Here's a huck worth noting. Paul Gamache, a West Coast paddler who lives in Seattle, recently dropped Cascade Falls, a 108-foot spouting beauty on British Columbia's Cascade Creek, seen in a video still here.
If confirmed, Gamache's plop would qualify as a world record freefall waterfall descent, besting Tyler Bradt's 107-foot clean descent of Alexandria Falls on the Hay River in Canada's Northwest Territories in 2007.
Gamache and paddling partners Cody Howard and Ryan Bradley measured the entire height of Cascade Falls, from lead-in to landing, at 112 feet.
But just to be sure, Gamache says the crew brought in a geo-engineering team, which measured the complete vertical drop of the falls at 108 feet, 2 inches. An official report from the firm should be forthcoming.
The following dispatch comes from the Huckin' Huge Web site:
"Cody Howard and Paul Gamache arrived on the site the day before. After spending a full day of rappelling, scouting, 'ghost shipping' and discussing the lines, they determined that the falls were marginally runnable. Ryan Bradley of Bellingham, WA to came out to help run critical safety, rounding out the crew.
"Early morning on November 22, 2008 Paul was belayed into the undercut holding tank by Cody from his stern grab loop. After sitting in the tank for a terrifying 5 minutes, waiting for safety to be set, he then dropped off the edge, free-falled, tucked and rolled up at the bottom with everything intact, and no skirt implosion."
Video of the descent is slated to appear in "The Risen Sun," Howard's upcoming film.
Why all the hair-splitting over the height of the falls? Well, as with everything else, when running waterfalls, size matters.
After Tao Berman set a waterfall drop record of 98.42 feet on Alberta's Johnston Falls in 1999, controversy arose over whether the falls was truly "vertical," since Berman skipped off an outcropping rock on the way down.
Then, when Ed Lucero originally dropped Victoria Falls in 2003, paddlers started squawking over whether that run was really "successful," since Lucero ended up swimming out of his kayak at the bottom.
When Bradt subsequently cleaned that drop and stuck the landing -- albeit with an imploded skirt -- in 2007, that put the controversy to rest, at least for a while.
No telling whether people will question the "cleanness" of Gamache's run of Cascade Falls, since he rolled at the bottom.
If you ask me, that shouldn't really matter at all, especially since he rolled up in his boat, with everything in tact, save for a bloodied pinky finger.
Bottom line is, Gamache nailed a huge huck, and has the video, still pictures and engineering firm records to prove it.
Gamache says that no matter what comes of his run, he's pretty darn pleased to have done it, while living to enjoy the inevitable after-paddle glow that comes from this kind of accomplishment.
"People will always argue what's a record and what's not," Gamache says in an email. "Fortunately it doesn't really matter to me one way or the other, it was pretty fun drop."
