Eric Hertz, Partner/Guide
"Eric is one of the best in the business - Obsessed with safety."
National Geographic Magazine
I met Eric in 1988, when he almost single-handedly stopped the James Bay II Hydro-electric Project, which would have destroyed eleven major rivers in northern Quebec. I worked with him to save Headwall Canyon in British Columbia and Quebec's Magpie.
Robert Kennedy Jr., Town and Country Magazine
Eric’s guiding began at 16 on a cross country bicycle trip where he met a guide who invited him to row a baggage boat on Oregon's Rogue River. For the next 10 summers he worked on the Tuolumne in California and on the Colorado in the Grand Canyon. He was one of the first to guide paddle boats down the Tuoumne where he invented foot cups to keep people in the rafts which have since become a staple on rivers around the world. Eric invented the concept of using safety caterafts for large volume rivers like Chile's Futaleufu and was among the first outfitters to teach agressive swimming to clients rather than passively floating on their backs. During his early years, when not guiding, Eric wrote plays which won a number of national awards including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. His play “Between Rails” directed by Hal Scott, was produced off-broadway. (New York Times review).
In 1986, he gave up playwriting to devout his full energy to conservation work and co-founded the Rondout-Esopus Land Conservancy in the Catskill and Shawangunk Mountains of the Hudson Valley which has protected over 3,000 acres. He started Earth River in 1989 on two core principles; that the company would run the finest, safest trips possible and that it would fight for the preservation of important river resources.
Over the past 23 years, Eric has been actively involved in efforts to stop the James Bay Hydro-electric Project in Quebec and dams on Chile’s Bio Bio and Quebec’s Magpie. His efforts helped bring awareness to the preservation of watersheds like British Columbia’s, Yosemite like, Headwall Canyon and New Foundland’s Main River, which were both threatened by clear cut logging. Using his land trust experience, he and his partner, Robert Currie, founded, the Earth River Land Trust on the Futaleufu which to date has protected over 20 kilometers of the river’s most fragile and dramatic shoreline. Eric has organized and led first descents around the world and has opened commercial rafting on a number of classic rivers including Chile’s world renowned Futaleufu which he led the first raft descent of while rowing the lead boat.
