This Week in Small Craft: June 1st, 2026
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This week in Small Craft, OARS announced a remarkable expedition retracing John Wesley Powell’s legendary 1869 journey through the Colorado River canyons, offering modern river runners a chance to follow one of the greatest small-craft adventures in American history. If you’ve got 42 days burning a hole in your pocket, you can scope out the itinerary here.
If your ideal weekend involves equal parts rivers and live music, Georgia’s Knobby Knees Music Festival is gearing up for another year of bluegrass, camping, and river shenanigans hosted by the Flint Riverkeeper. Meanwhile, the Ohio River Way is seeking a Conservation Planning Intern to help map and protect 71 miles of the Ohio River corridor between Kentucky and Ohio, focusing on flood resilience, biodiversity, and recreational access.
Protect Our Rivers continues its impressive cleanup efforts with another season of boots-on-the-ground river stewardship, proving that sometimes the most important river trip is the one spent hauling out someone else’s trash. Out west, American Whitewater is celebrating a major win as California’s famed Lumsden Road has finally reopened, restoring long-awaited access to the Wild & Scenic Tuolumne River and the legendary Cherry Creek run after years of storm-related closure.
Meanwhile, Colorado’s ambitious effort to reduce water consumption appears to be off to a slower-than-hoped-for start, raising fresh questions about how the state will balance growth, agriculture, and recreation as drought pressures persist. And down in southwest Colorado, the long-running Dolores River Festival is once again bringing boaters, anglers, conservationists, and river lovers together to celebrate one of the West’s most iconic waterways. Not a bad excuse to spend a weekend on the river.