An [Unofficial] Solo Record Paddling the Mississippi River by Canoe
13-minute read
Ilia Smirnov took to an 18-foot canoe in May 2026 and paddled all 2,350 miles of the Mississippi River, from the headwaters to the Gulf Coast. He completed his journey in just under 34 days.
Ilia Smirnov finishes his 2,350-mile journey down the Mississippi River
Ilia lives in North Carolina with his wife and family, where they own and operate Cape Fear River Adventures. Ilia’s background in whitewater kayaking and endurance paddling helped him decide to tackle the Mississippi, and pursue a Guinness World Record while doing it (his certification is currently under review).
Ilia’s paddle of choice was Aqua Bound’s Ultralight Tetra. While he took several other backup paddles along just in case, he discovered the Tetra was fully capable of doing the job on its own—all 33 days, 14 hours and 47 minutes.
We were delighted to sit down with Ilia to learn more about his grueling but successful trip. Here’s our interview with Ilia Smirnov:
BENDING BRANCHES: What about your Mississippi River trip was more challenging than you anticipated?
ILIA: Everything! In every way, it ended up being a more challenging, more involved experience than I anticipated. I did my best to prepare, but the trip itself was definitely beyond my anticipation. And it's not a bad thing. It was not that I was expecting one thing and it ended up being 10 times different, or harder.
I was basing it on my prior background and prior expedition-type trips that I have completed, and there was definitely a lot more to everything. A lot more demand on the body and mind, and just the environment was more challenging—the weather and water.
BRANCHES: Was anything not as challenging as you thought it would be?
ILIA: Some elements of my mental game. Perhaps I was expecting to suffer more, and I was able to overcome some of those mental challenges. My mental state was controlling the emotional and physical states. They were all interconnected. And so the mental aspect of this expedition was the driver and in charge of the other interpersonal elements.
Ilia at the Mississippi River’s headwaters, Minnesota
In some ways, I was able to find my mental game flourish and really come through on a whole different level to put me so much more in control of myself, to a point I've never experienced before.
I wouldn't say it was easy, but in some ways it was easier because I was anticipating the unknown, so I could only imagine certain aspects of it. When they were actually happening, I was able to overcome things that I didn't know if I would be able to overcome.
That was a big part of why I did this trip in the first place. It was certainly a challenge for myself. To put myself in that environment and those situations and see what happens.
BRANCHES: Tell us about the weather you faced.
ILIA: I think the ice came off Cass Lake and Lake Winnibigoshish the day before I got there. We came in about five days before my start. As we were driving in, I learned that the ice sinks. A lot of people think that it melts away and breaks away, which is the case in some places. I'm originally from St. Petersburg, Russia, and the whole city is based on the Baltic Sea. There is a major system of rivers that runs through the city, and in the spring, the ice starts to move and break and flow out into the Baltic Sea.
This is very different from what happens in northern Minnesota, as I learned. The ice doesn’t flow anywhere. It actually just saturates with water, and then eventually, once it's heavy enough, just sinks. And so that was very interesting to me. And like I said, it sank the day before we got there. I didn’t know if I’d even have to postpone because of it.
On Day 2, Ilia at Cass Lake with a couple of witnesses
We arrived on Monday, and I launched on Friday, May 1st. Coming from North Carolina, where I've been for the last 26 years, northern Minnesota—if you ask me—was still in full-on winter! There were multiple nights in the low 20s during the first part of my trip. To me, that’s winter conditions.
For the first nine days, I was wearing a full dry suit and other winter gear. One morning I woke up, and my dry suit was completely frozen. I could hold it up straight out. I had to find a way to climb into that thing with all the frozen gaskets and everything else.
Then, of course, by the time I got to Louisiana, it was June, and I went through everything in between. I experienced three different seasons.
I lived in my tent for 37 nights, and so I was exposed to all the elements all that time. Everything from freezing temperatures to rain, wind, thunderstorms, and a nearly tropical storm near the Gulf.
I did have some nice days too, which posed a problem of its own because of the sun. I was usually on the water before sunrise, and I was in the water right until sunset. So that means I was exposed to the sun for probably 14 hours. Those days were actually some of the more challenging because I have a special relationship with sunscreens—I try not to use them. So I was running into some issues of very brutal sun exposure.
BRANCHES: What were your water conditions like?
ILIA: My goal for my start date of May 1st was to have good flow from the melting snow. But the preceding winter didn’t have enough snowpack to have excess water. When I came to my first major dam at Winnibigoshish, there was barely a trickle of water coming out.
It was low water all the way until Minneapolis, where I anticipated they might release more water from the locks, but they didn't. So from Winnibigoshish all the way to St. Louis—close to 1,100 miles—it was low water.
Ilia and the famous Gateway Arch in St Louis
Finally at St Louis, I came to the confluence of the Missouri River, and the Missouri was riding high at that point. So once they merged, I was able to get some flow and better speed all the way until the Baton Rouge area. There, things slowed down because of the port and the different dynamics of the navigational channels, about 100 miles before mile zero.
BRANCHES: Tell us about your gear.
ILIA: This was a very involved trip in every way. I had so much gear that it's almost mind-blowing. I had different boxes of technical gear, clothing gear, different layers, all kinds of food and backup food (and that's an addition, of course, to what the support crew was cooking daily). From changing environments in water and weather, I had to have a variety of gear.
I went through at least three different boats in preparation for this attempt. The boat I ended up with was a Wenonah Voyager, which is an 18-foot performance canoe. That turned out to be an excellent choice, even though I did have some limitations. Overall, it allowed me to sustain, on average, about 15 hours a day, every day.
Of course I wore a life jacket every single day. And the paddle was extremely important—I estimated doing probably 1.5-1.7 million strokes. The paddle contributed greatly, because if the paddle had been prone to causing blisters or other water damage on my hands, or if it had been on the heavy side, or inefficient, things may have turned out differently.
Day 13, Ilia with a River Angel
The gear was definitely put to the test in all kinds of different environments with water, sand, rocks, dams, trees that were down, having to brace and push off, and on and on. The paddle had to be extremely reliable to withstand the use and abuse.
Then there were countless other pieces of gear, from safety gear to repair gear to all the medical gear I had. All the food—the way I was carrying and storing food, and resupplying food and water was quite complex. Plus, of course, all my sleeping stuff and camping gear. So I had a fair number of moving parts.
BRANCHES: How did it work to connect with your support crew?
ILIA: For a majority of the trip, I met with my support crew only once a day. A lot of the time, those meetup points were close to 100 miles apart, especially once I hit St. Louis and the Missouri confluence. The river was moving fairly quickly, so I think there were three days in a row I did over 100 miles a day. Other days, I did 80 or 90-mile days, so we had very distant resupply stops, especially on the Lower River, with very limited accessibility.
That was part of one of many, many challenges. Mentally, overcoming doubts to where it was okay to be on my own in this very huge, wild river in a completely remote setting with nobody to help, no way to get to that next meet-up spot 90 miles downstream except to paddle. That's a freaking commitment! It was a little bit uncomfortable to have only one way out.
In the headwaters, we were able to meet often because there were so many access points. Minnesota is absolutely amazing with its park systems. It’s so well orchestrated, each park is so thought through, and there are so many resources. We were able to time things easily for resupplies and stay together, even though they stayed in the RV and I slept in my tent.
A resupply and photo with River Angels on Day 22
After about Day 10, we switched gears and started training for once-a-day resupplies, because we knew the further we went, the more challenging things would become, including cell service. Bridges might be hundreds of miles apart because it's such a monstrous engineering project to create something to cross that massive river system.
It was a lot of coordinating the meals and cooking and shopping and drying clothes, making sure the support team could get all my stuff to me on time. On both sides—on the crew side and the paddling side—it was much bigger than we anticipated.
BRANCHES: We assume you're glad you did this! Do you have a big takeaway from your trip?
ILIA: 100%. Yes, I’m glad I accomplished this trip. Probably one of the biggest things I learned is how our mind interacts with reality and handles our expectations and fears. Our mind predicts worst-case scenarios so we can prepare for that outcome, so we can overcome it and end up on the other side.
That was part of my success—being aware of those mental processes happening on the inside, but also being aware that those processes create a certain train of thought that isn’t necessarily right. That train of thought is going to change. I've learned that things will always change. I can set expectations, but it’s going to change, and it can be a good or bad thing.
For example, I could get stuck in a thunderstorm and think, “This really sucks.”
Your mind can instantly go to, “This is the end. I need to get out.” But the reality is you don’t, because the thunderstorm is going to end and things will change and the perception of your environment will change.
There was so much going on, so much deeper in my perception of reality and how I was assessing those things. And I think that was the biggest lesson I learned. Being aware of what reality is coming at you, and how your physiological functions react to it, and what kind of thoughts they create.
I can control these thoughts. Take steps back and know that things will change. Be aware of my thoughts when they start to get associated with emotions and expectations, and pull back on that. Those were probably my biggest lessons.
BRANCHES: What’s your honest review of the Ultralight Tetra paddle?
ILIA: The paddle did not have a single compromise on the entire journey. That’s a huge compliment because, again, the gear was used very heavily in all kinds of environments and all kinds of situations.
The ultimate gear test begins
The paddle was built extremely well, with an extremely well-engineered design. It’s not only a terrific paddle and engineered with tons of technology, but the build was truly remarkable and admirable for the abuse it was able to withstand. The selling point for me was the weight of 22 ounces. That was a huge selling point, right on par with its performance.
Coming from a whitewater background and having faced all kinds of conditions on the water, I'm glad I settled on the Tetra and its more traditional blade design [than a competitor’s paddle], because the conditions were all over the place. One day might be awesome flat water, and I'm just cruising downstream, and the next day that river is turning into a turbulent sea with winds and waves, with me having to brace and do all kinds of strokes to stay afloat.
I felt extremely comfortable gliding that paddle in the water and using the brace strokes and whatever else. I really enjoyed the two-piece adjustable shaft, as I was able to adjust the length and play around with feathering angles.
I love the grip, whatever material Aqua Bound uses. I've never paddled with that kind of material. It feels almost a little tacky, rubbery and soft. It feels good—different, but good. It’s very easy on the hands. It was really enjoyable holding it. It felt very in control, never sliding, and very welcoming in my hands. At times I was able to have almost a perfect, silent catch with an excellent silent power phase and a very snappy release stroke.
I feel like the paddle is good to go for many years to come. This 2,300-mile trip did not faze it. With all the bracing and bumping, there were some surface scratches, but there’s definitely no structural damage, no cracking, no chipping. I love the stitching around the edge of the paddle.
BRANCHES: Do you have any tips for other paddlers who may consider a trip of this magnitude?
ILIA: I would say be absolutely sure you know what you're getting into and know all the aspects of the river, of the support, of the demand, and most certainly yourself, because it is a test of everything.
One of Ilia’s sunny days on the river
BRANCHES: Do you have any last words for our readers?
ILIA: There's so much to it. If you go out and paddle 2 or 3 hours, you usually will come home with some stories. I just paddled 530 hours! So, there’s much more. I'm actually going back through all my notes and videos and am trying to create a journal of just remembering, at least the bigger things.
I'm going to leave it at that because there is truly so much more we could dive into. The only advice I have is to paddle more. Get out there and paddle. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.
A big thank you to Ilia Smirnov for his time to talk with us! Would you like to learn more about his Mississippi River trip details? Here’s some suggested reading:
Photos courtesy of Ilia Smirnov.
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