Announcing the 2025 River Runners Hall of Fame Inductees
The history of the Colorado and Green Rivers is full of daring exploits and fascinating individuals, and the John Wesley Powell River History Museum is dedicated to commemorating them all. The museum’s mission is to celebrate the significance of river history through the cultures and landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, and the River Runner’s Hall of Fame (RR HOF) is an integral part of that mission. Since 1990, the museum has inducted over 30 individuals and groups for remarkable contributions to the history and protection of the Colorado River system and positive impacts to its river running community.
For 2025, the RR HOF selection committee has chosen individuals known for their work as educators, writers, and historians. This year’s honorees are Loie and Buzz Belknap, guidebook creators and Sportyak pioneers; Gary Nichols, Utah’s “King of Kayaking” and dedicated outdoor educator; and Brad Dimock, historian, storyteller, boat builder, and long-standing river guide. The committee has also chosen to induct Bessie and Glen Hyde, a long-overdue recognition of their historic 1928 attempt to navigate the Grand Canyon in a wooden sweep scow.
“Each of these individuals has, in some way, made river running more accessible,” said Susan Munroe, selection committee member. “They’ve written the guidebooks and the history books, and they’ve physically brought people into the river community through college courses or by putting them at the oars of their very own Sportyak. Even the Hydes, despite their tragic end, showed that you didn’t have to be a scientist or a surveyor to run the Colorado River.”
Loie and Buzz Belknap are best known for developing the “Belknap Guides,” waterproof river maps that have been the standard text for most sections of the Green and Colorado Rivers for over 50 years. Buzz also piloted a jet boat in the historic uprun of the Grand Canyon in 1960. Loie was one of the first female trip leaders for Canyonlands Expeditions and later helped run Fastwater Expeditions, which ran Sportyak-only trips through Desolation Canyon and on the San Juan and Dolores Rivers. The Belknaps’ guidebooks and Sportyaks helped make river running accessible for individuals with a range of skill levels.
Gary Nichols is credited with 16 first descents of sections of Utah rivers. He’s the author of three guidebooks, including the “River Runners’ Guide to Utah and Adjacent Areas.” Gary spent 41 years as an instructor in the University of Utah Outdoor Education department, where he taught and created more than 30 outdoor classes, including kayaking, canoeing, and backpacking. He introduced over 10,000 students to the outdoors, including the Colorado River system. His legacy is the hours spent with those students, elevating their appreciation for Utah’s rivers “so that, through awareness, we can work to preserve them” (quoted in Vamoose Utah, May 30, 2016).
Brad Dimock has been a guide since the 1970s and was a founding member of the Grand Canyon River Guides and the Colorado Plateau River Guides organizations. Through his own publishing company, Fretwater Press, Brad has researched, written, and published biographies of some of the greatest river runners of all time. As a boat builder and instructor, Brad commemorates and evolves the craft of Colorado River wooden boat building, including building (and rowing) replicas of historic crafts. Brad’s work as a builder, teacher, and author entwine to tell the story of river running through both words and boats.
Bessie and Glen Hyde, “the Honeymoon Couple,” were the first husband-and-wife team to run the Green and Colorado Rivers. They began in Green River, Utah, in 1928, with a heavy wooden sweep boat. Glen was familiar with sweeps from time he spent running rivers in Idaho. The couple successfully navigated Cataract Canyon, making Bessie the first woman to make that descent, and ran most of the Grand Canyon (they were last seen at Hermit Rapid) before disappearing. The committee felt that it was fitting to induct the Hydes at the same time as Brad, who not only wrote their biography but also built a replica of their sweep scow and piloted it down the Grand Canyon.
The John Wesley Powell River History Museum will host an induction ceremony for this year’s honorees on Saturday, October 4, 2025. The RR HOF induction ceremony is the museum’s largest fundraising event. In recent years, it has grown into a weekend-long social occasion for the Colorado River river-running community, with events such as a mini-film festival, local beach clean-up event, and an informal boat parade.
“The annual ceremony speaks to the core of the museum’s mission,” museum director Janet Smoak explained. “We come together as a river running community to honor the people whose contributions inspire, teach, and amaze us. It’s also an opportunity for our friends, new and long-standing, to support the museum’s research, events, and exhibits that preserve and share the stories, history, and science associated with the Colorado Plateau’s rivers, landscapes, and cultures.”
The Hall of Fame selections are made by a volunteer committee (committee members who are related to nominees or are nominated themselves do not participate in the vote to choose inductees). The public is also welcome to nominate future inductees; individuals wishing to submit nominations must fill out a nomination form detailing the nominee’s contributions to the Colorado River system. Please contact Janet Smoak at (435) 564-3427 to learn more. Nomination forms may also be submitted online here.