For the love of Rivers: Stoneman reflects on adventurous career

Darwon Stoneman figures Glacier Raft Co. has guided more than 500,000 people on the Middle and North Forks of the Flathead over the course of his career. He’s also guided thousands of others on the slopes during heli-skiing trips. All told, more than 50 million vertical feet.

“Knock on wood, never a major incident,” he said during an interview last week.” “I’d like to say it was skill,”

Stoneman gives a wry smile.

He admits he’s had to dig a skier or two out from the snow during his career and having a raft flip, and sometimes even sink, is part of the business.

Stoneman grew up in Alaska in his youth; mushed sled dogs, hunted and fished.

“Pretty much had an outdoor life,” he said.

He graduated from the University of Alaska in 1971 with a degree in business administration and a minor in economics. He considered going on to law school.

But instead, he began working ski patrol at Alta Ski Resort in Utah where he met Onno Wieringa and Bill Hoffman.

The three got into kayaking and thought about starting a raft company on the Nenana River outside of Denali National Park.

But Wieringa grew up in Conrad and had family ties to Montana. One thing led to another and in late August 1976 the three young men approached the Forest Service about getting a special permit to guide raft trips down the Middle Fork above West Glacier.

The Forest Service told them they didn’t need a permit. The men suggested they really should have one, Stoneman, who was 29 at the time, recalled.

When they set up the next spring, a green Forest Service truck pulled up to their makeshift office on Highway 2, near where the Glacier Highland is today.

“You need a special use permit,” the Forest Service official told them.

“We know, we told you that last year when we met with you,” Stoneman said.

“I’m going to give you one,” the official said.

The raft company was born.

In those early years, it was just the three of them and the Forest Service was restrictive. The permit allowed 20 people per launch, three times a day. Stoneman figured they guided about 650 people that first year.

“We do that many in a day today,” he said.

If two were out guiding, one would stay at the office. If all three of them went at once, they closed the office down and left a bicycle in West Glacier so they could ride back and get the van they used to ferry the rafts up to the launch at near Moccasin Creek.

Moccasin Creek wasn’t much a launch site back then, Stoneman recalled. They could drive the van down to the creek, but they couldn’t get it back up the hill, it was too steep, so they’d have to drive it down the railroad bed to the Harrison Creek access and back up to Highway 2.

“You couldn’t make a living at it,” Stoneman said.

But he continued to guide heli-skiing in the winter and rafting in the summer and started a family with his wife, Terri. They had two children, D.J. and Cassie, who both went on to be partners in the business.

The rafting business expanded over the years. They began guiding on the Buffalo Rapids on the Flathead River near Polson in ’78, the famed Lochsa river in Idaho in ’79, the Colorado River’s Cataract Canyon in Moab, Utah in ’80 and the Toby River in Canada in 1981.

“We covered a lot of ground,” Stoneman recalled. Rich Thompson was one of their first guides and his wife, Sally, went to work in the office.

She eventually became a partner. Hoffman would leave the rafting business to pursue a flying career and the company kept growing through the years.

As the kids grew older they sold off the distant rafting excursions to focus on family.

Like their father and mother, Cassie and D.J. were good athletes. Cassie was the anchor of the state A championship soccer team for Columbia Falls in 2004.

There have been a host of memorable trips over the years, Stoneman said. One was out of Schafer Meadows where he flew in to guide a party with some other guides. The other guides had brand new rafts and Stoneman had a ratty raft, so he brought a huge roll of patching tape with him, just in case.

As luck would have it, the new rafts took a beating as the makeshift “kitchen” made of wood in one ended up going through the raft.

Then the other new raft developed a gaping hole as well — the water was low and they kept catching on the rocks.

When all was said and done the roll of tape was gone and the two new rafts were mostly patches. They had no kitchen, just some tinfoil and a grill, but they made it out OK.

The ratty raft never needed a patch, Stoneman recalled.

The popularity of those adventure trips has declined, so now they run fishing trips out of Granite Creek, where anglers hike down to the Middle Fork and float out.

It’s works pretty well, Stoneman said.

The rafts are made out of better material, too.

Stoneman has seen plenty of bumps and bruises over the years. He had a knee replaced in his mid-50s.

“It’s the best joint I have,” he said with a smile.

He continued to guide heli-skiing until he was 65. He did several first descents in his youth, including the Toby River and the Susitna River in Alaska. Back then the kayaks were “made of glass” — meaning fiberglass — that they built themselves.

“It was a pretty big deal in 1978,” he said.

Today, he said his son ran the Toby in his second year of kayaking — testament to the improvement in gear.

Stoneman has traveled the world, skiing and floating.

It’s been a good life and there are many, many special places. He said he plans on continuing guiding and floating as much as he can at age 74, though a bad heel slows him down some. He fell off a ladder three years ago, of all things, working on a building at the complex and shattered his heel.

It’s still sore today.

“I’ve been trying to think of where I want my ashes spread,” he said. “... I think I’m going to run out of ashes.”