The next hardest thing after having decided to complete a human-powered descent of the longest river on each continent is coming up with a suitable ordering. With the Amazon done I am left with 6 pretty special rivers to complete. How do you choose the next? I have spent a good number of weeks now researching furiously and scribbling notes in my journal in some sort of mad equation hoping to come up with a result. I considered so many factors and by some luck I have managed to make sense of my quasi-mathematics to find a winner.

In 2011, I will make a full human-powered source to sea descent of the Mississippi River in North America (or more accurately the Red Rock – Jefferson – Missouri – Mississippi). At a touch under 6300km this river system is the 4th longest in the world behind just the Nile, Amazon and Yangtze rivers. A whole lot of paddling! I am amped to soon be on such a magnificent river. No hippos, crocs or gun-toting rebels on this descent but a waterway as mighty as the Mississippi is taken lightly at one’s own peril. Complacency leads to mistakes which leads to failure. Not an option for me I am afraid!

I have a pretty accurate put-in date which I will reveal soon, as well as announcing in the coming weeks some pretty cool sponsorship news. I plan to make the descent largely alone (ie. no team), but I would be stoked if anyone were to join me for a wee paddle if they so desired.

I have ranted before about my distaste (or at the very least unease) with continually “whoring” myself in the name of self-promotion. Something I do realise is a necessary evil. I am my own business after all.

But I am super stoked to show you guys today my latest published article. It has been a very good run with articles for me over the last 4 months with 5 features published in some pretty wicked magazines. However the one with which I am most proud appears in this month’s Wend Magazine out of the US.

A gnarly 7-pager, with a bit of everything about this year’s walk across Iran. The photos that the guys at the mag chose from the bunch I sent through came out superbly. All shot with a pretty simple Sony Alpha A230 DSLR (and to be honest a good number on auto!). No matter they look ace!

But it is not just the look of the article, or even the way the words came together which make me so amped. It was the way in which Kyle and his team at Wend approached the task from their end. I had become a little too used to putting together a piece for publishing, emailing it off with a bunch of photos, collecting my money and running for the hills! That is not how it works at Wend Mag. They actually give a toss about what goes into their magazine and make sure only the best makes the cut. Back and forth, with edits and re-writes, ideas thrown about from myself and Kyle, till finally we came up with something they were stoked about.

I have a nice shiny PDF of the entire article which I am sorely tempted to put up here for your reading pleasure, but you know what? I reckon that might be doing Kyle and Wend Magazine a bit of a dis-service. Never fear though! You can get a sneak preview of the article here. Better still you can subscribe to the digital edition of the magazine here, for FREE! Hard to beat that! (Just saw I also scored a double-page photo spread in the mag as well, with a shot of the Persian Gulf at the end of my walk. Check out page 4-5. Sweet!)

Nice surf here yesterday. Clean, 1m and sun shining. Not looking so hot for the weekend (waves that is), but hey can’t win em’ all! Enjoy yours!

I am still in the preliminary stages of planning and research but the Onyx looks set to be a river to remember, not least because it is just 40km long! A touch less than the 6000km plus kilometres of the Nile, Yangtze and Mississippi Rivers each! According to that source that is never wrong and oh so accurate at all times (!), Wiki, the river runs only for a few months each year in the Antarctic summer. Word is that it has been run before, at least in part by some Kiwi researchers who were stationed down there.

The landscape that the river passes through is magnificent. Pure Antarctic desert! Bleak but unforgettable terrain.

The logistics, permissions, cost and overall feasibility of running this river are all up for question. But in spite of any obstacles I may encounter I would hazard that it will not be the most difficult of my 7 rivers. Tough? You bet! But with a distinct lack of crocs, disease, men with guns and corruption I will take on whatever it can throw at me.

How will I run this bad boy? It looks in parts to be a very shallow, low volume river so I would be extremely reluctant to haul a 14 foot raft down it. Portaging for long stretches can be a real drag (no pun intended!) Kayak would seem, at first glance to be my best bet. It really does depend what further research reveals. Perhaps something that I talked a little about in a recent post might be in order!

In just the last couple of years, the expedition game has evolved. Mode of transport to me, now, is an important consideration to make. Like a jigsaw, the pieces of an expedition must fit together and the way in which I complete my journey is an area in which I must stay new and fresh. Two big hitters in this department at the moment are pack-rafting and stand-up paddle boarding.

Pack-rafting has been a huge hit in the US and Canada, allowing hikers to cover huge distances in a short expedition and obviously much more over longer ones. No longer is a pretty serious bit of whitewater an obstacle to man (or woman) and pack. Take out of pack, unfurl the raft, inflate, clip together your paddle, stow pack and go. Run some awesome river, take out and continue on your way. A man using the pack-raft to great effect just now is Andrew Skurka, he of the ultra-distance walking. Al Humphreys might also have something to say about it in the near future as well. The pack-raft appeals to me on the grounds that it opens up new territory, once quite inaccessible. Definitely on the cards to be used in the future.

Now. SUPing. It’s been around for a long, long while and originated in the Hawaiian Islands. A lot of clamoring for the rights of modernising the sport has gone on and is an argument I have no wish to enter here. For me personally, it was Laird Hamilton who first brought it to my attention some years ago. I had only ever thought of it as a wave sport. Just like jumping on a long board and using a single-blade paddle to catch waves and make turns with. It was only more recently that it’s use as an expedition tool came to my attention. My buddy, Dave Cornthwaite recently spent 3 days SUPing across Lake Geneva and from Bath to London respectively. In the UK, with the use of a support vehicle, there was no need to lump any kit around. In Switzerland however, Dave simply secured a dry-bag of gear to the deck of his board and away he went. Brilliant! Other folks having a crack at expedition SUPing include Norm Hann on what looks like an amazing journey through British Columbia. Hmmm….

What I dig about both pack-rafting and SUPing is that they are new technologies (or at the very least updated tech) that are viable options for serious expeditions, without being naff. They are not so niche or whacky as to warrant a spot in the sidebar of The Sun is what I mean. They are proper bits of kit for proper use in my field. That gets me excited!

Click on the image to enlarge it. The photo looks even better blown up. Are these kids stoked or what?