Kayaks to Hell

About William Nealy

William Not Bill Nealy was a wild gentle brilliant artist and creator turned cult hero who wrote 10 books for Menasha Ridge Press from 1982 to 2000. William shared his hard-won crash-and-learn experiences through humorous hand-drawn cartoons and illustrated river maps that enabled generations to follow in his footsteps. His subjects included paddling mountain biking skiing and inline skating. His hand-drawn poster-size river maps of the Nantahala Ocoee Chattooga Gauley Youghiogheny and several other rivers are still sought after and in use today. William was born in Birmingham Alabama. He and his wife Holly Wallace spent their adult years in a home William built in the woods on the outskirts of Chapel Hill North Carolina along with an assortment of dogs lizards pigs snakes turtles and amphibians. William died in 2001. His longtime friend and publisher Bob Sehlinger wrote: When William Nealy died in 2001 paddling lost its Poet Laureate one of its best teachers and its greatest icon. William was arguably the best-known ambassador of whitewater sport entertaining and instructing hundreds of thousands of paddlers through his illustrated books including the classics: Whitewater Home Companion Volumes I and II Whitewater Tales of Terror Kayaks to Hell and his best-known work Kayak which combined expert paddling instruction with artful caricatures and parodies of the whitewater community itself.