Roger Paris profile - Funhog Press
Roger Paris profile - Funhog Press
Roger Paris profile - Funhog Press
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Whitewater legend<br />
<strong>Roger</strong> <strong>Paris</strong><br />
Few adventurers have been as<br />
present in mountain culture over the past<br />
sixty years as <strong>Roger</strong> <strong>Paris</strong> (Ro zhe' Pair ree).<br />
His life reads like a time machine fantasy for<br />
outdoor athletes. Ever wonder what it was<br />
like in Chamonix, France in the ’40s <strong>Roger</strong><br />
was there. How about seeing the inventor of<br />
the Duffek stroke—Milo Duffek—throw the<br />
World Slalom Championships in order to<br />
defect from communist Czechoslovakia<br />
What about running the Yampa River with<br />
the Hatch brothers to protest the Echo Park<br />
Dam in the late 60’s, or climbing Mt. Rainier<br />
with the Whittakers or making the first<br />
descent of California's Kings Canyon <strong>Roger</strong><br />
did it all. In search of a role model for a long<br />
life of adventure <strong>Roger</strong> <strong>Paris</strong> is your man.<br />
<strong>Roger</strong> <strong>Paris</strong> is a longtime influential<br />
whitewater paddler who first crossed<br />
the Atlantic Ocean in the 50’s from<br />
France. After winning the 1951 World<br />
Championships in C-2 and after<br />
discovering numerous unrun rivers in<br />
Colorado and California, <strong>Roger</strong><br />
quietly settled into mountain living in<br />
the Roaring Fork River Valley of<br />
Western Colorado. His influences on<br />
the sport of whitewater as an athlete,<br />
boat builder, explorer, coach, and<br />
instructor over the last 50 years<br />
throughout Europe and the United<br />
States are profound.<br />
PROFILE<br />
Words: Tyler Williams<br />
Photos: Courtesy of <strong>Roger</strong> <strong>Paris</strong><br />
<strong>Roger</strong> <strong>Paris</strong> in a Klepper folboat on the Yampa River, Colorado during a Hatch Brothers/Sierra Club trip to save the canyon from being flooded by the proposed Echo Park Dam (1956).<br />
50<br />
52
PROFILE<br />
"The Nazis are coming!"<br />
This chilling news spread through northern France like<br />
the leading edge of a flash flood, prompting millions to<br />
gather their families and flee. Roads leading south from<br />
<strong>Paris</strong> became endless strings of refugees, moving<br />
incessantly like a column of ants across the bucolic<br />
countryside. Mothers and grandmothers pushed<br />
overflowing carts of their most essential possessions.<br />
Bewildered children marched alongside, their<br />
schoolbook packs loaded with clothes, bread, water—<br />
the basics. Many used wheelbarrows to haul their loads.<br />
Some rode bicycles. A few, the luckiest of the lot, drove<br />
through the slow procession in cars. Eleven year-old<br />
<strong>Roger</strong> <strong>Paris</strong> was one of the lucky ones. He was crammed<br />
in the family car with his brother, sister, parents, and<br />
grandfather.<br />
Time was running out. Bridges were being blown apart<br />
to stop the advance of the German army. Soon the<br />
routes leading to the safer southern farmlands would be<br />
cut-off. <strong>Roger</strong>'s family raced to get across the bridge<br />
before it was too late. As they neared the river, each<br />
rose a little higher in their seats, craning to get a view<br />
of the crossing. The bridge was still there! They rattled<br />
across with a surge of relief as the tension momentarily<br />
eased from the automobile. Moments later, the bridge<br />
was blown. Then the car died. Such was life in France<br />
in June of 1940.<br />
"Luck is part of life," 77-year-old <strong>Roger</strong> <strong>Paris</strong> happily<br />
and wisely says. It is a truth he has carried with him<br />
ever since crossing that bridge in the nick of time. As<br />
the sprightly septuagenarian begins yet another season<br />
of paddling, one gets the feeling that he makes his own<br />
luck. How else can you explain the fact that he is still<br />
adventuring with the same spirit he showed in 1941<br />
when, at age twelve, he took to the rapids under a<br />
broken, bombed-out bridge near his home in Orleans,<br />
France<br />
The <strong>Paris</strong> family returned to their house after three<br />
weeks of hiding in the French countryside only to find it<br />
stripped of household items and ravaged from the<br />
invasion. But as <strong>Roger</strong> says, "Life keeps on going," and<br />
so the wartime routine settled in. <strong>Roger</strong> would<br />
begrudgingly make his way to a strictly run school every<br />
morning, and carefully come home through the battle<br />
debris in the afternoons. He recalls the dark time<br />
pointedly, "Food was scarce, and war dangers were<br />
always around."<br />
When his father came home with a canoe one day,<br />
<strong>Roger</strong>'s dreary existence was infused with a glimmer of<br />
hope. Along with his younger sister and older brother,<br />
<strong>Roger</strong> pushed the open canoe on portage wheels to the<br />
Loire River one mile away, and launched into the<br />
nurturing world of the river.<br />
<strong>Roger</strong> found solace on the Loire. Tucked beneath the<br />
war-torn landscape, the river offered a natural<br />
environment amidst the grim reminders of German<br />
occupation that lurked above the river's banks. The river<br />
was a sanctuary, and as <strong>Roger</strong> says, "It was freedom." A<br />
canal along the river made for easy shuttles, so <strong>Roger</strong><br />
ran the Loire at every opportunity. He picked up<br />
paddling basics on his own, but to maneuver the<br />
bombed bridge rapids with confidence, he needed formal<br />
instruction.<br />
<strong>Roger</strong>'s paddling career truly began to blossom when he<br />
met André Pean. Pean was an athletic former wrestler<br />
who helped instruct young paddlers through the local<br />
canoe club. Like young <strong>Roger</strong>, the middle-aged Pean<br />
found the river a means of escape from the drudgery of<br />
life during world war. The two spent many afternoons<br />
on the Loire, firmly developing a bond through<br />
canoeing. Pean soon took on the role of coach, and<br />
<strong>Roger</strong> was his star athlete.<br />
As <strong>Roger</strong>'s paddling skills developed toward a<br />
<strong>Roger</strong> and Serge Michel in the middle of the first complete descent of the Royal Gorge of the Arkansas River, Colorado (June 1954).<br />
“Once in the rapid<br />
every second was<br />
an emergency…”<br />
recalling his early<br />
descent of the<br />
Royal Gorge.<br />
competitive level, the war came to an end. General<br />
Patton's American troops came marching through <strong>Paris</strong><br />
and its suburbs. War reconstruction began. <strong>Roger</strong>'s<br />
brother André returned from the woods where he'd been<br />
hiding from Nazi conscription. Life began to normalize.<br />
Now an eager teenager, <strong>Roger</strong> followed his older brother<br />
to the Alps after the war. They lingered in the mountain<br />
Mecca of Chamonix, and <strong>Roger</strong> fell in love. He swooned<br />
for the forests, was smitten with the glaciers, hanging<br />
valleys, roaring waterfalls and plummeting ski slopes,<br />
and yearned for every last mountain meadow and craggy<br />
alpine peak. He knew that the mountains would be<br />
where he would spend the rest of his life.<br />
<strong>Roger</strong> met the great climbers Lionel Terray and Louis<br />
Lachenal, and promptly set off to study for his license as<br />
a mountain guide. When <strong>Roger</strong>'s mandatory French<br />
military service called, he naturally entered the ski<br />
troops, and was sent to occupy the Alps of Austria.<br />
After his year in the army, he returned to the city and<br />
tried to re-enter the mainstream by studying economics.<br />
As one might expect, this endeavor was a complete misfit<br />
for <strong>Roger</strong>, and he soon returned to the mountains.<br />
He skied, climbed, and paddled. Among other rivers,<br />
<strong>Roger</strong> ran the Upper Isere, the Upper Arc, and La Rue.<br />
Several were first descents and some were last descents,<br />
as many of the runs are now lost to dams. Running new<br />
rivers held the most intrigue for <strong>Roger</strong> and his<br />
contemporaries, but racing held the promise of money<br />
from the French Sports Authority. Just as today's<br />
paddlers might compete in freestyle events to earn<br />
sponsorship for their next paddling safari, so too did<br />
<strong>Roger</strong> and his peers race slalom in order to fund the next<br />
river trip.<br />
<strong>Paris</strong> raced C-1 and C-2. His partner, hand-picked by his<br />
coach Pean, was fellow Frenchman Claude Neveu. The<br />
<strong>Paris</strong>/Neveu duo captured the French National<br />
Championship in 1948, and attended their first World<br />
Championships the next year. The Rhone River course<br />
featured a huge wave that flipped the pair on their first<br />
run. Fortunately, the scoring format took the best time<br />
of two runs, and on their second attempt, <strong>Paris</strong> and<br />
Neveu aced the course, finishing second. They were<br />
elated. By the time they attended their next worlds in<br />
1951, <strong>Paris</strong> and Neveu were old pros. They won the race,<br />
and were crowned World Champions.<br />
Slalom racing, and the advanced techniques inherent in<br />
it, was well developed in Europe by the 1950s. Canoe<br />
clubs were established institutions. Whitewater<br />
paddling was a recognized and rapidly developing sport.<br />
On the other side of the Atlantic, it was a different story.<br />
There were a few paddling clubs and adventuresome<br />
river runners in America, but whitewater equipment and<br />
technique lagged far behind Europe. This gap between<br />
European and American paddling began to close in the<br />
1950s, and <strong>Roger</strong> <strong>Paris</strong> was one of the main reasons why.<br />
In 1953, <strong>Roger</strong> traveled to the United States to compete<br />
in what was known as the Salida Race. This downriver<br />
event on the Arkansas River in the state of Colorado held<br />
large cash prizes, which drew Europe's top paddlers<br />
throughout the 1950s. The influx of world-class talent<br />
brought advanced skills and cutting-edge boat designs<br />
never before seen in America. The first decked<br />
whitewater canoe in the U.S. debuted at the Salida<br />
Race, as did the first slalom course in the Western<br />
states. Many Americans saw their first duffek stroke in<br />
Salida, and the superiority of fiberglass boats over<br />
wooden foldboats was established there. American<br />
paddlers came to Salida to learn from the Europeans,<br />
and Europeans traveled there to see the American West,<br />
and maybe win a little cash. In the 1950s, the Salida<br />
Race was the place to be.<br />
<strong>Roger</strong>'s coach André Pean had traveled to the Salida<br />
Race in 1952, and returned with great tales of high<br />
mountains, big empty spaces, and dozens of rivers that<br />
had never felt the stroke of a paddle. <strong>Paris</strong> needed little<br />
convincing. At the age of 24, he boarded a ship and set<br />
sail for Colorado. <strong>Paris</strong>, along with Pean and Neveu,<br />
landed in New York and traveled by bus to Chicago.<br />
There they met a friend of a friend who agreed to drive<br />
the trio to Colorado.<br />
Like many who travel to the American West from more<br />
tame environs, <strong>Roger</strong> was stupefied by the highelevation<br />
sagebrush valleys, the obvious lack of people,<br />
and the vast expanses of absolute nothingness. In 1953<br />
there were no freeways dashing across mountain ranges,<br />
“If moderate runs<br />
like Brown’s<br />
Canyon [of the<br />
Arkansas River]<br />
were just starting<br />
to be explored,<br />
just think of how<br />
many unrun<br />
rivers must lurk<br />
in these<br />
mountains.”<br />
no ski resorts of transplanted opulence. <strong>Roger</strong><br />
passed through Vail on a winding two-lane road.<br />
"There was nothing there," he remembers.<br />
In the middle of this sparse, spacious landscape, the<br />
tiny town of Salida, Colorado became a rendezvous<br />
point for an international gathering of boaters ready<br />
for competition, good times, and whitewater. When<br />
it came time to race, <strong>Roger</strong> switched from his regular<br />
boat, a C-1, to a kayak, which he hoped would<br />
provide greater speed. Despite having limited<br />
experience in a kayak, he finished third, and came<br />
away with $300 in prize money. It was enough to<br />
travel on for a while, so after the race <strong>Paris</strong> and his<br />
companions stayed and explored the surrounding<br />
area.<br />
Not far upstream from the racecourse was Browns<br />
Canyon—a remote section of river that rollicks<br />
between fields of granite boulders interspersed with<br />
sparse gnarled pines. Today it is one of the most<br />
popular commercial raft runs in the world, a classic<br />
class III+ romp. In 1953, it had never been run, so<br />
<strong>Paris</strong> and crew gave it a try. Despite being seriously<br />
psyched for the first descent, the Europeans found it<br />
hardly challenging. They had run much harder rivers<br />
in their homeland. "If moderate runs like Browns<br />
Canyon were just starting to be explored," thought<br />
the Europeans, "just think of the many unrun rivers<br />
that must lurk in these mountains!" <strong>Roger</strong> and<br />
company would be back.<br />
The following summer, <strong>Roger</strong> returned to Colorado.<br />
He won the 1954 downriver race (again paddling an<br />
unfamiliar kayak), and promptly joined a half dozen<br />
other racers for a run down the Royal Gorge of the<br />
Arkansas. The Royal Gorge is as spectacular as its<br />
title implies. Granite walls rise vertically for nearly<br />
2,000 feet, looming ominously over the river below.<br />
In 1954, the gorge had been run once or twice<br />
previously, but many of the drops had been portaged,<br />
and it remained a big intimidating place.<br />
<strong>Roger</strong>'s group of seven consisted of three kayaks and<br />
two C-2's. A cadre of photographers and friends<br />
followed the paddlers from the platform of a flatbed<br />
railroad car, which ran along tracks beside the river.<br />
The paddlers launched on a powerful springtime flow.<br />
Surging brown water boiled and hissed beneath their<br />
cumbersome wooden boats. The carnage began at the<br />
first rapid when one of the kayakers pinned briefly<br />
and swam. After picking up the pieces, the group<br />
<strong>Roger</strong>, in an early fiberglass kayak design, gets ready for a downriver race on the Arkansas River in Salida, Colorado at one of the first Fibark Festivals (1958).<br />
made their way downstream to a much larger rapid.<br />
Here Basque kayaker Ray Zubiri entered a big hole<br />
and completely disappeared in his fifteen-foot-long<br />
boat. When his empty boat emerged from the froth,<br />
<strong>Roger</strong> recalls it was "twisted like taffy." The<br />
adventure was on. <strong>Paris</strong> and his C-2 partner Serge<br />
Michel were the first to probe the next major drop.<br />
<strong>Paris</strong> wrote of their run; "Once in the rapid every<br />
second was an emergency." Paddling with this type<br />
of urgency, it is no wonder that <strong>Paris</strong> and Michel's<br />
boat was one of the few that emerged from the<br />
imposing canyon unscathed.<br />
The fragility and sluggishness of wooden boats<br />
during the ’50s was becoming ever more apparent to<br />
those on the cutting edge of whitewater paddling,<br />
and a concerted search for something better was<br />
underway. When <strong>Roger</strong> returned to Europe in the<br />
summer of 1954, he stumbled into the avante-garde<br />
world of boat design in his hometown of Orleans. At<br />
<strong>Roger</strong>'s suggestion, a fiberglass roofing manufacturer<br />
in Orleans agreed to build a fiberglass whitewater<br />
boat, one of the first ever made. <strong>Paris</strong> and Neveu<br />
began racing with the new boat, and their success<br />
created a paradigm shift in boat construction that<br />
lasted throughout the next two decades. It wasn't<br />
until 1958, however, that the most seminal event in<br />
fiberglass' acceptance occurred. Once again, the<br />
moment came at the Salida race, and <strong>Roger</strong> <strong>Paris</strong> was<br />
the driving force behind the change.<br />
Californian Tom Telefson came to the Salida Race<br />
with a long fiberglass boat that was crafted after a<br />
Swedish flatwater design—fast and unstable. In the<br />
days before the race, Telefson realized that his sleek<br />
race boat was too much for him to handle, and he<br />
began looking for a more forgiving boat. <strong>Roger</strong> saw<br />
the potential speed in Telefson's boat, and was more<br />
than willing to make a trade. He exchanged his<br />
folding Klepper kayak for Telefson's race boat, and<br />
won the 1958 Salida race definitively.<br />
Back in Europe, news of <strong>Paris</strong>' victory in the new boat<br />
material spread, and more racers began paddling<br />
fiberglass. Soon a new, separate race class was<br />
established for fiberglass boats. By 1965, wooden<br />
boats were virtually gone from the scene. The reign<br />
of fiberglass had begun.<br />
52<br />
53
Although he was a key proponent of new boats and their<br />
construction, it was more so <strong>Roger</strong>'s refined paddling<br />
technique that put him a notch above most other<br />
paddlers. He was always willing to share tips with<br />
inquiring river runners. One of those who queried <strong>Roger</strong><br />
for instruction was Bob Hermann, a spirited but<br />
unpolished American who had won the Salida Race<br />
before <strong>Roger</strong> and his European cohorts had started<br />
entering. Hermann invited <strong>Roger</strong> to his California ranch<br />
before the 1954 race to learn new and better techniques<br />
from the Frenchman. They ran the Klamath, Trinity, Eel,<br />
Russian, Merced, and Mokelumne Rivers in an era when<br />
the sight of river kayakers brought curious stares from<br />
nearly anyone. If you saw a kayaker in those days, it<br />
was likely to be <strong>Roger</strong>. He soon became a recognized<br />
figure on rivers in California and throughout the<br />
American West.<br />
In 1960, <strong>Roger</strong> joined California paddling pioneers<br />
Maynard Munger and Bryce Whitmore for an attempted<br />
first descent of Kings Canyon in the southern Sierra<br />
Nevadas. Munger had fished along the river, and felt that<br />
with the right team, the class V river canyon could be<br />
run. He called <strong>Paris</strong> and promised towering canyon<br />
walls, granite boulders, congested frothing whitewater,<br />
deep clear pools, and virgin sand beaches. <strong>Roger</strong> was<br />
nursing an injured knee from the previous ski season,<br />
but the temptation of a new upper-limits wilderness run<br />
was too great to resist.<br />
run of Kings Canyon, but more significantly they had<br />
made the first descent of any major class V river in<br />
California's Sierra—a region that continues to challenge<br />
expedition paddlers today.<br />
By the early 1960s, <strong>Roger</strong> had clearly influenced the<br />
sport of whitewater, yet his biggest contribution was yet<br />
to come. The Colorado Rocky Mountain School near<br />
Aspen, Colorado was an alternative college preparatory<br />
institution with a focus on outdoor activities. Kayaking,<br />
skiing, and French language were all registered courses<br />
at the school, so when <strong>Roger</strong>'s friend Walter Kirschbaum<br />
(a legendary German paddler who pioneered several of<br />
America's Western rivers) suggested that <strong>Roger</strong> come<br />
and join him at the school as an assistant instructor, it<br />
was a natural fit. <strong>Roger</strong> and his wife Jackie packed up<br />
their Volkswagen bus and drove from their coastal<br />
California residence to the Roaring Fork Valley of<br />
Colorado in 1964.<br />
<strong>Roger</strong> taught French language, Nordic and alpine skiing,<br />
and of course, whitewater paddling. Two years after<br />
starting with the school, <strong>Roger</strong> began his own <strong>Roger</strong><br />
<strong>Paris</strong> Kayak School, operating during summers on the<br />
rivers of the Roaring Fork Valley. It quickly became the<br />
leading kayak instructional center in North America. The<br />
<strong>Roger</strong> <strong>Paris</strong> name was an instant attention grabber, and<br />
the instruction itself was top-tier.<br />
Throughout the late ’60s and ’70s, <strong>Roger</strong> could be found<br />
with his wife Jackie and a crew of instructors teaching<br />
When not on the slopes, <strong>Roger</strong> is often at his TV-less,<br />
telephone-less cabin on the headwaters of the Crystal<br />
River in the heart of the Rockies. If you can find him,<br />
you might get him to tell you a snippet or two from his<br />
life of adventure. There was the time during the war<br />
when he acquired a gun and was stopped just short of<br />
entering a deadly battle, or the time he rowed the<br />
Middle Fork of the Salmon at flood stage, or when he<br />
paddled solo down the Green River, or when he hiked<br />
into the Maze of Canyonlands National Park for a week,<br />
then paddled back upstream so he didn't have to run a<br />
shuttle. Or maybe he'll tell of more commonplace but no<br />
less amazing moments, like the birth of his sons Mitch<br />
and Sasha.<br />
In any case, <strong>Roger</strong> has plenty of stories to tell, and<br />
plenty for us to learn from. Fortunately, many of us have<br />
felt <strong>Roger</strong>'s touch. His realm of influence has grown<br />
from the nucleus of his school on the Roaring Fork, and<br />
spread with his students throughout the Rocky<br />
Mountains, across the continent eastward, and farther<br />
still across the ocean back to its roots where a twelve<br />
year old boy steered his canoe through a rapid of<br />
bombed bridge debris, dodging the hazards, surfing the<br />
waves, and finally moving downstream to see what the<br />
next horizon held in store.<br />
<strong>Roger</strong>, in the stern, and Claude Neveu, in the bow, training in a brand new fiberglass canoe in Augsburg - Germany before the Slalom World Championships (1957).<br />
PROFILE<br />
The trio started down the clear mountain river, weaving<br />
through class III and IV rapids of perfect polished<br />
granite. A couple miles into the run, they arrived at<br />
their first scout as the river dropped below the horizon,<br />
revealing only white spray suspended in the morning<br />
sunshine. After a quick look, the rapid seemed runnable,<br />
and <strong>Roger</strong> led through. After a short pool was another<br />
drop requiring a scout, then another, and another. By<br />
early afternoon they had scouted nearly two-dozen<br />
boulder-strewn rapids, running most and portaging a<br />
few. The relentless whitewater kept coming. They<br />
labored through a narrow section of canyon where<br />
waterfalls poured in from the sides, and class V rapids<br />
filled the riverbed. Munger knew that even the<br />
fisherman didn't come here.<br />
The trio's calculated pace continued through the<br />
afternoon as the sun sank behind the canyon walls, and<br />
twilight seeped into their world of water and rock.<br />
Finally it became too dark to paddle, and the weary<br />
explorers curled up on a sandy beach for a miserable<br />
night in their wet suits. In the morning, they found that<br />
the rapids relented a short distance downstream, and<br />
the team greeted their worried shuttle driver (<strong>Roger</strong>'s<br />
wife Jackie) by mid-morning. They had made the first<br />
an ever-new crop of students how to hit their first roll,<br />
or run their first rapid. <strong>Roger</strong>'s instructional progression<br />
would begin on a pond before moving students to the<br />
Roaring Fork and Colorado Rivers. For the best kayakers,<br />
the classroom would then shift to more difficult runs like<br />
the nearby Crystal River.<br />
Legions of paddlers got started in the sport through<br />
<strong>Roger</strong>'s tutelage, and some went on to become high<strong>profile</strong><br />
paddlers in their own right. Nine-time US<br />
National Slalom Champion Eric Evans was a <strong>Roger</strong><br />
protégé, along with racers Jon Fishburn, Linda Harrison,<br />
Rich Weiss, and David Nutt—all National Champions.<br />
Other notable <strong>Roger</strong> students include Andy Corra, Jennie<br />
Goldberg, and Nancy Wiley and her sisters, Amy and<br />
Janet.<br />
In the ’80s <strong>Roger</strong> took over as professor of outdoor<br />
recreation at Colorado Mountain College in Glenwood<br />
Springs, Colorado. This tenure lasted through 1987,<br />
when <strong>Roger</strong>'s unofficial retirement began. His mountain<br />
lifestyle, however, has shown no signs of letting up.<br />
Since the ’80s, <strong>Roger</strong> has ski instructed at several of the<br />
biggest mountain resorts in Colorado, his latest favorite<br />
being Crested Butte, where he teaches for Club Med.<br />
Loving both rivers and mountains his whole life, <strong>Roger</strong> carves some<br />
turns at Crested Butte Ski Area, Colorado (2005).<br />
54<br />
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