Sorry, Huck Finn…there’s a new Mississippi speed record on the country’s longest waterway.
Paddling a Wenonah Minnesota 4 canoe, canosists Scott Miller, Judson Steinback, Paul Cox, and Wally Werderich paddled all 2,300 miles of the Mississippi from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico in just 16 days, 20 hours, and 16 minutes, besting the previous record of 17 days, 19 hours and 46 minutes. “It feels incredible to set the record,” says Miller. “It’s the culmination of a project five years in the making.”
Taking turns sleeping, the four paddlers began their quest on May 10 and reached the Gulf on May 26. In late July, Guinness World Records officially ratified the trip as the fastest “team, human-powered row” from the headwaters to the Gulf.
Along the way, the crew experienced plenty of hardships, from sleep deprivation to hunger, narrowly missing barges and other boats, levees, weather, waves and more. “Sleep deprivation was the hardest thing for me but once I figured out how to strategically use caffeine it was much better,” says Miller. “Prior to that I had a few incidents where I stopped functioning and was unable to speak logically or paddle. Another hard thing was the stress of avoiding barges and navigating big barge wakes, especially at night.”
As for the boat, he says it was the correct tool for the task. “The MN4 was the perfect boat for us—fast but stable enough to comfortably sleep in; at night we often had two guys sleeping foot to foot under the canoe cover in the middle of the boat,” he says. “The two middle seats were modified so as to be removable. Our support team member Scott Duffus spent over 150 hours making modifications to the canoe to make it the perfect craft for this attempt, including putting a hard deck on the bow, wiring an electrical system to power our navigation tablet and lights, putting in bulkheads with drain plugs to section off the middle sleeping area and refining our Llama Racks RR rudder system.
Currently, at least, he says he has no intentions of trying it again, even if the record gets re-broken.
“Having tried it and almost succeeded in 2021—we made it almost to New Orleans—and then having successfully done it this year, I very much do not have any plans to try it again,” he says.
As for what’s next—after all the fanfare and appearances of Oprah wear off—he’s all about getting more people out on the Mississippi. “My best friend—and lead advisor for the attempt—Todd Foster and I started www.twopaddles.org to share the magic of paddling on the Mississippi with the general public,” he says. “We’ve put on the “Mississippi River Paddle Weekend” during the second weekend in June for two years now and we look forward to continuing to grow the event; it’s comprised of a bunch of tours and races ranging from five to 150 miles so there’s something for everyone from beginner to hard core.”
