Every journey starts at the end. Vastness, beauty, delirious, head-turning stimuli of time spent somewhere remarkable and the recurring images that we are left with. Images that are presented gradually, like an unfolding lotus blossom, only to be fully appreciated after being safely delivered home. Such was the case after the first commercial kayak descent of the Great Bend of the Yangtze River. There is an echo in the voices of those that were there. A similar whisper of bittersweet return. A resignation that we will never be quite the same again. It is common in the world of kayak travel today, especially in China, that we may have also said farewell to a friend. But no regrets. In the end, the experience well outweighs the loss.

I speak of loss because the one thing we did not expect of our10 days on one of the last great remote stretches of river in the world, was witnessing daily its death. We came expecting 3,000 foot sheer gorges, huge water rapids amidst Tibetan prayer flags and sandy beaches beyond our wildest dreams: Shangri-la. We saw these things, indeed. But the specter of China, and its rapid expansion into prosperity, hung over the river. Dam preparations were everywhere. Roads were being blasted into existence out of pristine hillsides. The daily sightings of apocalyptic dredgers stripping away at the riverbed in a futile attempt at wealth foretold the loss of this environment. Futile because it is said that the average revenue of a single dredger in one year with 10 Chinese workers rotating 24 hour shifts is a humble $1,500 (USD). All of this comes at the expense of the river and her surroundings.

"Two years ago," well known international paddler and trip leader Willie Kern remarked, "I saw perhaps five or six dredgers along this entire 120 mile stretch of river." On this trip, in January 2005, nearly 80 of these rusted steel monstrosities revealed themselves in some of the most unlikely places. Far more dangerous than the giant rapids we encountered were the steel cables that ran from each dredger to hold it in place in the moving current. A kayak would amble along when suddenly cables would begin to dance in the water in a tango of slack and pull.

"Certainly it was not a dangerous river in the classic sense, but the boiling eddies, giant crashing waves and length of many drops made for a gut check as your boat would come onto the entry tongue..."

Tarkio Kayak Adventures group of 25 clients was comprised of an unlikely mix of world-class expedition boaters like Willie Kern, myself, Land Heflin, Polk Deters and Jed Weingarten, along with more average souls who ply the common grounds of America's whitewater. They came for big water (over 20,000 cfs at its lowest flows) on this, the world's third largest river—the Yangtze. For those more accustomed to creeks, the volume was jaw-dropping. Certainly it was not a dangerous river in the classic sense as most rapids were drop pool with little in the way of hazards, but the boiling eddies, giant crashing waves and length of many drops made for a gut check as your boat would come onto the entry tongue. Whispers between Willie and Polk revealed to those close enough that the river was higher than the original exploratory trip two years before. But I could hardly imagine a few thousand extra cfs making all that much difference in something already so huge.

The rapids were interspersed with spectacular stretches of gently moving water that luckily came at precisely the point where the narrowest walled-in gorges appear. It would be horrific to imagine any serious rapids in these stretches and would, perhaps, make the river un-navigable as the canyon walls rose thousands of feet steeply uphill with no exit points. I reflected on some of the original trips down here, as they encountered blind turns into canyoned out gorges that must have been met with intense anxiety.

Each night brought us relief at the most spectacular sandy beaches one could imagine. At times they appeared to be from another planet. Strange rock formations and caves gathered in a playground of tent sites and vantage points to view the darkening sky. It was during the night that the Yangtze was most beautiful. Sepia-toned silhouettes of mountains and ridges edged along the horizon below a dizzying display of stars and sky. The Yangtze is, no-doubt, a night child and I stole constant glimpses of her splendor. She never turned away. Neither did I. Each night I bid farewell with one last look before sleep. And then another. And another. Until I finally gave in to exhaustion.