Kevin Fedarko

In an effort to experience the uncharted glory of the Grand Canyon, and to shed light on the myriad threats that this place faces, writer Kevin Fedarko and photographer/filmmaker Pete McBride set out on an audacious and demanding quest: to cut a transect, on foot, along the entire length of the canyon. When they embarked on their adventure in the autumn of 2015—a journey of nearly 800 miles that had been completed by only a handful of people, none of whom were journalists—they were challenging themselves; but more importantly, they were also challenging others to recognize how delicate and unique this remarkable ecosystem truly is. Their trek, which took more than a year to complete, served to illuminate the wonder and the fragility of the crown jewel of America’s National Park system, and to underscore the importance of an iconic landscape that serves as a bellwether for the future of public lands in the United States.

Kevin Fedarko’s work has taken him to some of the world’s most dramatic landscape, from Kashmir’s Siachen Glacier to the Khumbu Icefall on Mount Everest and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. His deepest connection, however, is to the river and the canyon where he spent six years researching and writing The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon. The book, which won the National Outdoor Book Award and became a New York Times bestseller, chronicles the most ferocious flood in the modern history of the canyon: a surge in the spring of 1983 that threatened to destroy the Glen Canyon Dam while also serving as a hydraulic catapult for a trio of intrepid oarsmen and a tiny wooden dory. Fedarko’s story opens a window into the secret world of whitewater and wooden boats at the bottom of the most beloved landscape feature in North America.