I was seven the first time I saw Niagara Falls. My strongest memories of that family vacation are of the wax museum, Ripley’s Believe It or Not and grilled cheese sandwiches. The falls didn’t impress me much, and it certainly didn’t occur to me to run them.
The same can’t be said for others. Since 1901 Niagara Falls has attracted nutbars of all sorts going over the lip for their final swan song or for a shot at fame and fortune. Besides the 20 suicide victims police purportedly retrieve from the pool below every year, 15 “daredevils” have run the falls. Ten have survived.
Most of those 15 attempts sound like contenders for the Gong Show. They’ve relied on all manner of inner tubes, wooden barrels and metal kegs. One guy even rode off the lip on a jetski, hoping his rocket-propelled parachute would bring him down safely. Unfortunately he did a poor job of attaching the parachute to his body.
Most recently, in 2003, Kirk Jones, an unemployed man from Detroit, survived a swim over the falls wearing nothing but the shirt on his back (and some pants). He went on to join the Toby Tyler Circus. To paddlers, though, one story stands out.
Jesse Sharp, an unemployed 28-year-old from Ocoee, Tennessee, had ten years of whitewater experience behind him when he ran Niagara Falls in his red Dancer C1 on June 5, 1990, making headlines across the continent and reinforcing the public’s belief that paddlers are all crazy. He didn’t wear a helmet so his face wouldn’t be obscured in photographs. Friends believed he did it as a stunt in order to launch a career as a stunt man.
But Sharp may not have been a total quack. He had a decent creeking resume and he scouted the falls for three years. On the day of his attempt he made dinner arrangements downriver in Queenston. We can only assume he made his line, but he never made it to dinner. Authorities recovered his boat, which suffered only a mi- nor dent, but Sharp’s body was never found. It seems 170 feet of freefall was too much.
When Jesse Sharp went over Niagara Falls the world record for successful waterfall descents belonged to Shaun Baker for his freefall of 49.5 feet. Six years later Baker upped his own record to 75 feet. With Ed Lucero and Dave Grove both breaking the 100-foot barrier in the last three years, 170-foot Niagara is looking more and more like the type of river paddlers challenge themselves on and less like a sideshow for a wax museum.
People run waterfalls (and paddle whitewater, for that matter) for all sorts of reasons, but very few do it because it will make them famous. Those pushing the envelope of paddling are doing it with a noticeable lack of bravado after long bushwhacks through hordes of bugs. Ed Lucero fretted for a week with fear gnawing his sleep before he committed to running the 105-foot Alexandra Falls in the Northwest Territiories. Dave Grove thought his 101-foot run of Oregon’s Metlako Falls might be a record, but he didn’t get back to measure it until a month later.
These paddlers were not reckless seekers of fame. In some ways both were humbled by their accomplishments, but they also upped the ante when it comes to what is possible in a kayak. These accomplishments open the door for bigger challenges and expand the pool of what is considered possible.
Twenty years after my first family trip to Niagara, the falls impressed me more, and I spent a long time tracing lines over the lip to the pulverized froth below. It still doesn’t occur to me to run the falls—it’s both illegal and likely a quick death—but paddlers are now dropping falls nearly two-thirds the height of Niagara. It says a lot about the pace of progress in our sport that paddlers have even caused me wonder if they’ll ever reclaim this natural wonder from its dark history as a tourist-ridden venue for stunts and suicide missions.
Jeff Jackson admits he spent more time on a winery tour than at the falls or the wax museum during his last trip to Niagara.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.
