Riding the Dragon's Back: The Race to Raft the Upper Yangtze

New York: Atheneum, 1989. First edition. Hardcover. Good/very good +. Includes color photographs of the adventure. "The upper Yangtze River is the dragon, a beautiful and savage beast.... The authors tell firsthand what its like to pit your nerve and skill against a primal force of nature." -- from the jacket flap. Publishers Weekly -- "From the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau at more than 17,000 feet above sea level, the Yangtze sweeps nearly 4000 miles to the East China Sea near Shanghai. Its source, in a remote and sparsely populated area, was discovered in 1985; few travelers had seen the upper river in one of the last unexplored regions on Earth. Bangs and Kallen, coauthors of Rivergods , wanted to be the first Americans to raft the uncharted "Great Bend'' section of the upper Yangtze. They lost out to Ken Warren and his Sino-USA Expedition; in addition, two Chinese groups planned to run the river from its headwaters (altitude 17,660 ft.) to Yibin (797 ft.). In three ill-fated expeditions of 1986 there were six fatalities. The following year, Bangs and Kallen successfully took a team of experienced rafters and well-heeled clients to the river. To their first-rate adventure story, the authors add background material on ethnic groups and early explorers of the region. Book in good condition, but one of sections of photographs is not tight, splayed to show slight crack to spine. There is a personal inscription on the half-title page from one of the rafters. His picture is included in the book. He also included a note card with a curious reference to the author, Richard Bangs. Interior clean and bright.