Most people have a pretty reasonable risk to reward ratio for sporting activities. But these extreme kayakers are not most people.
From glacier drops to leaps described as suicidal, these are the craziest waterfall descents of all time.
“Like watching a friends suicide”
Described as like witnessing a friends suicide, Spanish kayaker Aniol Serrasolses had to abseil down a gnarly vertical rock face with all of his gear and his boat, therefore totally committing himself to running a huge 35m drop.
The old school pioneers
Completed in a crazy old school boat we’re not sure if this guy has the biggest cajones on the planet, or the smallest brain.
Maybe a combination of the two.
This guy has some seriously big balls
I mean seriously big balls…
We’re not sure this looks fun.
There is an art to running big drops. This involves tucking up and landing nose first to land straight in big aerated water to absorb some of the impact.
This guy isn’t an artist and over-rotates landing on his head. Wonder what was going through this guys mind and he was free-falling.
Hats off to this guy, this looks very, very scary.
The ‘Little River’
Dane Jackson has been called the world’s best kayaker. But whoever thought that calling this river in Alabama the ‘Little River’ is the world’s shittest cartographer.
The ‘Big Banana’
This huge 40+ meter waterfall had an impact large enough to make our balls clench.
This guy must be running on pure adrenaline cos’ his face has rather a lot of blood on it at the end.
The Tandem Record
Some waterfalls are big enough to make even Bam Margera shit himself!
In an attempt to set a world record tandem waterfall descent, professional kayaker Steve Fisher joined forces with the Jackass star.
Bam Margera swam from his kayak at the bottom of this massive waterfall. A kayaker’s standard punishment for swimming is to drink a beer from their wetsuit boot.
But Bam’s too much of a hero for that so he did it with whisky!
Some Wonderful Welsh Madness
Some true madness. Just watching this makes us want body armour.
When he’s not solo kayaking every river off Mt. Everest Daz “google-me” Clarkson-King apparently gets bored in Wales.
God Help Me
God Help Me is actually the name of this waterfall. We can easily understand why.
One for the ladies
If you thought you were pretty extreme because you regularly do downhill trails or catch a bit of air at the skatepark think again.
This lady has balls bigger than yours will ever be.
The Cold Drop
It seems hucking huge waterfalls just aren’t enough for some people. This guy, for some reason, felt the need to do this off an arctic glacier!
The World Record
At 189ft this is the world record waterfall descent, completed by a 22 year old called Tyler Bradt.
Bradt was freefalling (insert mental Tom Petty playlist) for 3.7 seconds, over a drop higher than Niagra Falls.
Bradt said he ran the waterfall because he didn’t like the fact that the previous world record holder had landed on his head, but the record had still counted.
What is even more impressive is the fact that Tyler Bradt has overcome a badly broken back from running waterfalls and is still kayaking.
Yep, some people in the world of extreme sports clearly have a slightly skewed risk : reward ratio. All we can say is we’re glad its them and not us!
