No waterfall drop is more revered than Tao Berman’s 1999 descent of Banff National Park’s Upper Johnston Falls. It was the first to approach the 100-foot mark and undoubtedly the most recognizable event in extreme kayaking, breaking the previous record by 20 feet and still standing as the highest falls run without swimming. The event was witnessed by 100 sightseers and several camera crews and was almost immediately broadcast across the world. Even without most of the fanfare, imitation is still the highest form of flattery, and for Canmore, Alberta’s Logan Grayling, it may also be a 98.4-foot steppingstone to something higher.
Nineteen-year-old Grayling was a Grade 6 student who had never paddled when Berman set the world waterfall record just 25 minutes from his house. John- ston Falls was a common school class trip.
“I didn’t even know what whitewater kayaking was at the time. I had seen the falls dozens of times, but had no idea anyone had gone over it or even what that meant,”
Grayling said. “I do now.”
Since Grayling began paddling the big stuff a little more than two years ago, he’s been hiking into the park, trading in math quizzes for real life calculations. He says as his skills improved, so did his confidence that this tourist attraction could be “knocked off” so that a new, younger generation of paddlers could emerge as leaders.
“Since [Berman’s drop] no one has been able to step up and run it, and let me tell you, it’s huge and f-ing intimidating. But I wanted to do this for myself, to prove to myself I could; to show that people can still push the limits of the sport and see what comes next,” Grayling said.
With only a couple of cameramen and about half the spectators of Berman’s drop, Grayling ran Johnston Falls on June 13. He estimates the flow was about two feet higher at the top and only a foot higher in the basin than in 1999. So technically, this could be some sort of new record, though he admits it is difficult to prove. The only hitch to the descent was that Grayling grazed his cheek on a jutting rock about 75 feet down, the very same rock that broke Berman’s paddle eight years earlier.
Most importantly for Grayling is what’s next.
“Now I know what my body can handle, we’re moving on. I’ve got a couple of spots that I can’t tell you about that are waaaay higher than Ed’s,” he said, referring to Ed Lucero’s 2003, 105.6-foot record drop of Alexandra Falls, NWT, which he swam. “Hopefully this September we’ll have a new record to talk about.”
This article first appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Rapid Magazine.
