The Early Days

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I’m opening this topic to elicit pics and tales from the Dark Ages of Buttboating.
The Early Days.jpg

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Billy.JPG

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Two great videos of Bob Brown and Paul Smith’s 1976 descent of the Franklin River in Tasmania:

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Onyx River.jpg
New Zealander Graeme Boddy on The Onyx River, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. January 1974.

“There was a lot of walk in and float out type trips done in New Zealand about this time. A guy called John Mackay developed a basic raft made from two tire tubes lashed together. He did a lot of first descents in NZ and wrote a book about it.” - Graeme Boddy of Wildwater Designs

http://www.wildwater.co.nz

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1st non-Indian trip through Barranca del Cobre
1952
Dick Griffith w/Bonito Juarez, hand paddling a pool.

Dick went down with three Tarahumara and his newlywed wife. They only had one boat for the five of them, were in the canyon for two weeks, and went from the village of Barranca del Cobre (now a ghost town) to Urique.

Dick hand paddled everything.

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John Harpole with a vinyl boat 40 miles from the road, after a rock climbing trip in the Kichatna Spires.

Note the skis-- Trucker Mountain Edges with Ramer bindings.

This was a first ascent/glacier ski/packraft adventure in the western Alaska Range.