The Perilous Journey of Amos Burg, Jr.
A young adventurer takes on the treacherous rapids of the Columbia River in a small canoe, aiming for the Pacific Ocean.
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Amos Burg, Jr., 22, of Portland, Oregon, is making what is said to be the first canoe trip down the Columbia River from its source to its mouth. He arrived in Revelstoke, B.C., on November 15 with four inches of snow in his canoe. En route to Revelstoke, he was forced to go through the treacherous Big Bend rapids. Crippled with a bad knee and having encountered severe snowstorms, Burg said he proposed to go on through to the Pacific Ocean. He still has several other bad places in the river to pass, notably Hell’s Gate above Bridgeport and at Priest Rapids, but Burg is confident he will negotiate these as well as the less dangerous places.
“Crippled with a bad knee and having encountered severe snowstorms, Burg said he proposed to go on through to the Pacific ocean.”
Amos Burg was a real-life explorer whose early 20th-century river expeditions are legendary in the Pacific Northwest. Today, many of the rapids he navigated—including Priest Rapids—are submerged or heavily altered by the massive dam system that powers the region, making his journey a literal trip through a vanished landscape.
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