Current Adventures Kayak School and Trips was started from humble beginnings in the Spring of 1994. Dan Crandall was the owner, founder, and only instructor at that time. Colleen McKinnon handled Reservations and accounting and helping out on every kind of thing when needed including lunch prep, driving shuttle, assisting on classes, putting up with Dan and everything else you could imagine. We taught River classes and touring classes, Eppies Great Race training, kid’s classes, rolling and much more. IN some ways little has changed since the early days, but we grew and added special people to out team as time went on.

Robin King joined our staff in 1995 to help Colleen in the office, and  John Weed joined us then as well to help run the kid’s programs, as well as many of our touring and race training classes as well. John still leads these categories for us, and Rbin can be found as one of the managers of the River Store in Lotus that Dan Crandall took over ownership of in 2004.

We have traveled to and led trips in Costa Rica since 1994, and ultimately we led multiple trips to Panama, The Grand Canyon, New Zealand, The Green River, Mono Lake, Monterey and San Francisco Bays, annual trips to the Rogue River, and many other destinations near and sometimes far from our great little home base on the South Fork American River.

We expanded our team over time to include many very special people. Dan does less teaching these days and more trying to run a business (not sure how well that works! (<: ) Colleen is in charge of the accounting for CA and The River Store, and still handles the putting up with Dan thing! Some veterans who are still with us are Paul Camozzi, Bill Van der Ven and Kim Parrino on our touring outings, Kim Sprague on touring and river stuff, Denise Pane as our almost original webmaster,(1998-2009) and graphics/newsletter consultant, Jason Bates and Gigi McBee as lead whitewater instructors and international river guides. Jason continues to be our lead on the river, and helps now with instructor training and recruitment as well as website contributor for www.Kayaking.com .Gigi is also our lead Swiftwater Rescue instructor now as well as co-manager of The River Store.

There are many more I plan to mention, and much more history down the river and yet to come, but this will be a continuing saga as I take time to revisit the folks who have helped us come this far and explore so many places in the world. There are our friends whom we havce shared so many of these experiences with, and whose lives have become intertwined with us and /or the paddling lifestyle. It’s a fascinating journey really, and we are always looking for new folks to join us and make new history.

Cheers!
Dan Crandall,  owner/paddler