Celebrating 60 Years with Adventure Bound

Celebrating 60 Years with Adventure Bound! In 1963, a grassroots rafting company from Colorado came to fruition on the banks of Deer lodge Park. This year, we are proud to celebrate 60 years with Adventure Bound River Expeditions, and the legacy of sharing, protecting and enjoying the wild rivers of the Colorado Plateau.

By 16, Tom’s summers were spent shuttling boats between Lake Powell and Grand Junction. By 18, he was a licensed river guide. And by 28, he was offered to buy Adventure Bound River Expeditions from Keith Counts, the man who’d saved the school group from ravenous hunger on Tom’s maiden voyage.

Keith began running rivers like this for the next three years. Until in 1966, his account asked if he had insurance for all these boats and passengers he was taking into the roaring depths of rugged canyons. Since organized river running was still an experimental venture of a still Wild West, he was surprised at the question and the fact that he even needed it.

So if he needed insurance, he supposed he’d need to make some money to pay for it. And on top of being new to commercial rafting, Adventure Bound operations were based out of Craig, Colorado and fairly isolated from its Utah peers.

It was a time when the Environmental Movement that raged through the 60s and 70s was still in its infancy. Since the 1920s, federal agencies had begun exploiting any and every river congress saw fit. Especially as people began flooding out to California and the wide open deserts next to it.

Well, until pioneering advocates like the Hatches and David Bower from the Sierra Club started raising hell. Many have considered the defeat of the Echo Park Dam project as the birth of environmentalism we know today in the United States.

We are so grateful to be celebrating 60 years of adventure bound!