The Road Less Travelled

by Ryan Holden

So, first things first - how did you get started? My first introduction to white water kayaking was almost 15 years ago through school. I went to St Paul's Collegiate and that's where I got my first little taste of white water kayaking. I'd done a little bit of kayaking on the river before, obviously growing up in New Zealand I'd spent plenty of time around rivers, lakes and the ocean so I knew my way around in a kayak but this was when I first had my eyes opened to the white water scene.

So do you have any favourite New Zealand rivers or descents?
Jeez, there's so many in New Zealand, if I had to pick my favourite river it would probably be the Kaituna in Rotorua. Just because it's so easy to access, it's close to home (Hamilton), you can do one three hour trip down it or you can do three ten minute trips or really whatever you feel like. It also has some nice waterfalls and rapids, it would be the one I've paddled the most anyway. In saying that, all the rivers on the west coast are all equally my favourite too, they're just all so good. The whole adventure aspect of loading your kayaks onto a helicopter really gets the heart pumping.

Do you always paddle everything or do you ever think, "OK, this one's too dangerous, we'll have to walk?"
All the time. If there's a feature in a rapid, like if there's a rock backing up a hole (underwater hydraulic that causes major suction) or the water's going under a rock, it can be any number of things really. We stop and look at every single rapid of consequence - because that's what you have to do if you want to stay alive.

What are you thinking when you're approaching a big rapid or waterfall?
It's a massive mental game, you know. It's a matter of getting a hold of yourself and controlling that total mental struggle you're having with yourself - controlling your fear.

What's the biggest waterfall you've thrown yourself off?
The highest I've ever done was on my recent trip to Iceland. The drop is called Aldeyjarfoss (19.7m vertical drop), which is up in the North of Iceland. It first got paddled in 1997 by a British guy called Shaun Baker and at the time it was the Guinness World Record for the highest free-fall in a kayak. I remember seeing a poster of it in a kayak store years ago and just being blown away by it, I couldn't believe my eyes. But we had been discussing it on this trip and we'd never seen video footage of it, which I sort of thought was a little bit strange because this guy is quite big on filming and documenting his descents. I'd heard a lot of stories of other teams of really good paddlers all going to the drop and never doing it - it hadn't been run since. And 10 years is a life-time in the kayaking world. So we'd identified it as a waterfall we were pretty keen to look at, but didn't hold a lot of hope that we'd paddle it, just because the guys we knew personally that had gone and looked at the waterfall and walked away were pretty experienced.
We'd heard all the reasons why you couldn't paddle it, there's too much water, big holes, undercut rocks. And when we got there and looked at it, it was super rowdy, it was high, there was lots of water and it was all going through a pretty small gap at the top; however we actually thought it looked surprisingly good to paddle. So we decided to run it. We played a game of rock, paper, scissors to decide who would go first and I lost, this meant I had to paddle it last - everyone prefers to paddle first to get it out of the way.
The first guy that went, there were three of us on the trip, had a beautiful line off the top but got stuck underwater for 11 seconds, which at the time seemed like a minute and 11 seconds. He popped up holding his ears, thinking that he'd burst his eardrums due to the pressure. This guy is one of, if not the most experienced kayaker in the world, Steve Fisher. He was telling us it was the single most violent experience he'd ever had in a kayak, this was a guy that had spent the last decade running the Zambezi, so this was obviously a little concerning.

The next guy came up without a helmet, his nose almost broken and peeled off from where his helmet got pulled over his head. His bottom teeth were through his lip.

The next guy (NZ's Jared Meehan) went, he did about the same amount of downtime, came up without a helmet, his nose almost broken and peeled off from where his helmet got pulled over his head. His bottom teeth were through his lip, so he pretty much had a second mouth, and the back of his boat was compressed to about half the normal size just due to the water pressure. We were also concerned he may have been concussed. I'd never seen anything like this before. After about an hour getting him patched up I had to make a decision as to whether I wanted to do it, the boys were telling me 'na don't worry about it, just give it a miss', but to me the waterfall looked as run-able as it had before anyone else went. Obviously you take into consideration the experiences the other boys have, but I still felt confident I could tackle it.
So I ran it, and it was very violent, I had my paddle ripped from my hands but I made it ok and of course I was stoked that I did it.

So what's your biggest concern when tackling a waterfall of this size?
My biggest concern was my spray-skirt coming off, just because there was so much water moving around in the pool, if your skirt came off and you lost your kayak the water would hold you down, making it almost impossible to surface.
Also something people don't realise is that when you tackle a waterfall this big it's really about 30ft higher as the water pushes you that far beneath the surface, so it's deep, very deep.

You've been on a recent trip to the White Nile in Africa, how did that go?
Great, this is the biggest expedition I've ever done. The stretch of river was a 90km stretch known as the Murchison Falls. It obviously has some pretty amazing rapids but it also flows through the deepest darkest African jungle, it's right in the heart of the LRA territory, which is the Lords Resistance Army - one of the worst rebel groups in Africa.

So, it's a bit of a hotspot?
Yeah, big hotspot. This section of the river has been done a couple times before and in the most recent attempt before us they were ambushed by rebels, one of them got killed and another was shot so that was obviously a pretty major concern for us.
The other major concern is that it has the highest concentration of hippos in Africa. Hippos kill more people in Africa than any other animal, and of course there's the crocs - we had seven croc charges on the trip.

A croc charge must be pretty intense?
We'd had these safety meetings amongst the group as to how we were going to deal with potential wildlife attacks. We decided that in the case of a hippo attack what we'd do is wait for the attack to be over before trying to help, this is because there are a number of cases in Africa where people have been killed when going to the rescue of someone being attacked by a hippo. So that was obviously pretty reassuring [laughs].
And then with the crocodiles the idea was that if a crocodile charged we'd try to get close together as a group and try and outrun it, depending on where we were on the river, if we were above a rapid or something we'd try and get into it. But if we were on flat water and it got too close we'd actually turn and charge back at it. I mean these are 20ft crocs, you don't wanna get one of these latched onto your boat. And then we went into the details where if one grabbed you you'd try and touch the flap at the back of its throat or poke its eyes, as soon as it got to that point of the conversation I just walked away [laughs].

Did you get many charges?
Every croc we saw on the bank charged us in one way or another, none of them just sat and watched us go by. You've got to remember that we're one of a group of about a dozen humans that have ever been through this area, so the wildlife isn't used to human presence like other areas of Africa.
Hippos are terrible things. Purely vegetarians, they'll just kill you over territory. But crocs are coming to eat you, there's something about that that makes it a whole lot worse.
We also had a lot of hippo charges, some really, really close calls. I mean there is upwards of 30,000 hippos in this stretch of water. We saw literally tens of thousands of them, they were everywhere - every minute of every day. You're always on your toes, I've never concentrated so hard for so long before.

Sounds like an old-school adventure?
Definitely. Right up until the moment I decided to go on the trip I wasn't sure if I should, because it was really just so dangerous, it was a full on adventure. And of course the whole wildlife aspect is pretty foreign to anyone really - particularly kiwis. But once I was on the trip it was mind blowing, it's the sort of adventure you dream of as a kid, you know, you're in the heart of untouched Africa. You've got lions roaring, elephants drinking out of the river, there's water buffalo and crocs and monkeys and snakes and every other thing.
If someone wanted to get into kayaking, what would your advice be?
I think the most important thing is to learn from someone who really knows how to teach you how to kayak. It's like any one of those sports where if your first impression isn't that good, chances are it's not going to be a pleasurable experience.

What are your future plans?
Keep doing it. But this lifestyle choice also comes with its own sacrifices, lots of travel and that sort of thing, that's becoming more of a reality as I get older, I'm 28 now and while that's still relatively young on the life scale, it is starting to become more of a factor. But every time I go on one of these trips it reconfirms why I chose to take this path - without getting deep and meaningful or anything, it's just a hell of a lot of fun. You get to experience things that very few people in the world get to experience, go places that most people won't get the opportunity to go, I couldn't ask for any better. I mean the downside of my job, is that I have to travel all around the world exploring rivers. How bad can that be?