Words:
Corran Addison

Photos:
Corran Addison,
Jens Klatt,
Horst Fursattle,
TJ Walker,
Graeme Addison,
Marc Godbout
and Nico Chassing

Fear!

Rudyard Kipling once said, “Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.” These fears prevent you from following your dreams and what can make you fail, or succeed, depending on how you manage them.

Nervous would be an understatement, and it was more like sickening fear that gripped me as I sat in my boat, rocking gently in the small, cluttered eddy above the drop. I adjusted my knee position in the boat, moving my shorts away from the thigh brace so there would be no chance of the material allowing my leg to slip inside the boat.

Glancing at the shore, I saw the equally nervous faces of the four paddlers I was running the section with, that had unequivocally said the rapid was a no-go. Dotted around them, a half dozen onlookers had walked up to see the last rapid on the run, a first descent by our group of the Upper Upper Sorba in Italy’s Piamonte region.

Ben Brown and Olaf Obsommer positioned themselves as best as possible for safety on each side of the entry drop.

The entire river funnelled down into a slot the width of a kayak and then splayed out into two nasty undercuts on each side, pushing whatever would enter the slot into one or the other of the offending sieves. Assuming you made it past this rather uninviting drop, the flow continued unabated down a swishing pitched slide over a deflection rock that looked like it could launch you into any direction it pleased, most of which would not end well and then into a hole. This, in turn, momentarily stalling in a quasi-pool for an instant, then cascaded over another slide and into a nasty hole at its base.

Thousands had run the section of the river below since the late 1980s; however, this rapid had been looked at by most but had never been run; for a good reason.

uninviting undercut

The crux was the entry, no doubt. Make it past the two undercuts, which would most likely be terminal, should you enter either of them, and you’d eventually come out the bottom of the rapid. Running that entry slot was not a straight shot: with the river wash pushing towards the left bank with some force (and thus into the left undercut), and at the last moment, due to the pure amount of flow trying to force itself into the undercut, some was getting rejected to the right into that equally uninviting undercut. Between the two, in a folding action that was not unlike the notch on North Carolina’s Gorilla rapid on the Green River, was the line. And a slim line it was.

I could feel the nausea building as I sat there, eyes closed, one hand on a rock steadying my kayak as I visualized the run. It builds first as an uneasy feeling, a sort of light-headedness, and then you feel it in your gut as butterflies mutate into a crunching, constricting, churning, and you want to vomit. You start to shake as the fear-induced adrenalin builds, little imperceptible electrical impulses all over your body, conveniently hidden from those watching by the dry top.

the smile

A fake smile rested on my face to reassure those watching that they were not about to witness the untimely death of their friend. Or perhaps the smile was to convince me that all was OK: that I could do this, that I had this under control.

I fiddled unnecessarily with my gear, checking my helmet was fastened and my jacket was tight. Of course, they were; the previous three checks had already confirmed this.

abrupt turn mid-descent

Looking over my shoulder, I could see only the horizon line of the water constricting into the slot and the two giant rocks that formed the undercuts. As dangerous as that slot was, it was only the beginning. Exiting, I’d be pointing river right, but you want to be pointing river left for the slide. Would I have the time to make that abrupt turn mid-descent of the slot, still trying to avoid the undercuts, so that I’d land on the racing water facing left for the slide. That skip rock halfway down could ruin your day if you skipped right into the cliffs on the right bank.

One of my childhood heroes, John Wasson, once said, “When looking at a rapid, trying to decide if I want to run it, I think about what condition I’m going to be in at the bottom and whether or not I approve of that condition.”

I would certainly not approve of any condition a high-speed impact into the right wall mid-slide was most likely to induce. The turn was critical, and I had to make that turn.

Another wave of nausea welled up inside. Now would be a good time to change my mind!

thumbs up

Glancing up again at the crowd on shore, Horst Führsattel gave me the thumbs up, camera in hand. My good friend Arnd Schaeftlein stood poised, camera in hand, throw-bag by his feet.

If I made the skip to the left, which was a big ‘if’, I’d then have to quickly pull the boat back to the right for the last drop, about a ten-metre slide into a nasty hole. This was less of a concern. If I made it there, realistically, a worst-case scenario would be a beating in the hole and possibly a swim into the pool below. Not so bad, all things considered.

I was reading a book by Anais Nin in the evenings and considered some encouraging words, “People living deeply have no fear of death.”

I was certainly living the dream. It was 2002, and we were on a two-month tour of Europe, connecting with all sorts of paddlers, paddling its rivers from Corsica to the Alps. I was by all accounts ‘living deeply’, yet despite this, I can assure you that I was gripped with overwhelming fear.

James F. Byrnes sums it up eloquently. “Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death.”

deep breath

I took a deep breath and stretched my skirt over the cockpit. This is the moment where fear leaves me, and resolution and determination take hold. This is my Rubicon, ingrained in me from decades of extreme kayaking, as both habit and a matter of course. This is how I have trained myself to overcome fear.

You must overcome fear. You cannot function properly while swathing in the clutches of fear. As much as it is a safety mechanism essential for survival, so it will also bring about your end if you let it win.

Once, paddling down the Lachines rapids in Montreal with friends, one of them had brought his girlfriend with us. She was a new kayaker but was technically ready for the run. She was surrounded by five of the world’s best paddlers, and while big and impressive, the run was essentially safe. As we approached the biggest section of the run, she was overcome with gripping debilitating fear. She was so terrified that all her senses left her and screamed that she didn’t want to do it anymore. She had changed her mind!

That ship had sailed long ago. At this point, we were committed, and the best course of action was to make the best of it. So overwhelmed with fear was she that, in a moment of panic, she pulled her skirt and jumped out of the kayak (into the river). All capacity of logic and reason had abandoned her, and her actions now were detrimental to her safety and well-being.

In this case, she was completely fine. She grabbed the closest boat, and we floated through the waves to the lower eddy, but this could have turned out badly in another situation.

being afraid to ‘kill’ mode

So it is my policy that before taking my first stroke, when running a rapid, there should be no fear: none! For me, that moment where I go from being afraid, to ‘kill’ mode (to use a caveman hunter’s state of mind) is when I put my skirt on. If I am still afraid after putting it on, I don’t go.

Any paddler that tells you they are not afraid above a big nasty rapid is pulling your leg, to put it mildly. Every single one of them is afraid before it’s ‘go time’. And we each have our little way of putting that fear into a closed locker where it won’t get in the way.

Any rapid that is difficult enough to induce fear in one of the world’s top paddlers (or, for that matter, any rapid that can induce fear in any paddler, regardless of skill level) is one that requires 100% of your abilities to be functioning uninhibited and at their very best. Any fear will make you a lesser paddler, and if you’re playing with the limits of your abilities, you can afford nothing to reduce your capacities from their maximum.

When running a challenging rapid, you must be completely devoid of fear.

So I stick mine in a little box, I close that box, and poof, just like that, it’s gone. My skirt is the lid of that box, and when it’s closed, it’s closed. If there is any fear at all that remains at this moment, I’ll get out and walk. As I have on many an occasion.

supremely focused

My skirt was on – this is it. Go or no go. A quick mental check and I was completely calm and focused. My heart rate abated, and I became supremely focused. A tunnel vision overtakes me in these moments, and I am focused on one thing only; the task at hand. I no longer see the undercuts or the right cliff wall. All I see is the line I want. I know precisely which strokes I will take and when, and I have survived this long because, as I once said to someone who asked, “when it counts, I don’t make mistakes”.

In 1871 Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke wrote an essay about military strategy in which he said, “No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces”.

This is undoubtedly true with sports like kayaking, where you are on a moving medium that’s constantly changing. Unlike rock climbing or skiing, where you can stop and regroup almost any time, kayaking does not allow this. Things keep going when you stop, as my friend who jumped out of her kayak mid-rapid discovered to her dismay.

So perhaps it’s not so much that I don’t make mistakes, but that this self-belief partly allows me to put that fear into a box, having supreme confidence in my ability, but rather that I’m lightning-fast at correcting and adjusting for the vagrancies of whitewater kayaking. I know that I can do exactly what I planned to do when it matters, so I am not afraid of the consequences of an error.

We all know that’s not true, but if I believe it right there and then, I’ll be OK. As my eight-year-old son says to himself before peeling out of an eddy to run a drop that has him scared, “I got this”.

tunnel effect

I pushed off the rock with my paddle, planted it in the water, and spun the boat downstream towards the slot. I am not afraid and am only aware of complete focus on the task at hand. It’s a little like those Sci-Fi movies where they throw a tunnel effect onto the images, with everything outside of the focal point obscured and blurry. That’s how I see the world in these moments.

Imagine a chess grandmaster playing against a layman: he moves the pieces around the board at will, as the opponent moves clumsily and obviously and manoeuvres his way to an easy victory. The layman fears the game’s outcome, but the grand master does not.

Believe yourself to be the grand master in this game! “One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.” Wise words by Henry Ford.

The slot came and went, my kayak scything cleanly between the shouldering rocks, turning left just before impact. Water splashed into my eyes, and I could see nothing, but I knew where I was. Like a blind man reading braille, I could feel the various knocks and skips under me, and then I braced for the big hit.

the kayak spun

I launched left as planned and landed with my nose just slightly too far left, catching the one brief spot of slower water between the drops, and the kayak spun instantly. Before I could react, I was going over the final drop backwards. I waited for an instant and then took a powerful back boofing stroke, and my boat rocketed through the hole at the base.

The tunnel opened. My focus range widened, and the world about me returned to its true self. I heard the cheers from those on shore and was overcome with joy and relief.

It was not the planned run, but it was a successful run. Where it mattered, I had been on point, and where it didn’t, I had made a new plan on the spot that was equally successful. Twenty years of doing this allowed me to enter situations like this with confidence and without fear.

It’s been 20 years since I got the first descent of that rapid, and it has never been run again.

So do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.

I didn’t say that. Ralph Waldo Emerson did.