Matt Muir (a.k.a. RivieraRatt), has contributed countless hours to American Whitewater’s river database, and is responsible for much of the success of AW’s website, www.americanwhitewater.org. The river database is a nationwide river inventory and gauging system covering 4,500 river descriptions and 9,000 gauges. It is a community effort with over 300 individuals across the country maintaining descriptions of rivers local to them. This high level of volunteer engagement has developed the leading on-line paddling resource available, combining up-to-date river descriptions with river stewardship and safety resources. Matt is “The Man” responsible for overseeing the river database and tutoring other volunteers on how to write better descriptions. He has been instrumental in the development of new features on the website, and essential in the recruitment of new volunteers. Some of the features he has helped develop over the years are the photo/video archive now containing over 10,000 images and clips.
In addition to his work on the river database, Matt has taken responsibility for managing corrections to the latest addition to AW’s website, the American Whitewater Journal Archive. The Journal Archive provides access to the entire collection of the AW Journals for the past 50 years, and can proudly be referred to as “The History of Whitewater”.