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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

IU alumnus paddles Yukon River

Bryan Brown, an IU alumnus and Hoosier native having recently finished a 57-day trip on the Yukon River, has now kayaked down two of the three largest watersheds in North America. He may be the first person in history to kayak the entire Yukon River from source to mouth.

“It’s very focused long-distance travel,” he said.

Brown kayaked from Green River Lakes, Wyo., to the dry wash end of the Colorado River near Yuma, Ariz., and then back up to Moab, Utah, last year. He became the first person to complete the journey solo.

That trip was 2,400 miles of paddling.

This summer, Brown said he paddled about 40 miles per day, completing a 2,300 mile journey to the Bering Sea in 57 days on July 27, including 17 days of delays due to ?inclement weather.

Brown said he started his trip May 23, driving from his Los Angeles home to Washington to pick up his kayak, a 14-foot Pyranha. The kayak had three hatches that could store 20 days of food plus Brown’s camping gear and other necessary resources, such as the two maps and a GPS system he traveled with.

The entire rig weighed about 125 pounds.

At times, he said, even having two maps and a GPS didn’t help Brown determine where he was on the upside down “V” of the Yukon River, he said. Not only was he never in the same place on the map as on the GPS, but there were times the GPS showed him paddling on land.

After picking up the Pyranha, Brown said he drove up to Whitehorse, Yukon, camping along the way.

Most people start paddling the Yukon River there, but Brown said he was determined to paddle from source to mouth, which meant traveling even further north into Atlin, British Colombia.

It was here that he said he first began paddling on June 1 .

But it would still take about four days to arrive at the Lewellyn Glacier, the official documented source of the ?Yukon River.

This extra detour was necessary because mountainous terrain makes it nearly impossible to drive to the Lewellyn Glacier, he said.

Brown said the isolation of the area was unbelievable. There are only four bridges stretching over the Yukon River , and all of them are located within the first 1,000 miles of the river.

After that point, there are still 1,100 more miles of river to the Bering Sea, he said.

“There’s just not much out there,” Brown said.

Though there were a few villages along the way where Brown said he was able to stop and purchase supplies if necessary, Brown was virtually alone for the better part of his journey.

Brown said stores sometimes caused frustration because they very rarely followed the posted hours. The villages were so small that it wasn’t necessary.

Prices of food in such remote locations were also a problem, Brown said, explaining that he had bought a $12 bag of chips at one point in the journey.

Small villages were the only opportunity Brown had to contact his wife, Sandy, who would disperse information to their family and friends.

Weather was another major struggle, Brown said.

He said winds whipped up 10-foot waves, and the rain and cold were nearly constant.

“I had ice storms the entire way,” Brown said.

He said one storm in particular lasted on and off for three days.

Because the water temperature averaged between 37 and 45 degrees, Brown said he had to wear a dry suit for the entire duration of the trip.

The sheer difficulty of the trip is why Brown said he believes it is possible that he is the first person to kayak the entire Yukon River.

He said he has done extensive research and has yet to find records of another person completing the journey.

For this reason, Brown submitted the details of his trip to the board who determines what records enter the “Guinness Book of World Records” in hopes of securing a new ?record.

Unlike Brown’s last trip, he said national park requirements were not a problem. Previously, on the Green and Colorado Rivers, Brown was forced to mail equipment ahead to himself so that he could meet the equipment requirements of each national park he paddled through.

Here, however, he said, he could not mail things ahead to himself. Instead, he tried to carry what would satisfy the most environmental safety ?requirements.

Brown said the main reason he didn’t run into trouble with administration was because there were no people out on the river.

Those officials monitoring the area were most likely doing so from the air, looking for large industrial projects, he said.

They wouldn’t have any reason to stop a lone man in a blue kayak.

Brown said his trip was related to the work of those national park rangers observing the land from above.

He said his interest is in the health of ecosystems in and near the river.

Brown said he believes his agenda is apolitical and completely rational, though he declined to disclose the specifics of this agenda during an interview because he has yet to complete his third trip.

Brown said he is still waiting for the permits necessary to take on the last major watershed, the Mississippi and ?Missouri Rivers.

In the meantime, he said he has been writing books about each of his completed ?journeys.

From his travels and research, Brown said he has realized the Yukon River has experienced slightly less environmental trauma than the Colorado River.

“It’s pristine,” he said. “It’s incredibly unmarked.”

Because it is well-watered, life is less clustered and better able to adapt to human ?intrusions, he said.

The Colorado River does not have the same amount of resources and is therefore far more sensitive to humans, he said.

Brown said one of the main threats on the Yukon River is the overfishing of salmon but, because of knowledge of this potential hazard, fines have been implemented for people who fish on days when it is not permitted.

“People are already working to protect this ecosystem,” he said.

Brown said he encountered very pleasant and helpful villagers along the way.

They were operating fishing camps, fishing responsibly and very interested in the ecological maintenance Brown is ?concerned with.

“You could see they were paying attention to the quotas,” he said of the fishermen.

Brown said his goal is to obtain the permits and finish his third trip while he’s still young enough to do so.

“Hopefully that will be no later than next summer,” he said. “This is all individual ?action.”

In the meantime, Brown is trying to stress he importance of being aware of the amount of trash they throw away.

Brown’s journeys, he added, are not about him but instead about protecting the fragile ecosystems that rely on the rivers he is kayaking.

He said people need to take a grassroots interest in the big picture of the environment because these issues are not going away.

“We can all help,” he said.

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