Riding the rapids

How long have you lived in the area?

I moved to Accord in 1977. When I went for a hike in the Shawangunk Ridge I knew it was where I wanted to live.

Tell us about what you did initially in the area

There are number of articles on the Earth River website about your work helping the Cree Indians in their fight against the James Bay II Hydro-electric Project in Quebec. Can you tell us about that work?

In the early 1990s I attended an environmental awareness lecture at SUNY New Paltz on a series of dams planned for numerous rivers that flowed into James Bay, Quebec. The public meeting was arranged by members of the Cree First Nations, who had paddled a giant, handmade Cree canoe from James Bay, down Lake Champlain and the Hudson River in order to bring an awareness to the project slated for their land.

Q&A

Visit

In the early 1980s I was living in Accord and working as a river guide in the Grand Canyon in the summer. My time in Accord was spent as a playwright as well as focused on forming the Rondout Valley Land Conservancy with Ira Stern.

Tell us about how you started Earth River Expeditions.

In 1989 I was invited to guide an expedition down the Bio Bio River in Chile. The river runs through a deep canyon and circles a snow-capped, smoking volcano that rises 9,000 feet out of the water. It was an amazing trip and lived up to its reputation of being one of the top rafting destinations in the world. Unfortunately the river was threatened by a series of dams that would flood the canyon and the homeland of the native Mapuche Indians. It was that trip that convinced me to start Earth River Expeditions. I knew that places that aren’t seen don’t get protected, and if I could safely show media and policymakers these places it could make a difference.

After the Bio Bio trip I took a road trip further south in Chile to Patagonia. On a remote dirt road, I crossed a bridge and looked down at the crystal clear, turquoise river flowing below. You could see water curling over smooth white rocks 20 feet below the surface. In my 25 years kayaking and guiding I had never seen anything like it. Not the Colorado or even the Bio Bio had ever affected me like that. In those days, virtually no one had even heard of the Futaleufu River. I found out that it had been kayaked in 1985 and was attempted by raft later that year. The kayak trip was a success but the rafting trip was aborted halfway down when one of the rafts flipped and was was lost in a rapid that is now infamously named Terminator. From the rapids, I could see from the road it looked navigable with the right equipment. The 1985 trip used heavy, unwieldy Grand Canyon-style oar rafts with guests holding on. I felt with light rafts and people paddling we would be better equipped to negotiate the river’s more technical rapids like Terminator. When did you realize that you might have

Eric Hertz

Age: 67

Profession: Professional outfitter

Town: Accord found what many people now consider to be the best whitewater rafting river in the world? And how are your sons involved now?

The luck and fate of discovering it on that Patagonia road trip was really the genesis of the vision that paying clients could be guided down it. The following year, I organized an exploratory trip with light boats and some intrepid, paying clients paddling in the front of the two rafts. Myself and the other guide steered the boats with oars from the back, where we could give commands and watch the paddlers. Despite a lot of scouting and some challenging moments – not knowing what to expect around the next corner.–we successfully completed first full raft descent of the river.

These days we run an average of 10 commercial trips of between 12 and 16 guests down the Futaleufu, and half of our guests are beginners. My two sons, Cade and Teal, who are both Rondout Valley graduates, guide and manage our river operations.

Tell us about the company’s environmental work.

The company was involved in a number of river conservation projects over the years. The first was the trying to protect the Bio Bio River.

While taking guests down the Futaleufu in the early ’90s we also ran a series of conservation awareness trips with the Natural Resource Defense Council and other Chilean environmental groups down the Bio Bio. Unfortunately, we were too late to make a difference and it’s now flooded.

Hydro Quebec’s project would flood eight major rivers, an area the size of France, and destroy their homeland and way of life. New York state was funding the project to the tune of $5 billion without even doing any environmental impact study.

Realizing Earth River might be able to help, I contacted the Grand Council of the Cree, and we agreed that I would fly over each of the threatened rivers looking for a safe stretch of water to run conservation awareness rafting trips with media, policymakers and members of the Cree First Nations.

After flying for over a week, I found a suitable stretch to safely raft on the Great Whale River. For the next three summers Earth River ran a series of environmental awareness trips down the Great Whale River with Cree chiefs, elders, media, environmental groups and New York state legislators. We rafted previously unrun rapids, slept in teepees that we built in native camps along the way, and ate caribou and goose cooked over a central teepee fireplace. The Cree elders shared stories of the area that had been passed down through the generations.

The James Bay project was defeated after pressure from the members of the media, many who had rafted the river, caused a public outcry, and members of the New York State legislature, specifically Assemblyman Bill Hoyt and Sen. Franz Leichter, who had also experienced the river, convinced the New York state legislature and Gov. Mario Cuomo to bow out of the project.

Compiled by Jeff Slater, BSP Reporter

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