The Rogue : A River to Run (The Story of Pioneer Whitewater River Runner Glen Wooldridge and His First Eighty Years on the Rogue River)

"One day in 1915, I started down the Rogue River in a boat I made. My first trip, I was a wild brainless kid of course, learning the hard way by rambunctious adventure, the needs to explore the unknown, down the plunging rapids. The Rogue is a wild brawling river and you had better respect it. I learned to use the oars, the pikepole, rope line, currents and eddies, and how to read the water. I craved fast white water like a steelhead, and tried lots of rivers like the Klamath, the Salmon River of No Return, Canadian rivers, etc., but for me the Rogue beats them all. Later I hauled dudes... hundreds of them... maybe over a thousand, shooting the rapids and camping out on the beach in the wilds." These stories and many more are in this no-holds-barred book. But more than that, it tells of the Rogue itself, of its development and its people. It gives you a sense of an earlier time - a time whose only remnants are rusting pieces of mining equipment, fiant traces of burned cabins and crumbling bridge piers. It brings alive the grizzled miners always looking to strike it rich tomorrow; hermits toting rifles after the ultimate game, each other; tall-tale tellers; poachers and gamewardens; fueders, gillnetters, sportsmen and unsportsmen. It tells of blasting the channel downriver, of floods and rescues, of depression and river-running highs.