140 Miles to Save our Wild Salmon

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Photographer, Matthew Irving follows Luke Nelson and Ty Draney on their 140-mile Great Salmon Run.

Luke Nelson, 31, of Pocatello, Idaho, and Ty Draney, 37, of Afton, Wyoming, ran alongside the sockeye salmon’s migration route in the Columbia and Snake River Basin, in Wyoming’s Star Valley, this past summer to raise money for Save Our Wild Salmon, which has a mission to “restore self-sustaining, abundant and harvestable populations of wild salmon and steelhead to rivers, streams and oceans of the Pacific Salmon state.” We recently posted Luke Nelson’s story here.

And, browse photographer Matthew Irving’s gallery and captions from the adventure, below:

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Watching Ty and Luke eat the night before was an impressive sight to behold. I’ll never know how their bodies were able to take in that much food.

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It wasn’t so much the quantity that they ate, but how fast they ate it, and how easy it went down.
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Luke and Ty packing the night before departure.

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After Luke and Ty had been running for about 48 hours, I went searching up a drainage for them. After a couple of hours, I found them.
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Luke and Ty were relieved because they knew they were in the correct drainage. I was relieved because I knew they weren’t dead.
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The run out was fun (probably more fun for me because I didn’t have to run the entire route). It was really awesome to finish this adventure with them.
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Luke, rounding a corner, on the home stretch.
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Luke, cooling off right before he reaches the car.
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Luke and Ty crossing the final creek.
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This is what feet look like after 140 miles.

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