The script appears in words a foot tall on the giant screen.
“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood.”
The telling quote by Sir Richard Burton, one of the first explorers of Africa, rouses Pasquale Scaturro, a modern-day explorer whose enthusiasm for adventure rivals the childhood passion of cardboard-ship captains and cul-de-sac cowboys.
“Those words are so true,” Scaturro said. “I love that quote.”
The Lakewood geophysicist is an adventurer with many stories. He has climbed Mount Everest three times, even guiding Golden-based blind climber Erik Weihenmayer to the summit in 2001. He has led expeditions down exotic rivers. But no Scaturro tale boasts the grandeur of his IMAX-captured first descent down the Blue Nile River in Africa last year. Scaturro, 51, spent 114 days paddling a raft – along with hardy kayaking pal Gordon Brown and a part-time crew of scientists and archeologists he describes as “the greenest bunch of river rookies who ever got in a raft” – from the highlands of Ethiopia to the Mediterranean Sea.
Along the descent of the history- drenched river, Scaturro and Brown deterred crocodile and hippo attacks, ducked bandit bullets, navigated uncharted whitewater, battled malaria and crippling fatigue and made history as the first people to paddle the length of the world’s longest river.
And just in case the handlebar- mustachioed Scaturro’s memory fails, he’s got the IMAX film “Mystery of the Nile” (10:30 a.m., 2 p.m., 4 p.m., Denver Natural History Museum) to help him recall his greatest story.
“A big old trip like this puts life in perspective, you know,” he said. “In the end of life you’ve got friends and you’ve got memories. Looking back with this film, I mean there are photo albums and there are photo albums. And then there is IMAX. It’s the ultimate photo album.”
Of course, the film doesn’t show it all. There were adventures behind the adventures shown on screen. There were moments of malaria-addled disillusion that almost ended the trip. There were gun-toting bad guys – known as shiftas – who shot at Brown while he paddled through a narrow canyon in Ethiopia. The pair’s treacherous nighttime crossing of Lake Nasser during a violent windstorm nearly killed them. The brutal wind and dust conspired to make them crazy. Then there were moments when grabbing the unwieldy IMAX camera was not a priority.
“A lot of the stuff we couldn’t film,” said Scaturro, who was in constant touch with IMAX film experts back home who helped the novice cameraman capture essential scenes for the film. “You couldn’t film yourself getting arrested.”
But, in classic IMAX fashion, the film captures the incredible richness of Africa. Scenes from an abandoned Nubian temple inspire awe, as do scenes from Sudan and the ancient pyramids. The airplane and helicopter scenes induce vertigo as the camera soars through Mordor-esque gorges and over thundering waterfalls.
At a recent showing of the film, the audience applauded when the curtain fell on the two-story screen. The gushing response filled Scaturro with pride.
“That was so inspiring,” said Craig Wellbrock, on vacation from Anchorage, Alaska, with his family. “The adventure, the risk. And anytime someone does something they love to do, it’s even more inspiring.”
Scaturro isn’t relishing his moment as a star, though. He’s already planning more adventures, like filming an ascent of the north face of the Eiger in the Alps.
“People like to live vicariously through people like Pasquale,” said Liz Davis, lecture and course coordinator for the Denver Natural History Museum, home of the IMAX theater. “He really brings this movie to life.”
Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-820-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
