When Rafael Ortiz became the second person to kayak over Washington’s 186-foot Palouse Falls last spring, extreme whitewater boating was reinjected into mainstream headlines. “You get some attention after doing something like this,” says Ortiz, who received both praise for pushing the envelope and scorn for being careless and stupid. Then, after the hype died down, people asked, “What’ll they try next?” That’s when talk of an attempt at Niagara Falls started to recirculate.
“If someone were to run Niagara Falls safely and successfully, it would indeed be an amazing feat and the publicity would be insane,” says Tyler Bradt, who set the record for highest vertical drop when he ran Palouse in 2009. “It would be quite a fine line,” he cautions, “because the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful descent would reflect the sport either very positively or very negatively.”
Running Niagara Falls has always been somewhere between a heroic feat and cliché publicity stunt. Since the original pickle barrel hucksters of the 1920s, just 16 people have survived the drop, none in a kayak.
In 1991, 28-year-old Jesse Coombs died attempting to run the Canadian falls in a converted Perception C1. Many say ego got in the way of better judgment—Coombs refused to wear a helmet so his face would be visible in photographs. Those close to him point to his stellar paddling record and suggested that if anyone could have run Niagara at the time, it was him.
JAILTIME AND A FINE FOR THOSE WHO ATTEMPT NIAGARA FALLS WITHOUT PERMISSION
Even if a paddler was to manage the combination of skill and sheer luck needed to survive the plummet, there’s still the law to contend with. Nik Wallenda spent years planning and negotiating with authorities on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border to complete his tightrope walk across the brink of Niagara this past June. Despite his success, officials have clearly stated that such pro- posals will only be considered once every 20 years.
While a handful of crews have poached an illegal kayak run down the class V+ gorge below the falls, anyone caught initiating a stunt that may draw a crowd to Niagara Falls without first getting permission faces a fine of $10,000 and up to six months in jail.
Despite the safety and legal risks, hucking huge is an expanding part of the sport and it’s garnering a lot of outsider attention for whitewater kayaking. This might make the timing for a Niagara descent more opportune than ever. If they’ll sponsor someone to skydive from 120,000 feet or drive Formula One on an ice circuit, why shouldn’t Red Bull—who just happens to be one of Ortiz’s sponsors—send a kayaker off of Niagara Falls?
Ortiz admits he’s scouted Niagara, which measures up a VW microbus shorter than Palouse. “There is a line, no doubt,” he concedes, but says the famous falls are far from ideal for a first decent. “The main difference with Palouse is that you can’t run Niagara dirty,” Ortiz explains. “Your life relies on a couple of strokes you take looking 170 feet down.” Still, he admits, “It’s there—the Holy Grail of waterfall hucking.”
This article first appeared in the Summer/Fall 2012 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.
