Upping the Ante

Editor's note: In October and November of 1998, two well-known kayakers died paddling Class V--Doug Gordon on the Tsangpo (see First Descents) and Scott Bristow on the Potomac. As Charlie Walbridge, former chairman of the American Canoe Association's safety committee, puts it, "There have been a lot of Class V deaths is the last couple of years. These two most recent ones certainly reinforce that it's dangerous business." The following is not meant to glamorize or encourage such exploits. Rather it is meant as a report on what's happening on the cutting edge of the sport. Please be careful out there.

Like it or not, people are running harder and harder rapids--and there's nothing we, nor anyone else, can do about it. It's as natural as climbers scaling more difficult peaks and skiers flocking to steeper slopes. And just like the extreme side of many sports, when the envelope gets pushed the stakes get raised.

The phenomenon is nothing new--paddlers have one-upped one another ever since John Wesley Powell first ran the Grand Canyon. But now, with technology and skills at an all-time high, the ante has been upped. Paddlers are trudging farther upstream to steeper, more obscure tributaries; they're running conventional Class V at higher flows; and they are freeing virgin runs of wood to make paddling "somewhat" possible.

Dangerous as these runs may seem, they represent the cutting edge of kayaking. And because of this, we've decided to bring a few of last year's hair-raising highlights to your attention. We're by no means condoning or glamorizing them, but we also can't ignore them. And they'll continue to happen whether we write about them or not. With that in mind, following are a few examples of paddlers upping the ante in 1998.