It's freaking gnarly, dude.
It's as gnarly as I could have imagined it being.
This is a lot of fun.
Just really nervous about how fast I'm going to be
actually flying off the lip.
With drop kayaking, when you're really pushing
yourself is when you feel more alive,
but it's really dangerous.
Waterfall running is not something that everybody
likes to engage with.
You come in with speed, and then you immediately
go to a vertical freefall.
You are going from 45 miles an hour to a dead stop.
It feels like being whiplashed in a car crash.
We take hits.
Hitting your face with your paddle, breaking your nose,
which is why we sometimes throw the paddles.
The benefit of throwing your paddle,
it creates less chances of hitting
yourself with the paddle.
With a hydraulic, you have this curtain of water
that's hitting the pool, and it's
pulling you down underwater.
If you are in a hydraulic, you can also play dead,
and then the water will pull you down and pop you downstream.
It's kinda sketchy out there.
If you go too far right, it has a really bad spot
where it kind of folds back in and you would probably
just break your boat and die.
The Rio Santo Domingo has this super steep section that
had never been done before as a complete top-to-bottom descent.
I get it.
They're crazy-looking rapids, man.
Before running a rapid, you always visualize the line.
How are you going to enter the current?
Where are your reference points, a rock or a breaking wave?
And where do you want to be on that lip?
I feel like we need a solid safety team down there, dude.
And the amount of people that we have right now,
I'm not sure if it's enough.
On trips like this, you have to trust that your partners are
going to be able to potentially save
your life because in big drop kayaking,
you can plan every move, you can scout every line,
but until you're in the water, you don't know
exactly what's going to happen.
The most important thing for me is not getting hurt.
I don't want that for my family.
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
[BABY COOING]
[VOCALIZING]
How are you, buddy?
ALI CASAS: [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
Hey, what you guys reading?
When I met Gerd, I started kayaking.
He's been a good teacher, and we've been
kayaking together ever since.
You got the keys?
ALI CASAS: Kayaking gives you more
mental strength because you're about to run
something that scares you.
I trust him a lot, and I know that he
doesn't do stupid things.
But I worry all the time.
I just don't tell him.
Nice!
Let's go.
You ready?
We have two tiny persons at home
that they are waiting for him, and you always think
that something bad can happen.
[MUSIC PLAYING]