WW Kayak w/ PuckerFactor

[ZimZam]

Sick!!!

[video:vimeo]

[Stefan]

that does make climbing look tame

[rob]

"The mountains don't care of you live or die, but water is trying to kill you"

[JayB]

Can't even imagine what those drops feel like to paddle since there's an awful lot of challenging drops out there that look like nothing on video.

 

Anyone who enjoyed the vid should read this Essay by Walt Blackadder (kind of the literary equivalent of that video):

 

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1086409/index.htm

 

"The Alsek River flows in a torrent into the Gulf of Alaska. So fierce are its white-water rapids and so menacing the huge icebergs that break away from glaciers along its banks that no man had ever run the river in a boat. There were reports of an especially treacherous gorge named Turn Back Canyon with 500- to 1,000-foot vertical granite walls, numerous waterfalls and dizzying whirlpools. The water was flowing at 50,000 cubic feet per second. In comparison, the Colorado, the ultimate in U.S. white-water rivers, moves through the Grand Canyon at 10,000 to 20,000 cubic feet per second. The author, a physician in Salmon, Idaho, decided to challenge the Alsek alone..."

 

One of my favorite vids - even more impressive IMO since it's from a remote unsupported first-descent in super-old school fiberglass boats...

[video:youtube]

[JayB]

Good example of a fairly dangerous drop that looks like nothing starts 23 seconds in...

 

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE5N52V3IRk

[ZimZam]

I'm thinking that's Devil Canyon if it's on the Susitna. I know of only a couple folks that'll run that in a jetboat. That is most impressive, like you say, considering it was done old school. No way.

Here's another more recent video from a descent this year.

 

What a beautiful place. It'll be a travesty if they put that dam there.

[wfinley]

I'm thinking that's Devil Canyon if it's on the Susitna. What a beautiful place. It'll be a travesty if they put that dam there.

Not to belittle the devastating impact the Susitna dam would have on the entire Susitna watershed ... but the proposed dam is in Watana canyon which is upstream from Devils Canyon. Different places.

[ZimZam]

Hey Billy. I just meant it it would be terrible to build it, or any other dam for that matter, in this valley. The "Susitna-Watana Dam" is not, in fact, going to be at Watana Creek, but rather at Deadman Creek. (The State says, "Of course we weren't going to name it the Deadman Dam.")