and well-loved sections of river in Washington state—but the thought of paddling it in what looks like an early iteration of a Perception Dancer would have most modern-day boaters shaking in their spray skirts.

At least within the pages of the archival issues of POWDER I’ve seen (which currently run from 1972–1982), there’s not much more in the way of whitewater kayaking. But the pages of POWDER were far from the only links within the sports. Just one year after their first film splashed onto the scene, ski film production company Matchstick Productions (MSP) released The Hedonist (1994).

Midway through the now-classic annual film shred-fest, the wall of white, winter footage gives way to the chocolate milk chaos of runoff season. Smack in the middle of the film is a full-on kayaking segment on the Pueblo River featuring skier Dean Cummings shot by MSP founder Steve Winter, who was never a paddler himself but had a particular affinity for filming kayaking.

Two years later, MSP released Fetish (1996), which featured a full-on paddling segment with footage from Barrel Springs on the Colorado River and Oh Be Joyful Creek, just over the hill from Crested Butte, Colorado.

In 1999, MSP released a film titled 1999-A Film by Scott Gaffney. Gaffney, whose name is now synonymous with all things skiing and ski films, spent many off-seasons in a kayak in the Ottawa River in eastern Canada, which is coincidentally featured in the film with its own kayaking segment. Around the same time, Gaffney was introduced to a number of Tahoe locals by cinematographer Dustin Lindgren.

Lindgren had spent years filming his brother, also named Scott, as he tackled first descent after first descent on some of the world’s most challenging whitewater. Lindgren began filming with MSP in 2004 alongside Gaffney and shoots and directs with the company regularly to this day.

As whitewater kayaking made its way to the pages of POWDER Magazine and the editing bays of Matchstick Productions, outdoorsmen in the Tetons had taken to exploring their own nearby rivers when the snow stopped falling. Explorations of some of the area’s most beautiful, remote and difficult rivers, like the Box Canyon of the Clark’s Fork Yellowstone, had been taking place since the late '70s by people like legendary paddler Rob Lesser, and Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard.

As it had in other places, paddling gained popularity in the area due in part to incredible stretches of local whitewater on the Snake, Gros Ventre, Teton and Grey’s rivers. In 1996, another ski film production company, this time led by two brothers in the Tetons who dubbed their outfit Teton Gravity Research, also made its debut film.

Two years later, Teton Gravity Research released Uprising, whose closing segment featured footage of whitewater kayaking, among other non-skiing sports. In 2001, TGR placed its company stamp on a feature-length kayaking film called Nurpu, and then another in 2003 called Wehaykin’. 

As the sport of skiing continues to grow and monetize nearly exponentially, whitewater kayaking’s participation has remained relatively stagnant over the last decade, save for some incremental growth.

To this, I can only speak from my own experience, which is to say that, unlike skiing, the baseline level of risk tolerance needed to whitewater kayak is comparatively very high. In the simplest examination of this, crashing on skis or a mountain bike does not relegate you to an environment where you are unable to breathe and where you might remain unable to breathe due to any number of factors. In short, it’s a fairly unapproachable sport, especially in its beginning stages.

While the "good old days" of whitewater being featured in ski media were a bit before my time, I feel the same nostalgia for these days as I do watching early 2000s ski films and flipping through old issues of POWDER. I’m some 20-odd years younger than both Gaffney and Lindgren, who were both an integral part of those days, and I still have a bit of a "pinch-me" moment when I get to work alongside them.

As the three of us floated in inner-tubes down the Truckee River on a break from a shoot a few weeks ago, trying to catch eddies with our hands and joking about whose lines we were following, I felt a sort of kinship knowing that I had at some point landed on the same off-season defiance of gravity as these two legends of the sport.

It’s hard to say whether kayaking will come back to skiing in the same way that other trends have made a reappearance, or whether it will remain true to its dirtbag roots, but skiing has potentially strayed too far to ever truly welcome kayaking back.