Shaped by the Snake River

Shaped by the Snake River

The knife the river inspired.

The Snake River Deli is here — hand-finished in the Teton Valley, with a topographic blade engraving of the Snake and a one-of-a-kind stabilized maple and azure resin handle. No two alike.

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Part One of Three:

Corey Milligan and the Snake River

On a Thursday afternoon in the spring of 1997, Corey Milligan loaded his wedding party into a raft on the Snake River. It was two days before his wedding. The river was running at 37,700 cubic feet per second — the highest flow ever recorded on that section. Some stretches were virtually washed out.

They didn't flip. They survived. And for Corey, it was exactly the kind of day the Snake River had always promised.

"It was huge and epic and glorious," he says. "A great thing to be able to share with all the people who'd come in from out of town."

That instinct — to bring people to the river, to share it, to let it speak — runs through everything Corey Milligan has built, including New West KnifeWorks. But to understand it, you have to go back to the beginning.

Corey grew up in central Ohio, as far from wild rivers as a kid can get. He found water anyway.

"Growing up, I just loved the water. In central Ohio, that was usually expressed at a swimming pool — maybe eight hours a day, all summer long. Swim team, swim lessons, recreation." His dad took him canoeing when he could, and in college he worked as a counselor at a canoe tripping camp in Canada. But the West was always calling.

His last semester before graduating, Corey enrolled in the National Outdoor Leadership School's Semester in the Rockies. The program included sections on backpacking and climbing — and three weeks learning to raft and kayak.

"That was really my favorite," he says simply.

He left Ohio in 1992 and headed out West. His truck broke down in a part of Wyoming known mostly for tumbleweed and briefly worked on a nearby ranch to pay an automechanic. The folks at the ranch told him if he was looking for adventure, he should go to Jackson Hole.

 

Jackson in the early '90s was still a place where a young man with river skills and nerve could make a life. In the spring of 1993, Corey tried out for and got a job with Mad River Boat Trips, one of the original whitewater outfitters on the Snake. He guided whitewater trips through Alpine Canyon and scenic floats on the stretch from Wilson to South Park.

"I just loved it. I didn't know a job could be so fun."

What started as a job became a calling. Off the clock, Corey was on the water in a kayak — pushing into technical stretches, seeking out harder water, working up through the skill grades until he was running Class V. He spent summers on the Snake and its tributaries, winters dreaming about the next season.

"I'd say at my peak I was a Class V kayaker — or bumping up against it. I ran some of the classic Class V runs and just spent a ton of time on the Snake."

He worked eight summers as a raft guide. The last three, he ran the guides for Mad River as manager. By then, the river had become more than recreation. It had become an identity.

 

The Snake has a way of testing the people who love it most. Corey has his share of stories.

In the summer of 1997 — the same summer as the wedding raft trip — he and three friends drove to a stretch of the Snake near Twin Falls called the Murtaugh section to run a rapid called Paradise. The river split around a boulder the size of a house. One channel cascaded over a violent, nearly unrunnable drop. The other went over a 15-foot pour-over that formed what Corey calls "a perfect hole."

Holes are dangerous. The hydraulic forces water inward from both sides, trapping swimmers in a recirculating current.

"It looked almost man-made," Corey says. "Just a perfect hole."

They chose the cascade side. Corey wasn't optimistic they'd stay upright, but the plan was to wash out into the pool below. They flipped as expected — and then something unplanned happened.

"We watched across this pool very quickly — maybe 50 yards — and hit an eddy on the far side that shot us right into the hydraulic hole on the other side."

He remembers free-falling into it.

"I thought, 'Oh my god, I'm dead.'"

He recirculated three times. Each cycle — maybe 30 to 60 seconds underwater, out of breath — felt like an eternity. On the third, he surfaced.

"It wasn't my first rodeo. But that one was close."

The raft was not so lucky. It stayed stuck in that hole for three days. There was no getting it out.

 

Corey often reflects on what the Snake River has meant to him and by extension, New West KnifeWorks. 

"I don't know why floating down a river speaks to my soul more than almost anything," he says. "I love the constantly changing scenery. I love the ease of moving through current — just going in the right direction with the right energy."

There's also something the river teaches, he says, that applies far beyond the water.

"The most important thing in whitewater — in boats and rivers generally — is that you always have to be looking ahead. As far as you can see. And be planning for what's coming. It's certainly a metaphor for everything in life. It's not what's right in front of you. It's how far ahead can you look and make adjustments."

That philosophy — look ahead, stay connected to the things that matter, make something beautiful out of what the land gives you — is at the heart of New West KnifeWorks' Snake River Series.

Each knife in the series carries the colors of the river and the surrounding geography in its handle, and a topographic engraving of a section of the Snake etched into the blade. They are objects made by people who know this river — not as a backdrop, but as a life. The first chapter of that life started with a kid from Ohio who fell in love with moving water, and never looked back.

Next: How Corey went from river guide to fighting for the Snake River's permanent protection.

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