Yes, that’s right, the Grand Canyon has some of the best sandy beaches in the world surrounded by some of the most surreal scenery you can get.  And the best part?  You can only get to them by boat.  But the Grand Canyon isn’t alone.  There are a ton of rivers that offer stunning, secluded beaches that few people get to step foot on each year.  They are little slices of paradise that you would never expect.  And we’re going to reveal them here.

We’ve talked to some of the most experienced river guides out there to find out where some of the best beaches in the U.S. hide.  Here’s what they had to say…

Billy Bar – Lower Salmon River, ID

Scenery is key at this Lower Salmon River beach spot that’s also ideal for family fun.

Here’s what the guides say:

This enormous sandy beach offers not only a wonderful view but lots of options as to how you’d like to spend your day at camp. There is lots of room for campers to spread out and “claim” their river front property. The beach also doubles as an outstanding volleyball court or bocce ball arena. And of course something must be said about the big calm eddy that invites you to try out an SUP board, start a ducky war or just go in for a cool down.

Brown Betty – Colorado River through Cataract Canyon, UT

One of the favorites on a Cataract Canyon rafting trip, boaters fight hard to make their way to Brown Betty before others claim this ideal spot.

Here’s what the guides say:

Brown Betty is a vast expanse of dunes at the bottom of the very first rapid in nearly a hundred river miles, with the soaring and portentous cliffs of mighty Cataract Canyon tilting upwards towards a searingly violet sky. You’re excited about the huge rapids to come, but want to hang a while to hike to the magical sandstone turrets of The Maze and the Doll House, which of course ups the adrenaline. This is the real deal. It’s so pristine you could go for a walk in the moonlight to the end of the earth, and never stub your toe.

Grapevine – Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, AZ

Already mentioned above, we couldn’t leave the Grand Canyon off of our list.

Here’s what the guides say:

Nothing in the world is quite like having your boat tied to a sand stake pounded to its hilt in fine-grained sand, gently rocking in the calm eddy of one of the most prized catches in the Grand Canyon: Grapevine Camp, mile 83. The roar of Grapevine rapids is just downstream, echoing off the darkening schist cliffs of the Upper Granite Gorge. Your heart is at ease, your spirit soaring with the ravens, your anticipation of more huge rapids on the morrow, and if you’re lucky your belly is full of Dutch-Oven baked brownies with crushed walnuts.

Warren Creek Camp – Main Salmon River, ID 

There are lots of pristine beaches on the Main Salmon River, but this one makes the cut for being a secluded paradise with stellar fishing.

Here’s what the guides say:

This hidden, large beach is a favorite among anglers due to its proximity to Warren Creek just upstream of camp. But if fishing is not your thing, you have plenty of other options at this secluded beach. Its space provides lots of room for finding solitude at your tent, partaking in beach games, heading out for a hike or going for a dip in the calm eddy nearby.

Confluence of the Tatshenshini and Alsek Rivers – Tatshenshini River, Alaska

With glacial blue waters and snow-capped peaks in the distance, it’s a different kind of beach experience.  But one that’s worth the trip.

Here’s what the guides say:

The views are bigger than any!

A special thanks to river guides Jeffe Aronson, Codye Reynolds, Gena Moore, and Ote Dale for contributing to this piece.

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The post Perfect Sandy Paradises You Can Only Get To By Boat… appeared first on River Currents.

But their list got us thinking. What are our picks for top travel destinations this year?  So we threw the question out there to a few of our world-traveling guides and here’s what they said (no surprises here that most of their picks revolve around rafting):

“I would go to Nepal, and New Zealand. I’ve done a lot of rivers all over the world over nearly 40 years of boating, but for some strange reason hadn’t yet heard about the Tamur and Kanarli. I’m really keen to hike four days into a super remote Class IV river, see Everest and the Himal along the way, then go down a pristine river so far away from anything that if you went any farther, you’d be coming back!” ~Jeffe Aronson

“Regan and I are going back to do both the Rogue River (which is very unusual and technically fun whitewater). And the Tatshenshini in Alaska. Once is just not enough!” ~Ote Dale

“I’d like to go to Suriname. Because there are rivers there. Because I don’t know anyone who has been there. I have a lot more to learn about it before really considering going there. But the geography, location, cost of travel are all appealing. Also the lure of unknown rivers. There could be lots of first descents to be had…” ~Tom Patoff

“I would go back and explore more of Africa. I’d like to see the deserts and coast in Namibia. I’d also like to do the whole run on the Zambezi.” ~Kate Wollney

So whether you’re looking for a big whitewater rafting adventure or just want to getaway to somewhere new and exotic this year, we hope these destination picks help you plan an incredible vacation in 2013.

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The post Top Travel Destinations of 2013 appeared first on River Currents.

Giant peaks 15,000 feet high gnawed at our vista. So many exist here that most guides cannot keep their names straight. One, however, everyone knows. Windy Craggy Mountain. This pipsqueak tops out at a mere 6,000 feet in British Columbia 15 miles east of the Alaskan border and 10 miles from the confluence of the Tatshenshini and Alsek rivers, not far from our camp.

Windy Craggy could be instead called Mount Doom. This is because Windy Craggy is a Triassic pillow basalt containing 3 percent copper — 100 million tons of it — worth at least $5 billion. Windy Craggy lies in between Yukon’s Kluane National Park and Alaska’s Glacier Bay and Wrangell-St. Elias National Parks and Preserves in a region where mineral extraction was up for grabs. In mid-1993, Geddes Resources Limited of Vancouver pushed for a permit to pulverize the top 2,000 feet of Windy Craggy then gouge its nub into a mammoth, open-pit mine. This meant excavating a staggering 265 million cubic feet of rock by gnawing 60 million pounds off the mountain daily for fifteen years and piping it as slurry 150 miles to port in Haines. From there, Geddes would ship it to Japan.

A simple plan.

The Complication

Too simple. The complication? Windy Craggy is also 40 percent sulfide. When the 375 million tons of crushed tailings the mine would produce as waste became exposed to atmospheric oxygen it would unleash immense quantities of sulfuric acid to flow through the wilderness. This acid would leach out heavy metals like cobalt (0.1 percent of Windy Craggy is cobalt). This combination of acid and heavy metal contamination is so sinister it has its own name, Acid Mine Damage, or AMD. AMD permanently poisons a drainage ecosystem. It devastates fish and the creatures that eat fish—from grizzlies and otters to sea gulls and eagles. AMD is so hideous that already the USA was spending $1 million per day to mitigate AMD heavy metals along 4,000 miles of its poisoned streams.

The estimated cost to de-toxify Windy Craggy Crater once Geddes sucked it dry stood at $1 billion. If nothing went wrong.

Geddes planned to hide their hundreds of millions of tons of sulphide tailings from atmospheric oxygen under a 2.5-mile long reservoir three miles from the river. The problem? Windy Craggy sits in the most active earthquake zone in North America, one triggered by the Fairweather Fault. In 1899, the second largest earthquake in North American history, 8.6 on the Richter scale, hit 75 miles northwest of Windy Craggy and lifted entire mountains 47 feet higher! The quake also sent glaciers slamming down their canyons half a mile in five minutes. In 1958, a Richter 7.9 quake epicentered 30 miles from Windy Craggy shook it like a rag doll.

The upshot? No dam can withstand such force. Indeed, British Columbia’s Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE) estimated that an ecological disaster would occur here every twelve years.

It Gets Worse

But Geddes’ overall plans proved even more frightening. They aimed to build hundreds of miles of roads, bridges, and pipelines through virgin wilderness and to construct a town and processing plant on site. These alone would be the ecosystem’s kiss of death.

An economist might argue that losing some wilderness was worth the metals. Yet an economic analysis of Geddes’ mine made no economic sense even in the short run. To gross $65 million non-sustainably per year for fifteen years, the mine would permanently devastate sustainable fisheries worth almost as much, forever. Fisheries in the Tatshenshini-Alsek system and the Lynn Canal into which Geddes planned to dump slurry effluent are worth $49.5 million yearly. Spills from Geddes’ slurry line would also endanger the world’s largest concentration of bald eagles, 3,500 of them, who converge on the Chilkat and fuel a lucrative tourist industry.

Grizzlies Threatened

The icon of the north is the grizzly mainly because men have wiped it out nearly everywhere else south into Mexico. As with sex, religion, and politics, grizzly bears never plod a neutral path across the convolutions of the human brain. For nearly a century, California’s only grizzly has been Samson, the bear depicted on its state flag. Oregon also extirpated its thousands of grizzlies. As did Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah.

The most important stronghold of this threatened species lies along the Tatshenshini, a habitat so perfect that one grizzly exists for each three square miles. AMD from Windy Craggy Mine would devastate the ecosystem. Geddes’ roads would expose bears to hunters. Geddes’ tailings reservoir would block their migration. “Grizzly bear populations,” reports Stephen Herero, head of the I.U.C.N. Bear Research Group, “would be lowered, degraded, fractionated, and alienated from prime habitat … The most important area in the Tatshenshini drainage known for grizzly bear denning would likely be abandoned.”

The Fight To Protect And Preserve

After spending $47 million developing the mine Geddes said, “[Windy Craggy Mine’s] impact on the environment would be negligible.” Besides, explained Geddes’ president Gerald Harper, the Tatshenshini region “isn’t wilderness, it’s barren land.”

In contrast, British Columbia’s Bureau of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources decided: “It is clear that there is a serious lack of understanding [by Geddes] of the actual potential for AMD from the pits, both during and following mine operations.”

Because AMD caused by mining Windy Craggy Mountain would violate the World Heritage Convention, the U.S.-Canada Boundary Waters Treaty, the Pacific Salmon Treaty, and the Migratory Birds Convention, a coalition of 50 conservation organizations urged British Columbia’s provincial government to create Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Wilderness Park. Combined, this 36,000-square mile protected region of the Yukon, British Columbia, and Alaska is the world’s largest international park and Global Biodiversity Reserve.

On the Tatshenshini-Alsek things have gone well. The area was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 for the spectacular glacier and icefield landscapes as well as for the importance of grizzly bear, caribou and Dall sheep habitat.

We soon rowed a mile-wide river flowing into the heart of the Saint Elias Mountains, arguably North America’s most remote — and now protected — region.

This essay was originally created for the 2011 O.A.R.S. catalog. For more compelling stories from other renowned writers, request your catalog copy today!

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