Adventure Floats His Boat

Local outdoorsman Ryan O'Reilly floated the entire Missouri River, but it almost tamed him first.

When you really think about what the words “float trip” conjure in your head—lying inert, wearing shades and a silly hat, cold beverage in a coozie tied around the neck, finger dangling into six inches of slow-moving water—the images seem anything but harrowing. Maybe you haven’t been on a float with 29-year-old Ryan O’Reilly. He’s more interested in what, for lack of a less embarrassing metaphor, you might call “extreme floating.”

Specifically, O’Reilly floats the Missouri River. The whole thing, from Three Forks, Montana to St. Louis, Missouri. 2,321 miles, if you’re curious.

Intrigued, and still trying to fathom how someone could spend that much time alone in a raft and not crack, I meet O’Reilly (of the auto parts O’Reillys) at his downtown loft apartment to pick his brain. We sit down and I inquire into how he got into the idea of floating the United States’ second largest river from source to end.

“I got the idea when I was in college. Where all good ideas come from, I was drunk, specifically around a bonfire on a sandbar on the Missouri River. I walked away and started looking at the river and thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to float this river from Kansas City to St. Louis?’ I guess that idea never really left me, and I just took that one step farther.

Years passed, and O’Reilly moved to Austin, Texas to manage a band. But the idea of the trip never left him, and he finally decided to do it.
O’Reilly made arrangements with his family to get dropped off in Montana and picked up in St. Louis around forty-five days later. He decided to take a cell phone; and while it isn’t surprising he did not get reception on most of the river, he expected some scheduling delays and needed to be able to check in. He brought along one other 21st century tool—GPS. Huge reservoirs, particularly in Montana, made giant lakes on the river, necessitating the further use of a GPS locator. “I wouldn’t have made it without it,” O’Reilly says.

If the purists are keeping score, O’Reilly also conceded to two other things: one, he had a small motor on his canoe, (“Equivalent to someone being in the front of the boat”), though he claims to have used it only when absolutely necessary. And two, if he spotted a riverside town and was hungry, he would go in and get a cup of coffee and a decent meal.

On May 31st, 2007 O’Reilly set off from Three Forks, Montana. Right away, it was frustrating.

“The first twenty miles were bog and swamp. I had attached wheels to the back of my canoe to ease dragging it around reservoirs, and I had to drag it right away. On the very first day.”

Solitude became a daily routine right off the bat. At one point in Montana, O’Reilly went five days without seeing not only another human, but anything man-made. “You forget there’s places like that left in America. It messes with your head.”

A few weeks in, somewhere in South Dakota by the Nebraska border, O’Reilly reached his breaking point. He was over halfway done, and while things had gotten easier to take, at the time he was dealing with a part of the river that was notorious for difficult winds that could put you to a standstill. Angry after a day of almost no progress, he decided to set up camp.

“I had done fifteen miles in eight hours and just gave up for the day. I was tired of paddling into the wind and drinking nasty lakewater. So I unfurled my tent bag with a snap.” O’Reilly demonstrates by throwing his arms out. “All of a sudden, I heard a low rattle. I looked down, and there was a rattlesnake. He was about four feet away, so I stumbled back and felt a sharp pain. I had stepped on a prickly cactus, but my first thought was, ‘I’m going to die here!’ I realized I wasn’t, but I just gave up. I beat my paddle against the canoe—you can still see the dents—then I grabbed my pack and decided I was going to quit and hitchhike home. I hiked to the nearest hill, and looked out, and there was nothing. Just grass. No roads, no homes, no cows, nothing. I looked at my GPS, and I was thirty miles from the nearest road. That’s when I realized I couldn’t give up. I really didn’t have a choice!”

Once he got to Kansas City, he realized this was the home stretch. The river runs exceedingly fast at this point, and all one has to do is basically float. He called his ride, father Charles O’ Reilly, who decided to meet him in St. Charles and do the final day with him.

Ryan O’Reilly hit the Mississippi in St. Louis on July 18, 2007, almost right on schedule. He had done the whole thing in forty-eight days, about forty-five miles a day.

I ask him, would you do it again? Did it break you? Can you go the rest of your life without seeing a paddle?

“Actually, I sometimes sneak away sometimes and paddle around Springfield Lake. I just crave that solitude. I kind of sigh with relief. But would I do the whole Missouri River again? Absolutely.”