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How is it that so often mountaineering stories and accounts are so compelling, yet kayaking ones are not? This certainly isn’t because I am a mountaineer or even into mountaineering. The highest I have ever been is 16,000′ and that was via a car! Mountaineering just doesn’t do it for me, all the misery factor with none of the reward. Yet a written account like Ed Viesturs draws me in.
ed note, when talking about kayaking and the sport I am referring to expedition/extreme kayaking.
Why is this? I believe in a large part because mountaineering writers are not scared to talk about death and tragedy. Mountaineering has a long history, and accepts the fact that it’s a dangerous sport, accidents happen, bad decisions are made and sometimes people die. Kayaking is still in denial about this aspect of the sport. Talking about drownings and tragedies is frowned upon, if not complete taboo. People like Tyler Bradt can’t get a sponsor because they are “crazy”. In both sports risk is part of the game. If it wasn’t, the reward would not be so priceless.
I’ll gladly admit that mountaineering at a high level is more dangerous than kayaking at a high level. When was the last time eleven paddlers died in once year, let alone one day, in once incident? All the while kayaking maintains a mainstream reputation for being crazy and foolhardy, but mountaineering is respected.
Mountaineering has grown to accept that fact that it’s a dangerous undertaking with unique rewards. Climbing mountains has been around forever, as has the use of rivers as transportation. Climbing for fun and challenging the largest mountains in the world has a hundred plus year history and public perception has grown to understand the sport. There is an understanding that there is nothing wrong with opting to climb safe mountains, and most will never attempt K2.
On the other hand white water paddling, for fun, is a young sport. It’s still common to get asked “why would you do that? It’s crazy!”. I believe that in the future public perception will realize it’s acceptable to both push the limits of what is possible and have a good time playing it safe. There is currently a general industry trend to downplay the dangers and people have gone so far as to call pushing limits “bad for the sport”.
Honesty will go a lot further in the long run, so I’ll call it like it is. Kayaking (and public perception) needs to grown and accept that fact that it’s a dangerous undertaking with unique rewards.
Along with this there needs to be an understanding that there is nothing wrong with opting to paddle safe rivers, and most will never attempt the Indus.
Moving on, what’s so interesting (and different) in mountaineering writing is the amount of time spent contemplating tragedies and accidents, where most kayak literature glosses over similar incidents. As alluded to before, I believe some of this is because of the sports desire to be accepted in the mainstream and lose the “crazy” title.
Mountaineering epics tend to take place over a much larger time frame. “…fifty- seven days after arriving at base camp…”. Kayak expeditions pale in comparison to this time investment. Often the drama plays out during a day or weeks of toil and struggle, where on the river the same amount of drama is encapsulated into a minute, sometimes a few crucial seconds. On the river it happens too fast to coherently process, let alone ponder. It takes under three seconds to drop a seventy foot waterfall. Certainly not enough time to process the event as it happens, although a lot of it does go to the subconscious. Speaking of subconscious and sports I highly recommend Blink.
Still I believe that eventually we do process this information, perhaps not as clearly in the moment as mountaineers, but in the long term we all (hopefully) ponder our close calls. In the words of Devin Knight “I want to learn from the past, not be scared of it”.
I am of the opinion that only good can come from talking about close calls and tragedies that have happened. Pretending like they never occurred (and asking others to) only serves selfish goals. We all make mistakes in life, on and off the water.
I am glad that kayaking is not as dangerous as mountaineering. In my seven years of paddling, I’d consider three to be on the “upper end” of things. In those years I have only seen a few near death experiences. This is because unlike on the mountain, we can walk off at any time. We pride ourselves on going into to remote, difficult locations, but we all know if the situation really turned dire we could walk off the river. The Middle Kings is one of the most remote rivers in the continental United States, but in a true emergency kayaks could be abandoned and a civilization reached well before anyone even missed a meal, let alone died of deprivation.
Yet in a different way kayaking is as committing as mountaineering. Once a waterfall or rapid has been entered, there is no way to back out. This personal choice to attempt each challenge is much like the choice to attempt a summit, condensed into the briefest moment with fewer options of return.
Coming into the 2009 season I had run my share of respected rapids and waterfalls, but never been in a situation I did not figure out on my own. I think most white water paddlers take pride in their ability to escape potentially dire circumstances. There is nothing wrong in this, until people hide events that where help was needed, no matter what the personal reasons.
We all need to face it that at the high end of the scale we may encounter deadly situations which can’t be escaped alone. Little did I know how clearly I would experience this first hand…to be continued…