Forward motion, headfirst & horizontal to gravity!

still the best hydrospeed creeking action ever!

towards the end of the 90's i read an article about a south african guy named mike horn who had become the first person to hydrospeed/riverboard the entire length of the amazon river. the trip was close on 7 000km's long and lasted 7 months. reading that article made a big impression on me & i was especially struck by the incredible mental fortitude that one would have to have in order to pull off such an adventure. in fact, it was reading about mike horn that got me started in the sport of hydrospeeding / riverboarding.

from there, my interest in mike's exploits grew & i regularly followed his adventures via his website , which includes circumnavigating the globe on the equator entirely solo and without mechanical assistance, which took him almost 2 years to complete...

then, recently i came across some video footage of mike & a friend named cedric (dont know surname) running some whitewater in Peru which I think was around 1994. the footage is something of a 'holy grail' of hydrospeeding / riverboarding and includes mike's world record setting 21m waterfall descent. the narration is in italian (anyone able to translate?) but if you ignore that & just watch the footage it is probably still the best video footage ever of the sport of hydrospeeding / riverboarding. i believe the filming was arranged by mike's main sponsor at the time: sector watches. he was one of their "no-limits" team members. dont know the chap who put the footage up on youtube, but my thanks.

take a look and i'd be interested to hear your opinions...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoAq-w3j528

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9_8fdMJGcU

if these links do not work, you can visit my blog at http://www.mylifeinwater.com to check it out.

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Comment by Rochelle Parry on November 18, 2009 at 6:41pm: Very cool! I love the ice creek. Interesting use of mountaineering. I think some of his entries may have been cleaner if he'd kept his legs behind him, but overall very impressive!

Comment by Charl van Rensburg on November 18, 2009 at 8:16pm: I agree. It only dawned on me a while after I'd first seen this footage that the reason he landed side-ways on the entries, when dropping some of those waterfalls, was because the pools were really shallow so it was a way of breaking his fall and stopping from penetrating the water too deep... talk about putting your body on the line.

Comment by BrianJ on November 19, 2009 at 7:09am: no PFD!! ;)

Comment by Rochelle Parry on November 19, 2009 at 6:25pm: Is a PFD helpful in inches of water?

Comment by Kevin Yount on November 19, 2009 at 8:41pm: I respect him and his partner for summoning the stones to run some of those shallow lead ins and landings, but I have to say that I think Mike's big water and expedition exploits are a better display of his skill and fortitude. And when one of them had plenty of room to land at the end of the video: part 1, and ended up getting plastered sideways against the rock for a few seconds....scary!

Comment by Charl van Rensburg on November 19, 2009 at 8:55pm: ah, kevin you are pre-empting a future post of mine.... check out this video-clip, part 2 of 6 of a documentary on Mike Horn. towards the end of part 2 (about the last half I think) his trip down the amazon is featured. I'll concede he has a funny accent, but if you can get past that, it is worth watching the whole series.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP1s0GFewMY&feature=related

Comment by Kevin Yount on November 20, 2009 at 12:41am: thanks, Charl. I've only seen bits and pieces of that until now, and always with other background music as it was part of a Mike Horn tribute/highlight video that someone else made on youtube. I guess living in South Africa and Switzerland (as well as having no one to talk to except yourself for a few months on some of the expeditions) would create a unique accent. I know for sure that my accent is a unique combo of Southern United States and having lived in China for two years.

Comment by Rochelle Parry on November 20, 2009 at 1:09am: Having had a broken knee (tib plateau to be specific) I cannot imagine the pain he must have endured to complete the run.

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