The Missouri River 340 starts Tuesday morning at Kaw Point in Kansas City, and by the time paddlers reach our stretch of the river, most of them will have been on the water for a day and a half. You don’t have to wait streamside to know where they are.
According to Missouri River 340 (mr340.org), the race provides racers with GPS trackers so friends, family, and total strangers can follow along online as the fleet works its way from Kaw Point to St. Charles. That live tracking runs on RaceOwl, the GPS-tracking platform used to broadcast racer positions in real time for ultra-distance paddle races — credit to RaceOwl for the plumbing that makes the MR340 watchable from a phone anywhere in the world. Look for the tracker link posted on mr340.org once the race goes live Tuesday morning.
We’re also running our own live map here at the Rocheport Times, built to zoom in on our stretch of the river specifically — Rocheport, the Katy Trail crossing, and the water below our bluffs — so neighbors can watch racer positions overlay-ed upon a upon the river in birdseye and cinematic viewing. Live feeds begin on Tuesday at 7am on our MR340 Tracker.
Either way you watch, here’s what the dots on the map mean. The MR340 runs racers through a series of checkpoints between Kaw Point and St. Charles, according to mr340.org, where safety crews log boats in and out and racers can grab supplies, sleep, or drop out if they need to. Checkpoints aren’t just rest stops — they’re also where the race enforces its cutoff times.
That cutoff is nicknamed “the Reaper.” According to mr340.org, the race sets rolling cutoff times at each checkpoint, and a sweep crew moves down the river behind the pack — any racer who hasn’t reached a checkpoint by its cutoff is pulled from the race. It’s part of what makes the MR340 as much a test of pace management as raw paddling strength. [REPORTING NEEDED: this year’s specific checkpoint cutoff schedule, once mr340.org posts it]
If you’re planning to watch from the riverbank, Rocheport is a good spot for it — racers pass near the Katy Trail crossing after they’ve already covered well over 100 miles. Follow our map tracker to see when paddlers my be paddling by Rocheport. Bring water for yourself, not just for them.
We’ll keep our live map updated through the finish in St. Charles. However you follow along, the short version: watch the dots, know that “Reaper” is not just a spooky nickname, and remember that every one of those racers has been paddling, largely without sleep, for longer than most of us have ever stayed awake on purpose.
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