Our Guides

I have been taking people downriver most of my life. I started young, bringing school friends with me, then graduated to taking more and more people. I’ve paddled most of the big stuff in North America; one of the benefits of living in Texas was not having a good “home” river to run, so it pushed us to run a wide variety of rivers. The largest white water had to be on the Futaleufú River in northern Patagonia. 

My professional career has been mostly technical work since I got my mechanical engineering degree. For the past 10 years, I worked on large 3D printers for companies like Lockheed Martin and NASA. This was extremely detailed work, almost always completed under a time crunch. I found myself unfulfilled at the end of the day, the work was routine and always an emergency. I thought of the times in my life when I was happiest, and it was on the river showing people the beauty of mother nature. To that end, I shifted gears and started researching ways to make money doing what I love on rivers I have paddled before, and luckily, I found Morrisons was looking for river guides.

Situational awareness is key to having a good time on the river. Staying safe is the primary concern and making sure you are keeping track of all the things going on around you can mean the difference between a good time and a bad time. To that end I have a sixth sense for what’s going on around me.  

I always get asked about my name and where it came from. I was named Rip after my father, who got the name from someone that saved my grandfather’s life during WWII. The funny part is I always use L. when asked my middle name because it’s even more ridiculous than my first name.