Risk Takers: Extreme Kayaking

Trip Jennings: I was thinking about what to say about risk and why we take it, preparing for this presentation, and I remembered a moment when I thought a whole lot about that question, “Why do we take these risks?”

I was dangling from a very thin rope, not a climbing rope but a throw rope that you use in a kayak, trying to rappel to the bottom of the Pandi River Canyon in the very remote jungles of Papua New Guinea. Here's a shot of the river as it flows out of the mouth of the Pandi River. And the evening before, I had had the most terrifying experience I've ever had in a river. I was 100 feet down into the canyon... when I reached the end of my rope. Still 40 feet from the very bottom. And, so, I had to wait for like an hour while my friends walked through the jungle to get some more rope to lower down to me. So, that was a pretty good moment, right, to kind of think about... “Why do we take these risks? How did I get here?”

And so, we'd come to Papua New Guinea to paddle the source to sea descent of the Pandi River. Right, it was a river that had never been explored in a kayak. The reason we'd chosen this river was that it was slated to be logged and clear-cut for an oil palm plantation. So we wanted to use our adventure story to tell a story about a culture and ecosystem on a brink of change. We started at the underground source of the Pandi, deep in a cave. And we made our way down through some of the most beautiful and amazing white water I've ever seen, through some small waterfalls, and some large waterfalls. And towards the end of the day, we got to a point where the whole Pandi River poured off of a 20 foot cliff into this cauldron where all of the water re-circulated back upstream into a cave behind the waterfall. It was way too dangerous to run, even though it wasn't a big drop, but it was way too dangerous to run. Because that's not a good place to be; behind a waterfall, stuck.

And so, it was almost dark, and the canyon walls were 100 feet vertical on all sides. There's no way out but down. That's the worst place you ever want to be in a kayak, right? That's like every kayaker's nightmare. And so we decided what we would do, is we would make our way on to this small cliff as far downstream as we could on river right. We'd hop in our kayaks and slide off of the cliff into the river and if we did it just right, we'd be downstream of the upstream flow. The re-circulation area. We'd make it out all right? So, I went forth in the twilight, almost dark. I caught-- It went fine. I caught the very first eddy that I could, so I could stop and run safety for Matt Fields-Johnson. He was our photographer on the expedition and the least experienced member of the crew. And I watched him slide off of the... the sort of cliff, the precipice there, and watched his boat turn sideways in the air, land, flip and get sucked upstream behind the waterfall into, kind of, the worst place to be. And, he rolled a few times, lost his paddle, flipped over again and swam out of his kayak.

His kayak went downstream and he was stuck in this really turbulent pool, barely able to breathe, every now and then getting a breath. And, thankfully, Brian Eustis was still on the cliff. He hadn't gone yet. He tried again and again to toss him a rope, right, to get him anything to help him get out of that spot, and he just couldn't because the cliff was so overhung. And so, after a few minutes, Matt was fa-- was floating face down, totally out of air, totally out of breath and totally exhausted. And I was watching my friend Matt drown. And I couldn't do anything about it because the current separated me from where he was. And so, at the very, sort of, very last resort... Brian lowered all of the rope. He just tossed all of the rope and held on to the very end of it and let it circulate around and around in the pool in that turbulent, sort of, cave. And finally, a bit of it grazed Matt's knuckles and he grabbed-- grabbed the rope, he pulled up on it, he got a breath using his last little bit of oxygen.

And, he and I had worked at a summer camp for years together and we had always taught the kids, Oh, this is how you do this cool trick knot, a one-handed bowline, and if you ever fall off a cliff, - with one hand on the rope… it'll save your life. And so that was how we got kids to get excited about it. And we never-- We always thought that was total BS. Until he pulled himself up, threw one handed bow and then fell back into the rope and Brian was able to pull him up just enough and Matt clawed his way back up onto the cliff, right? And I was watching this with my flash light at this point, my head lamp, because it was dark. So, Matt passed out from total exhaustion just a few minutes later. Well, sort of, separated from his boat, separated from his gear, with nothing on but his kayaking gear to shiver and snuggle with Brian all night long.

And... So the next morning, the rest of our job was, kind of, to get up and around... to a place that we could rappel down into the river canyon. Make sure that he could swim safely, run safety for him, as he swam across the river upstream of the rapid that had nearly killed him the night before. And so, that's where I got to the end of my rope. And I was sitting there thinking to myself: “How did I get here, why... why do we do this?” And few of the reasons that really... stuck out in my mind, I think are really important lessons that I bring with me on and off the river. And I want to share a few, a few of them with you.

So, when you are deciding whether or not to run a rapid, right? That's one of the most important decisions you can make as a kayaker: when to run and when to walk around it. And so, what I first want to do is I want to look at all of the hazards, right? I want to look at all the things that are terrifying and dangerous about that, that particular rapid. Or maybe it's an expedition or any risk you want to take, right? I want to look at the dangerous things. Look at the-- I want to know where they are, what they are and what they might do to me, if I mess up and how to get around them. And I, kind of, like to hold those things in my fear hand. And then I like to think about why I want to paddle this rapid, right? There's good reasons to do it. I love being immersed in this beautiful river and working with it to get myself safely through a hard spot. But there's also other reasons, right? Maybe we want to impress our friends. Maybe there's a really good photographer on the trip and you want to get that awesome image. Maybe you've got some camera courage going. And... I like to think of those things as, kind of, the ego and I like to hold those things separate, right? So that I can, kind of, acknowledge them because they are there, they are real, they exist for all of us. But I don't want them to be part of my decision making process.

And so, once I've separated those two out, I've got a look inside. I've got to, kind of, listen to my gut and my intuition, right? And say, “Can you run this rapid safely?” And... there's this, kind of, beautiful moment, right, when you really decide, when you are able to separate out these things. We like to say that running hard white water is 60 percent mental, and 40 percent actually being strong and paddling and having it balanced and knowing the strokes. Because this is a hard process to fake, to really be honest with yourself. About why you want to do this, and can you do it, right? And so, once you've reached that point and you've really separated out the fear and the ego and you've checked in with your gut, there's this beautiful moment of clarity and, kind of, freedom that I feel. And it's kind of, it's this euphoric and rare thing. And as you take that last stroke, you paddle out of the eddy, that stroke that commits you into paddling a drop, into a decision that you've made wholly on your own to run this, to take this risk and to paddle this rapid. That's one of the most empowering feelings I've ever had in any experience in my life. Because that is where we really unlock our true passion. We unlock and, we sort of, are able to get in touch with, you know, what makes us tick, in our really-- our true potential. We are able to do, you know, what we are here to do.

And so, what I needed to do at that moment was get that rope and get to the bottom of the Pandi River Canyon, which I did. Matt was able to swim across, no problem. He got up, he got out. We got him to his boat and we paddled for the rest of the week downstream to complete the first source to sea descent of the Pandi River Canyon. And, as I think about that expedition, and as I, sort of, reflect on that, I think it's clear to me now, seven, eight years later and many expeditions later, that, you know, I let that ego get in my way. I really wanted the photos that Matt would take because he is a great photographer. And so I invited him on an expedition he probably wasn't ready for. And... You know, I got him into a situation, we all got into a situation, that he couldn't get out of on his own. And almost paid a really big price for that. And that's something I, kind of, carry with me in my decision-making processes in life and on the river. I think if I'm going to risk my life to tell a good story, I want to make sure that that story is really worth telling. That means telling a story that really helps us as individuals, and as a society, decide how we want to relate with each other and with the ecosystems that make life on this Earth possible.

So, I hope that everybody will challenge yourselves to be risk takers and make it to the end. Make it to the sea. Thanks a lot.