May Club Meeting

Flying Pie Pizza     7804 SE Stark Street Portland, OR 97215      Google Map

Amos Burg (1901-1986), a native of Portland, Oregon, was the first to complete transits of the free-flowing, undammed Snake and Columbia Rivers by canoe, and in 1938 he became the first to navigate the length of the Colorado River in a rubber raft. In his daring explorations of waterways from the Southwest up through Canada and into Alaska, Burg is considered to be the only person known to have run all major Western rivers from source to mouth.

Vince Welch was a boatman on Northwest rivers for several years before heading to the Colorado River, where he guided for Grand Canyon Dories and first encountered the legend of Amos Burg. He has since lived and guided all over the West and has written for River magazine, The Utne Reader, Boatman’s Quarterly Review, and Mountain Gazette, for which he is a senior correspondent. Welch lives in Portland, Oregon.