Argentina First Descents...

Words by Trip Jennings:

OK, here´s what I love most about kayaking. This is what keeps me smiling for days and fuels the addiction: pushing the limits. Either my limits, the limits of the sport, whatever. I´m not sure why, but running a waterfall that has never been run before that scares me, is my crack. To arrive at a drop, know that it´s ridiculous thing to attempt to run and that I might be better off staying in bed, yet at the same time, see the perfect line, know deep down inside that I can hit that line, and then do it...that´s adrenaline. That´s what gives me the satisfaction I feel for days afterwards. That´s what keeps me coming back every time.

This week LJ and I were lucky enough to have one of those days. At the end of the last No Big Names video, there was a drop featured called the Nilahue. It´s in one of the most beautiful valleys in the world, with huge unrunable waterfalls dropping in all over the place and super nice locals all around. I don´t remember much from the video except they didn´t run it and said they´d save this one for next time.

When we arrived, the river was roosting high. Maybe 10,000cfs. Huge. Many times the flow we saw in the No Big Names video. The drop itself had turned into a gnarling death trap where the NBN could have run it, but in the center the high water opened up a pretty intense line, that we called runnable. It was a 40 foot vertical drop into a transition of 6 feet deep exploding foam pile/landing pad. The landing pad had about a boat length and a half before falling off the final 30 feet of the drop. The line was to boof in the center of the river, transition on the soft but not so deep landing pad, become enveloped by the bottom drop and pop up on the right side of the pool to avoid the death cave on the left.

LJ and I both knew we were going to run it almost instantly when we saw it. Actually getting gear on, getting in your boat, and calming your nerves enough to huck a totally flat boof off of what is a 70 foot horizon line from the top, is a bit of a different story.

In the end we played rock, paper, scissors for who would go first. Whoever `won´ would get the first descent. LJ won, and I´ll never forget running safety from the bottom and watching his hull fall 40 feet before reconecting and dissapearing for at least 20 seconds. I´m pretty sure I held my breath the whole time, until he finally reappeared, rolling up and smiling. A few minutes later, I followed.

Now normally, I wouldn´t choose to boof anything over say...25 feet. This was a 40 foot boof. Very intimidating, but after extencive scouting we decided it was so areated it would be soft and we would dissapear of the ledge before we could even slow down. Paddling full speed up to the horizon and then boofing burned the image of my boat flat as a pancake with the valley, 70 feet below in the background. Quite a unique lip shot. As it turned out, it was so soft and fun, we both wanted to run it again I wasn´t even a bit sore the next day. Alas, it was late and the next big drop was calling...

Boof safely,
Trip