Tess McEnroe is a whitewater guide for ARTA River Trips in Idaho

Tess still gets goose bumps (and a little choked up) when she pulls into Blackadar Camp on the Main Salmon and remembers the first time she was there. Before she was voted “Most Likely to be Heard” in elementary school, before she won the underwater swimming championship as a lifeguard in high school, before she got a degree in Photojournalism from the University of Montana, before she was selected as “the student most likely to trip over a rock” in guide school, before she traveled to Nepal as a photographer for The Kathmandu Post, she was an awestruck 9 year old from Minneapolis, Minnesota looking up at the Idaho stars, listening to the majestic river and promising herself that she would make this place a part of her life. 20 years and all those adventures later she still feels the magic of that first night; every time. They weren’t expecting Tess when they named it “The River of No Return”.

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