Vertigo-Inducing Video as Kayakers Plunge 65ft Down Waterfall in Tlapacoyan, Mexico Simon Garner - Yahoo! News UK
go to original March 17, 2013

Vertigo-inducing kayaking - the heart-stopping moment a daredevil kayaker plunges down a 65ft waterfall. (Forge Motion Pictures)

Adventure-loving trio Erik Boomer, Tyler Bradt, and Galen Volckhausen spent 10 days hurtling down powerful waterfalls of up to 130ft in height on a trip to Tlapacoyan, Mexico.

Photographer Tim Kemple from Salt Lake City, USA, rigged up ropes across canyons to dangle within touching distance of the kayakers as they plummeted over the waters edge.

Tim joined a team of filmmakers - Anson Fogel, Skip Armstrong, and Blake Hendrix - to capture the vertigo-inducing views and turned the trip into a short film called 'Cascada'.

His stunning vantage points show the heart-in-mouth views the gutsy kayakers are faced with as they freefall down the monster drops.

Tim said: "The narrow, gorge-like nature of the two big rivers in Tlapacoyan meant there were opportunities to set up a line across the canyons.

"We didn't expect how great it would look and with a little creativity how frequently we could pull it off.

"I could have touched the paddlers as they went by - we were literally dangling a few feet away from the lip of the waterfall.

"The idea of this view, looking straight down the waterfall, was definitely one of those shots that we talked about before arriving in Mexico.

"We weren't the first people to shoot images in Tlapacoyan but that became the challenge - how could we use light, perspective, and creativity to capture images that people hadn't seen anywhere before?

"Kayaking waterfalls is a one-take situation. Even if the paddlers enter the water cleanly, it hurts, like getting punched in the face."

Tyler Bradt - who holds the world record plunge in a kayak off the 186ft Palouse Falls in 2009 - broke his back just two years ago on the 95ft Abiqua Falls in Oregon, USA.

He said: "Breaking my back hit the reset button for me in my waterfall running. I had to start back at the beginning and work up.

"This was the first time I finally felt right to run big waterfalls after over 18 months of striving to get back to that spot.

"Tim and the team captured the critical moment when everything goes right or everything goes wrong during the fall.

"It's important for waterfall kayakers to land precisely and that is influenced by their actions at the lip of the waterfall and into the first 20 feet of free fall.

"At this moment I was focused on setting my angle correctly. Some of the beauty of waterfall running is a separation from thoughts and the purity of existing in complete presence with such an amazing force of nature."

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