Rocky represented a peculiar mix of talents. He possessed a Ph.D. in neuroscience but was clearly more at home on a big, wild, remote river than in a laboratory. In the last decade he’d logged more than two hundred first descents down five thousand miles of Mexican rivers. Some of these were through Mexico’s rugged and dangerous Copper Canyon region, a notorious haven for drug cartels growing marijuana and trading in opium. But for Rocky, the risk was worth it. He was a true crusader, bent on saving these beautiful free-flowing rivers and keeping them from being dammed for hydroelectric power. Rocky spoke fluent Spanish, had an easy and trustworthy manner with strangers, and a way about him that defused tense situations. He never seemed to get rattled, and he never seemed to rattle others. There was no one more experienced to guide us safely into the jungle.

13

The group I’d organized for this training adventure was not exactly conventional. With us were three guys in their late twenties named Taylor Filasky, Eric Bach, and John Post. They called themselves the Modern Gypsies. I was impressed because they were passionate about international projects for social good. They’d taken their winnings from coming in first on a TV show called Expedition Impossible (I knew them well, as my team came in right behind them, in second place) and put it toward projects that raised awareness about the needs of people in developing countries. This included a clean-water project in Ecuador and a partnership with a company creating cleaner-burning stoves to reduce wood consumption and deforestation.

I liked their spirit and their hipster style. The Gypsies loved adventure but had never been on a big whitewater river expedition. So I invited them along, as well as my brother Eddi and another skilled paddler named Chris Weigand to serve as a second guide. And then there was Rob, low energy, beaten down, overweight, and suffering from bone disease and lung-capacity issues from various medications, but poised with paddle in hand, ready to help guide me.

At the Frontera put-in, Rob snapped last-minute photos of toucans and scarlet macaws, and he described Mexico’s largest river. From the beginning, we knew the Usu was going to be big water. It normally ran about forty thousand cfs, larger and faster than anything I had ever encountered. But on our arrival, torrential rains had swelled it to almost three times its normal flow.

The Usu was now running at over one hundred thousand cfs, and almost eight times the normal flow of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

I had flashing memories of our Green River trip when a similar thing had happened. We seemed to have an uncanny knack for arriving at rivers right when they were at record flood levels!