Canoeing the Columbia River to Raise Awareness
9-minute read + 2-minute video
Robert Lester and his cousin, Braxton Mitchell, canoed almost 1,300 miles to raise awareness and inspire care for the Columbia River watershed in the northwestern US.
A dream trip since he was a young boy, Robert decided 2023 would be the year. He and Braxton started in Butte, Montana at the Continental Divide, paddled down the Clark Fork of the Columbia River, then paddled and portaged all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
The two men were accompanied by a film crew who documented their 52-day expedition that traversed four US states and a few miles of Canada. Their documentary is making the rounds in theaters as this blog is published.
Watch the trailer below:
We sat down with Robert recently to get some personal comments about their epic trip. Here’s our interview with him…
BENDING BRANCHES: Tell us the main goal(s) of your Columbia River Canoe Project and if you feel you were able to meet those goals.
ROBERT: Our purpose with the trip was to inspire stakeholders to make some measurable changes in the health of the Columbia River Watershed. We really wanted to look at three factors.
We wanted to look at natural resource extraction and remediation, things like mining and how the watershed has been impacted by the mining industry. Then we wanted to evaluate damming on the Columbia. And then also look at the connection between native people who’ve used these lands and this river for so much longer than we have and try to learn from them.
We were able to look at and evaluate all three of those things. As far as the documentary goes, conservation-wise, it’s a mile wide and an inch deep. We touch on all those issues but we don’t dive deep into them. We decided to go down the route of telling this as an adventure and inspirational story, especially from Braxton’s point of view. The big story ends up being that Braxton has never been in a canoe.
He was a last-minute addition. I had had two other partners planned but they ended up not being able to go. One of them was a week-and-a-half before the trip. I was at a family reunion, telling my cousin and uncle that I was in some deep trouble. Braxton said, “I’ll go!” He’d never been in a canoe before!
So we went into some of those inspirational stories—it’s really the story of Braxton. That’s what makes the film so watchable. We still wanted to touch on those conservation points and then try to inspire and influence as many people as possible to go to some of the resources we provide. To those people actually doing the work on the river itself.
BRANCHES: What were your highlights of the trip?
ROBERT: It’s hard not to say just being able to spend so much time in nature and on the water. That’s not necessarily a single highlight, but the value of the trip. And in addition, making it to the ocean is a feeling I’ll never be able to forget. It made all that hard work so worth it.
The other big highlight for me, the most rewarding part of the journey, was getting to watch Braxton. This kid had never been in a canoe! He’s never been on any sort of expedition like that and was only 18 years old. He turned 19 on the trip. Just to watch him really grow as a human and learn about himself was the most rewarding part for me personally.
BRANCHES: What was your prior paddling experience?
ROBERT: The documentary makes it seem like I’m an expert paddler, but that’s mostly because I was compared to Braxton! In reality, I’m a river novice compared to many, especially many of your readers.
I had experience on several overnight oarframe trips, and in college we would run the Gallatin River every spring. But I probably had only 4 or 5 days of canoe experience myself.
BRANCHES: What made you decide on a canoe as your vessel of choice?
ROBERT: Really two reasons. First, it’s the most efficient craft for the entire journey. In the beginning it sucks because the creek we started in is only a few feet wide and we had a 17-foot canoe. So we were raking through the willows and getting hit into the banks left and right.
But then, with two men on flatwater, this canoe ran like a Ferrari. It was the best overall craft for the entire journey if we were only going to be in one craft.
Second, we liked the homage it paid to the fact that native peoples have traveled in canoes on these same rivers for 30,000 years. So we liked both of those reasons.
BRANCHES: What was the most challenging aspect of the trip?
ROBERT: First was the portages. We portaged 19 hydroelectric dams, then quite a few additional fish passage and irrigation dams. So a lot of portaging, which was difficult.
Then when we hit the Columbia River Gorge we had to leave Montana at the highest possible water. We were in flood stage in Silver Bowl Creek [stage 1], which we absolutely needed to be able to get down. But that also put us in flood stages a little downriver.
So when we hit Albertson Gorge, it’s Montana’s premier whitewater. Because it was so high we ended up walking the entire length of it. We weren’t even able to pull out for a rapid, put back in, pull out. We portaged the whole 18 miles.
Then we hit really big winds in the Columbia River Gorge. That’s the place where windsurfing was born, right there on the Hood River. People flock there every year in the summer because of its consistent big winds, and they all go upstream. For us, that ended up being a huge problem. We had days with four-foot rolling waves so we had the choice of hanging out to wait or portage.
We ended up portaging over 175 miles out of the 1,300 total, so that was definitely the most strenuous part for us.
BRANCHES: What made you want to take this on?
ROBERT: I have wanted to do this trip since I was a little kid. I loved the idea of it. A (different) cousin of mine and I would build wooden boats every summer out at our grandparents’ house. We’d float them down the river, then grab them over and over. And then, at the end of the summer, we’d put messages in them and let them keep going.
We loved the idea of that “message in a bottle” style that somebody at the ocean might call us or send us a letter. It never happened, but it inspired this idea of how amazing it is that these rivers are so connected. That it could flow all the way to the ocean.
I grew up right on the Continental Divide so a boat could put in this river and go to Louisiana and a boat could put in that river and go to Washington. It was amazing for us. I thought how amazing it would be to canoe to the ocean.
I never really did much more with it. Then I went to college and I became a mountain athlete. My expedition experience is all in climbing and skiing, but nothing this long.
I would plan our skiing and climbing trips in my physics class. When I got bored during the lectures, I’d pull out my laptop, get on Google Earth and plan out trips. One day, I thought, “I should plan that canoe trip,” so I went through the entire river on Google Earth and marked down all the spots that would be issues. I put it in my Google Drive and never thought about it again.
Then in October 2022, I was talking to a friend of mine. He’s this really inspiring kid I’ve known for 15 years—he’s a quadriplegic. He has the most infectious, positive attitude you could ever imagine, and he just loved the idea that I wanted to canoe to the ocean. When someone who’s so inspiring said it was something I should do, it meant I needed to do it!
So I went home that day and started emailing every canoe company in the nation. The next May we were on the water.
BRANCHES: What’s the story behind making the documentary?
ROBERT: We usually make some videos and video advertising with our skiing and climbing. So I thought this canoe trip might be something worth shooting. I never thought it’d be a documentary.
It’s the way it is because of Braxton, really. It’s a story worth watching because you’re getting to watch this kid grow up, learn how to canoe and learn about himself. Otherwise, we would’ve had a really good 15-minute film. But he makes the story interesting.
Neil Larson, the co-director with me, was the one who realized this was such a cool story and leaned into it. He learned about Braxton and followed his story on the journey. That’s what really made it a human story outside of just a paddling documentary.
BRANCHES: Which Bending Branches paddles did you use and how did they perform for you?
ROBERT: We had three paddles on the trip and held on to them the whole time. They were the Expedition Plus paddles. They were wonderful. It’s maybe less about performance and more about how I feel like that thing became my best friend. It still hangs on the wall in my house.
You have some sentimental value for the canoe [Robert and Braxton used a 17-foot Navarro Oberholtzer canoe]. But for some reason, my real attachment was to that paddle. Just the way it’s worn from my hands and where it rubbed across the side of the canoe. I can tell you about each little dent.
And its performance was great. We needed one paddle that could get us from bouncing off rocks to being able to paddle for 10 hours a day at the end.
Where to Watch the “Columbia River Canoe Project” Documentary
The documentary has received several film festival awards in 2024 and 2025, including from the Old Towne Film Festival, LA International Art Film Fest and SOAR Film Festival.
At the time of this writing, there’s still time to attend live screenings in the winter and spring of 2025. Rob’s goal is to see the film come to streaming platforms for a wide audience. You can keep track of those developments on his website, Mountain King Industries.
We want to thank Rob for his time and congratulate him and Braxton on a job well done!
(All photos courtesy of Robert Lester)
What paddling questions can our friendly Customer Service team help you with? Contact us at 715-755-3405 or [email protected]
More for you...
