Well, this is extremely cool.
Team River Runner is an adaptive sports program that gets veterans in the water and paddling as a form of therapy, both physical and mental. This past September, they took on the bold task of prepping and guiding five visually impaired veterans for a paddle down all 226 miles of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon system.
TRR helped blind veteran Lonnie Bedwell make this paddle back in 2013, setting a record for the first blind paddler to successfully paddle the Grand Canyon. Bedwell was so moved by the experience, he wanted to return and do it again with more veterans. Kathy Champion, Brian Harris, Steve Baskis, and Travis Fugate—all visually impaired vets—spent months training with TRR before they hit the water on the Colorado. 12 days and 226 miles later, they’d all successfully made the paddle.
“I believe we can’t abandon our sense of adventure because we lose our ability to see it, and it has become my goal to help people who live with similar challenges, and show them that anything is possible.
Google paired with TRR to put images from the trip on Google Maps Street View, so you can get a close look at the paddle. Click anywhere in the below images to drag the camera perspective around. You also get a little map so you can see where along the paddle the image was taken.
This is incredible. Thank you for sharing!
Nice recap. It was an honor to be part of this.