He Prays to the genius of the place and to Earth, the first of the gods, and to the Nymphs and as yet unknown rivers.

—The Aeneid, Virgil, poet, 70-19 BCE

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About
  • In Torrents As Yet Unknown: Whitewater Ventures into Earth's Great River Gorges, I will examine what lured men into some of Earth’s most wondrous and forbidding places – the flanks of Mount Everest, Victoria Falls on the Zambezi, the Great Bend of the Tsangpo in Tibet, and more – and explore what they found between the walls and within themselves. This is a history of ever more difficult adventures as equipment and technique evolved in the second half of the twentieth century: giant military-developed rafts and almost indestructible kayaks of space-age plastics. It is, even more, the story of a cast of extraordinary characters, united by their compulsion to seek the unknown and the pulse of free-flowing water, challenged by the symbiosis between adventure and the social forces that both enabled and shaped their expeditions: sport, competition, and nationalism; media and tourism.

    Much the same can be said of mountaineering, and yet – ​in these mountain roots the drummer beats a different tempo. From the geologic pace of mountain orogeny, the glacial evolution of summits, and the labored plodding of tethered climbers through the death zone, to the chaos of tons of water thundering over broken ledges and the instant decision and athletic reaction demanded to survive, for both man and nature it is a different dynamic. Whitewater sport today stands side-by-side with mountaineering in participation and public attention, yet it has lagged in generating its own literature. Torrents As Yet Unknown will help fill that gap for a target audience broadly characterized as the readers of National Geographic and Outside, and for general readers interested in human drama played out against great natural challenges.

    I write from a lifetime of river-running experience and passion: Olympic competition at Munich; Himalayan exploration in Bhutan, Pakistan, and Tibet; and publication by National Geographic Book Division. At Torrents’ heart, third person narratives will illuminate milestones of whitewater exploration, informed by my experience and by unique access I have to many of the explorers and archives. The final chapter, written in first person, will focus on Tom McEwan and the river team he led during our 1998 expedition to the Great Bend of the Tsangpo River in Tibet – a journey unsuccessful and ultimately fatal, but perhaps setting the stage for the greater challenges of the next century.

    Publication by Steerforth Press is anticipated in September, 2023.
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Praise
  • “A river is a liquid mountain, though you may have never thought of them this way, until reading Walker’s dramatic, highly-researched homage to venturing into the unknown. Like Into Thin Air, this book takes you to places from which there may be no return. The shock for those who’ve never paddled a stream will be that rivers are so alive, voice-filled, dangerous, and welcoming. Rivers are places, Walker writes, where the current ‘flows but one direction — into the future.’ Walker’s experiences as an elite paddler, meditative and enormously dramatic, will have river veterans nodding in agreement and surprise. I loved the journey.”
    --Doug Stanton, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Horse Soldiers
  • “It’s not often that an all-time great explorer, paddling pioneer, and expedition leader writes an all-time great book on his life’s obsession. But Wick Walker has done it and it’s a doozy. This compendium of whitewater first descents is a must-read for every adventure-lover — you don’t need to be a kayaker or raft guide to feel the power of these stories.”
    –Brian Castner, author of Disappointment River: Finding and Losing the Northwest Passage
  • “Superbly written and very, very gripping . . . Torrents As Yet Unknown brought back to me rich memories, especially of Mike Jones, one of the great adventurers of our time.”
    –Sir Chris Bonington, CVO, CBE, DL, mountaineer and author of more than a dozen books about his adventures, including Annapurna South Face
  • “Wickliffe Walker’s Torrents As Yet Unknown is an important contribution to the literature of exploration and the history of whitewater river running. But it is also a fascinating study of character — of the irrepressible imagination and sheer audacity of those who seek out the wildest places, who make a life of honing the skills needed to navigate the unknown at the extreme limit of human survivability. As I read, I found myself repeatedly murmuring, ‘You can’t make this stuff up.’ From kayakers trying to maneuver on the Blue Nile while shooting attacking crocodiles with a pistol, to paddlers attempting to kayak from just below Everest’s Base Camp, to Chinese scholars sealing themselves in closed capsules and asking to be shoved off into the ferocious cataclysm of the Yangtze River’s Tiger Leaping Gorge. Walker knows the territory: he’s a soldier and explorer who has led expeditions into Tibet’s mythic Tsangpo Gorge, and singlehandedly paddled the first descents of many of Pakistan’s whitewater rivers. His book had my pulse racing. And I kept thinking, ‘That’s why we love rivers, and that’s why the greatest push the limits.'”
    –Peter Heller, author of The Dog Stars, The River, and The Guide.
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​​Hardcover $27.00
Sep 12, 2023 | ISBN 9781586423728
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