Help save the Chetco River from gold mining.

If he could speak from the grave, Ed Abbey would explain it this way:

The love of [wild rivers] is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth … the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need — if only we had the eyes to see.

Billy Miller in Conehead on the Scenic Chetco River - Northwest Rafting Company photo. 

So if producing 40 to 65 pound chinook salmon is not enough, here's one more reason to protect the priceless Chetco River from proposals to mine almost half its length for gold. It's the epitome of America's Great Outdoors.



See the Chetco through others eyes. Read about three amazing journeys where the participants brought back words and photographs to help the rest of us "see" this wild river as never before:

• One man - Chetco's headwaters to the sea;

• Four river runners - packing boats and supplies across the rugged Kalmiopsis Wilderness to run the Chetco from Slide Creek to the Steel Bridge.  It took almost as long to get to the put-in as it did to run the river. If this was not hard enough they brought back photos and video to share; and 

• Two authors and a former Grand Canyon guide - who drug their boats upstream for two miles to bring back photographs and glowing descriptions of the river between Boulder and Mislatnah Creek. This little known Scenic section will be re-classified as a Wild River Area in the Chetco River Protection Act.