A veteran river runner turns 70, and heads off into the Peruvian wilderness to raft the Rio Marañón, the headwaters of the Amazon.

From The Outdoor Journal Issue 14. Preparing to launch that first morning, an emerging dread crept up the back of my neck. Although I had run rivers for 42 years, including nine trips down the Colorado in the Grand Canyon, I had never faced a challenge like this one: a gradient nearly equal to the Middle Fork of the Salmon, four foot wave trains, big pour-overs, surging eddys, seemingly endless rock gardens. I was to carry the two large kitchen boxes.