You don’t have to be a kayaker or a chiropractor to recognize that 186 feet is a ridiculously long way to plummet in a small, plastic boat. But you have to be named Tyler Bradt to know how it feels to paddle that coffin-shaped kayak over the lip of a waterfall that size and survive.
Bradt, a 22-year-old from Missoula, Mont., found out what he was made of — apparently some really resilient, buoyant stuff — when he reset the bar for world record kayak waterfall drops at an estimated 186 feet on eastern Washington’s Palouse Falls on April 21, less than two months after a controversial 127-foot record had been set by Pedro Olivia in Brazil.
A slew of questions always follows such feats of daring and defiance of deadly odds. Debate — not life or death — is the only certain outcome.
In the two months that have followed that 3.7-second, river-enshrouded free fall, the question Bradt has undoubtedly heard most is, why?
“Just that I thought it was possible,” was the reason he gave National Geographic Adventure magazine this month. “I wanted to do it, I guess, because I can.”
Describing Bradt as “ordinary” or “normal” is fodder for its own debate. Anyone who has spent any time with him knows he’s got a wild streak running through him as long as the Amazon River. Yet, beyond an obvious confidence, it’s more difficult to pinpoint anything particularly special about him, either.
As a guy who has spent an arguably unhealthy amount of time on the periphery of such adventures and adventurers, the question I hear even more often than Tyler Bradt’s “why” is: Who does that? Or, who are these people?
To date, the best answer I can come up with is that, ultimately, they’re just like you and me.
To be fair, the question is a bit more complex than at face value. It pops up just as often after a story about a guy who runs 50 marathons in 50 days as it does after one about a dedicated tribe of snow-bikers schussing the slopes. But more often than not, the response remains surprisingly simple.
Essentially, it’s a matter of priorities, and these are simply folks who have made outdoor recreation — to whatever degree — a priority in their lives. They find time to make it part of their daily routine just as others do to work out at the health club, play with their children, go to church— even eat and sleep.
“Climbing has changed my life, personally,” Boulder- based rock climbing guru Timmy O’Neill told me the same day he learned his good friends Micah Dash and Jonny Copp died on Mount Gongga in China last week. “Is climbing important? Absolutely. I’d love to see everyone out there climbing.”
For some, like Bradt, the passion evolves from a lifestyle into a living. But the reality is that he was running rivers long before he made any money doing it. And without a paycheck, he’d be doing it still.
“Rush (Sturges) and I, before we ran it, we had a conversation that really summed it up,” Bradt said after slaying a 107-foot dragon known as Alexandra Falls to set his first world record in 2007. “We’ve been paddling our entire lives. Our passions are for creek boating, running drops and paddling around the world. We are pursuing the continual progression of the sport and of ourselves, and we both felt like we were at a point where we could do it. We were confident and happy with the decision to run it because we felt like it was the right time to push ourselves and create a progression with this waterfall. That’s what it was for me.”
Some would refer to that as “taking it to the next level.” It’s a trait ingrained in most folks hailed as successful in life, be it in athletics or academics, on Wall Street or the climbing wall. Whether it’s due to nature or nurture, it sounds pretty normal to me.
