After the clobbering, I was no longer afraid. I felt refreshed.īefore I was clobbered by that wave, I was terrified of being clobbered by a wave. I did a few Eskimo rolls for the fun of it. When I got back into my kayak, I thought I’d be even more nervous, more hesitant, and even stiffer than before. I did my best to smile back as I lay on the floor of the raft, trying to catch my breath. I gasped for air as a large bearded river guide reached for my life jacket and tugged me onto his raft. I tried to swim to the surface but I wasn’t sure which way was up.įinally, about 50 feet downstream, the river spit me out. I didn’t even get a chance to take a good breath before going under. Before I could even think about doing an Eskimo roll, the current yanked me out of the cockpit and dragged me deep down. I was instantaneously upside down, underwater. ![]() The wave hit with such immense force that my boat flipped, not sideways, but end over end. The size of the wave startled me it was much bigger than it appeared from land. Ten feet.Ī wall of water that stood at least twice my height crashed, flattening me against the back of the boat. About thirty feet upstream from the big wave, I started to paddle hard, taking short strokes to power through it. ![]() I positioned myself carefully as I entered the whitewater. My hands were shaking, and it took me a few tries to seal my sprayskirt around the cockpit.Īdrenaline coursed throughout my body as I slowly inched my way toward the rapid. While the other kayakers watched from land, I entered my kayak. I volunteered to go first, mostly to get it over with. I felt uneasy, stiff, awkward, and scared. The water was bigger than anything I had paddled before, and now even small rapids - waves I could normally surf for fun - were rattling me. So far, I hadn’t been feeling myself on this trip. We got out of our boats - we were 15 kayakers and three support rafts - and scouted the rapid from the right bank of the river. To give you an idea, here is a 25-second YouTube video of a kayaker running the rapid. ![]() Several hours into the first day of our paddle down the Grand Canyon, we came to our first significant rapid of the trip, House Rock Rapid. This post is part of HBR’s special issue on failure.
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