I lost my old username, but made a new one just to comment here. The misinformation you pose about white water deaths is patently false. American Whitewater, Charlie Walbridge to be specific, collects data on the deaths relating to white water recreation and professional kayaking or kayakers who comfortably frequent class V are not the most common. The majority of deaths are on class III rivers.
https://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/Article/view/articleid/33752/
And “killing themselves” would be a bit harsh, no? The implies some desire to do so or a blatant disregard for ones safety. The folks that I know that love running hard class V want to do it until they are very old! I know one 70+ y.o. who still can rip on class V.
Finally, crazy would not be the way I would choose to describe it. I’m a modest class IV kayaker who sometimes ventures into class V in the right circumstances depending on group, water level, location, etc. It’s only crazy if you don’t know what your doing. Things can get rowdy, or out of hand at times, but how one deals with it makes all the difference. Which is why there is so much footage like this out there. Skillz!
The sport as a whole gets so mis-represented it’s bloody shame. And you’re perpetuating that. Folks run much harder shit than this water fall. This is impressive. I couldn’t do it and don’t have the desire to run big water falls, but the record is 186’ and there harder things to do out there and waterfalls unfortunately is a sub genre that gets over played IMHO. Unfortunately paddlers and non-paddlers alike eat this up.
