British Columbia鈥檚 Grand Canyon of the Stikine River is one of the great whitewater problems: a 45-mile stretch of Class V鈥揤I rapids that has been successfully paddled by fewer than a hundred kayakers. Of those, only one has done it alone: Doug Ammons, the legendary 55-year-old boater from Missoula, Montana, who is shrouded by kayakers in the same oracular light as Reinhold Messner is by mountaineers. This month, Erik Boomer, a 27-year-old photographer from McCall, Idaho, plans to one-up Ammons by paddling the Stikine alone鈥攊n one day.
鈥淚t鈥檚 every bit the equivalent of soloing a major Himalayan peak,鈥 says Ammons, who took three days to run it himself in 1992. 鈥淟ooking at people coming up, I knew Erik would be the one to do it.鈥
Boomer, who logged a first descent of Quebec鈥檚 100-foot Chutes 脿 Magnan waterfall in April 2011 and spent 104 days circumnavigating Canada鈥檚 Ellesmere Island by sea kayak last summer, plans to 鈥渃reate a mental map鈥 of the Stikine鈥檚 40 massive rapids by taking a couple of warm-up runs with a team before his solo attempt. Once he knows the lines, he鈥檒l launch alone at first light and spend the next seven to 10 hours in the sheer-walled, 1,000-foot-deep gorge. 鈥淚 see it as the culmination of all my skills,鈥 he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a soul project.鈥