I think this whole thing is a little silly, and very dangerous, but none the less, the limits were pushed a little further in Whitewater Sport for new heights in successful waterfalls run in a kayak. Tyler Bradt ran Palouse Falls in April- which was a 198 foot waterfall- but they are calling it 187. Regardless it was a breathtaking descent and I had front row seats having rappelled off the ledge to run safety and snap a few photos. Here is an article about it in the Oregonian.
There isn’t a lot that scares Tyler Bradt, so before he steered his kayak off the lip of eastern Washington’s Palouse Falls and dropped 18 stories amid water rushing at 2,000 cubic feet per second, he recalls his mind running gin clear, just like the current. “There was a stillness,” says the 22-year-old extreme kayaker. “Then an acceleration, speed, and impact unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. I wasn’t sure if I was hurt or not. My body was just in shock.”
So was everyone else. The previously held record for kayak descents, set only weeks earlier, had been off a 127-foot fall in the Amazon. “The risks on a 180-foot drop are exponentially greater,” says kayaker and filmmaker Trip Jennings. “Your rate of descent is multiplied, so the time you have to react plummets.”
Before the record-setting run, Bradt repeatedly visited Palouse Falls State Park to read the water and scout the descent. “The first time I saw the Palouse, I knew it was runnable,” he says. “There’s a smooth green tongue of water that carries about a third of the way down the falls. That was my route.”