29/06/2025
Sexism In Rafting Isn’t Dead, Yet | Raft guide and researcher Maria Blevins has spent half a decade investigating sexual misconduct with the aim of making the river industry and community a safer place for everyone. Here’s what she learned about sexism, sexual harassment and sexual assault in the rafting community—and what we can do about it.
I arrived at the New River Gorge in West Virginia over 20 years ago to begin training as a whitewater guide. It was one of the most exhilarating times of my life. The New River in springtime had huge waves, a budding landscape and giant house-size rocks I learned to navigate a boat through. The nights were spent around a campfire with other trainees, playing bluegrass music or regaling each other with stories of an upset at Greyhound or Double Z. I fell in love with the river and the community of people I was joining.
As I was learning to navigate whitewater, I was also learning to navigate a social scene I had never encountered before. The social landscape was a little more unruly than any I had experienced. There were some wild parties, a lot of sexual energy, crass jokes and a very flexible code of conduct. That was just life on the river, it seemed.
Fast forward to 2015, when a group of 13 National Park Service (NPS) employees came forward with reports of years of sexual harassment and abuse from the river rangers at Grand Canyon National Park. The report from the Department of the Interior’s inspector general detailed accounts from female park service employees. According to the complaints, the boatmen had stuck cameras up the women’s skirts, groped them, exposed themselves and used profane language. The news stories and subsequent congressional hearing started a public conversation about sexual harassment and assault in the river community.
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✍️: Maria Blevins
📷: Hailey Thompson
📖: This article was first published in the Fall 2022 issue of Paddling Magazine.
