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