Yann Crist-Evans
Job: Jack of All Trades, Raft Guide, Whitewater Repair & Design
Primary Outdoor Sports: Kayaking, Rafting, Backpacking, Mountain Biking
Favorite Beverage: Tea
River Snack: Pocket Bacon
Favorite Season: Winter
Favorite Camp Chore: Cooking
Hot Take: Avatar was a bad movie
Book Recommendation: The Dark Tower Series
Three Words to Describe Yourself: Passionate, Committed, and Trustworthy
“My step dad was a kayaker, my dad was a raft guide, and my mom drove the school bus for a rafting company. So it’s been in my blood since the beginning. I did my first raft trip when I was 8 years old, Ruby-Horsethief. Just kinda fell into it from that and started doing stuff with my parents a lot.
I was an only child getting taken out doing backpacking trips in the Moab desert and I was like, ‘This sucks. I’d rather go party with my friends.’ Now, I look back on it and it definitely was a highlight. I just wish I could have experienced it in the light I now have rather than the way I felt at the time.
But, it did give me a lot more enjoyment later. More knowledge and experience of what to do to be prepared for those future experiences. A lot of people are two years into kayaking and they’ve never done any backpacking and I’ve already done that. So the mindset is there.”
“My parents moved to Chile for nine years when I was 20. So basically from then on, I was on my own. I moved to Durango, started going to school there, became a raft guide, and just kind of decided that I wanted to keep doing that. I got a degree in graphic design and realized that I’d rather keep guiding, so I just kept guiding.”
“Kayaking looked fun. I started skateboarding when I was probably 10. I look at kayaking as kinda like skateboarding on a river. Like you’re on a street park and you can engage all the features. You’re hitting that rock over there, splatting off this one, and surfing that wave. Using all these different elements of the river to kind of engage your skillset to make it more fun.”
“I started out primarily as a rafter. I got into running waterfalls and I was legitimately a Class V rafter. But, I don’t know. There was just something still so much more appealing about kayaking. I was just like, ‘Alright, I’m gonna go back to the drawing board, start back at Class II and III.’ It’s a tough decision to make, but it’s worth it. For me, at least, it was.”
“I did a hike-in trip last fall. It was a two and a half mile hike in and then mostly Class II with a couple of portages, but it was spectacular. It was one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been. It got so narrow at certain points that you had to put your kayak on edge to get through the crack. Super easy whitewater, but it was so stunning.”
“When you first start kayaking, you’re with newer boaters and everyone has different opinions of how far they want to go in kayaking. Some people immediately just want to be Class V badasses. Other people don’t care. They get good enough and then they decide they’re going to step it up or they don’t. But for me, I always wanted to get to the places few ever get to see. Even the most elite people outside of kayaking could never see that place and that’s wild to me. There are just so many gorges out there that you just can not experience without being down inside of them.”
“The North Fork John Day trip was pretty amazing. It was very continuous, blind turns, lots of wood. I wouldn’t want to run it any lower than we ran it. Wouldn’t run it much higher either. So it was kind of like we hit the perfect window. Just knowing that the unknown was below was really exciting. I didn’t know what was going to be down there. Not to think that it was going to be crazier than I expected. We had an idea of the class, but there was just less info on it than a lot of other rivers. I think that’s what drives me for kayaking. It’s not even the destination. It’s not even getting there. It’s more being able to see places that nobody else can get to.”
“Honestly, sometimes the known can be scarier than the unknown. I did a run, probably the hardest run I’ve ever done was Clear Creek into the Klamath. It’s V, solid V. And I knew that the very last rapid was unscoutable. You can kind of scout it, but not really. And, it’s not portageable. You have to run it and it’s the biggest rapid on the whole run. It ends in a big pool and you’re done with the run after that, but it’s long, it’s steep, and it’s nerve-racking. So you’re getting into the pool above that and looking down and going, ‘Fuck. Ok, I have to run this. There’s no way around this. It was a pretty menacing experience.”
“I saw this really cool meme that was a picture of some beautiful gorge with a kayaker at the bottom. It’s all flat water, but the lighting was just amazing. And, it said, ‘I believe in God, only I call it nature.’ That’s how I feel. That’s exactly how I feel about it. I don’t care about organized religion or anything like that. But, I do believe in a higher power. I don’t know what that means exactly, but look around at this. This is it.”
