Hunt Jennings: Keeping Cool While Plummeting Over 100-Foot Waterfalls in a Kayak

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 90 with Hunt Jennings.

Introduction

Tom Rowland: That was Hunt Jennings, and he was talking about running Wolf Creek, which is, in his opinion, the most difficult waterfall that he's run. Hunt Jennings is a professional kayaker. These days, he's also going to nursing school. What would you think a guy that would run many hundred-foot waterfalls would be like? Would you think that he would be cocky and brash and full of confidence? Well, I kind of thought that's what I might encounter, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that Hunt was a far different man than that. He was contemplative and soft-spoken and intelligent, and he really thought more in a zen type way than in a conquering fashion of these waterfalls.

Tom Rowland: Hunt started kayaking when he was in sixth grade, and then he did something really cool, which is what intrigued me about getting him on the podcast. He left his conventional high school his junior year and went to a school where they camp out. They actually take their classes on the edge of the river. They move around like a vagabond school, and in the afternoons they have dedicated kayak practice. Everybody that's there is there for one reason: to go to high school and to become a much better kayaker. He did this, and not only did he become much better, he became one of the best in the world. Hunt has done many first descents on lots of waterfalls, and he's had some incredible adventures and experiences way off the beaten path.

Tom Rowland: He has a very interesting point of view on life, mostly that he learned from two things. One being wrestling, which is very close to my heart, and the other kayaking. We had a lot of interesting conversations on the similarities and differences between wrestling and kayaking, and also the lessons that the river can teach you. Being on the water, learning how to read the water, learning how to live in, on, and around the river can teach you a lot of life lessons that he has been able to translate into his academics and into his regular life. This will be one of the most interesting podcasts that we have done yet. It's with extreme kayaker Hunt Jennings, coming up.

Getting Into Kayaking

Tom Rowland: All right, so Hunt Jennings. Man, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it.

Hunt Jennings: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Tom Rowland: Well, I've heard a lot about you. We have a mutual friend in David Levitt. He's one of your training partners and kayak buddies.

Hunt Jennings: He is. Yes. He was my teacher, my coach, and then eventually we became training partners, like you said. He started when we were in middle school and he was our teacher. He took us over the summer out to Idaho for a kayaking trip, and then that kind of fired everything off. Since then, we've been traveling.

Tom Rowland: How old were you when that first exposure to Idaho, to the West, happened?

Hunt Jennings: I was probably 14 or 15 when we first went out there.

Tom Rowland: And had you been kayaking a good bit before then?

Hunt Jennings: I had. I started in sixth grade. So I guess this was eighth grade that we went out there, just learning the basics, learning to roll your kayak over and stuff like that.

Tom Rowland: And you learn that mostly in the swimming pool or the lake, wherever you learn the basics?

Hunt Jennings: Yeah. You start out definitely in the pool and flat water and just learn those basics, and then start on the easiest river you can find. So around here, that would be the Hiwassee River, and then progress your way up to the Ocoee and stuff like that.

Tom Rowland: I'm learning as I go here, and I'm not really a kayaker, although I spend a lot of time on rivers as a drift boat guy. Different kind of rivers than you're on, but parts of those rivers, we take out before you put in for the deep stuff. So I might ask you some questions that are pretty basic, but at some point you were a professional kayaker. Is that a fair thing to say?

Hunt Jennings: That's a fair thing, I guess. I had sponsorships, and they helped some for me to travel and do stuff like that. It's kind of a joke in kayaking in some ways, because there's a lot of opportunity for sponsorships once you get to a certain level, but there's kind of a narrow opportunity to make a sustained living off of it. So right now I'm not completely supported by my sponsors, but I would say for sure that I was in that world.

Tom Rowland: And that sponsorship enabled you to travel all over. Is it all over the world or all over the country? Where all has it taken you so far?

Hunt Jennings: I've done a good bit of traveling over the world, really. My junior and senior year of high school, I did some study abroad stuff.

Tom Rowland: I was reading about that. There was the Patagonia study abroad, which is kind of the gap year, more college-credit type stuff.

Hunt Jennings: And then New River Academy was the actual high school. So it's an accredited high school. I did that kind of in relationship with McCallie.

New River Academy And The Kayaking Life

Tom Rowland: So how did that happen? Were you always drawn to kayaking, or was there a moment that you just decided this is it? I love this.

Hunt Jennings: I'd always been really drawn to kayaking for sure. I was pretty into wrestling as well, and that's partially how I know David Levitt. He was my coach. And there came a point where they were both taking so much time that I had to decide. I really wanted to go all out in one of those. And I chose kayaking. There was this opportunity that I found out about through the New River Academy to go there, and my parents were supportive.

Tom Rowland: How did you break that to them?

Hunt Jennings: It took a lot of meeting people that had gone to the school and then getting them to talk to my parents to be like, oh, it's a real thing. It's not a fake school. There was a student that went to McCallie, when I was in sixth grade he was probably a sophomore, and he went there. So I think that helped.

Tom Rowland: Where was the school based?

Hunt Jennings: West Virginia. But then each quarter, they would fly somewhere different and travel around. So we went to Canada the first quarter I was there, and then Chile the second quarter.

Tom Rowland: So what does a day at this school look like?

Hunt Jennings: They set it up so it's fairly similar to a normal high school. The difference is you're staying either camping or really close to a river, so that instead of going to wrestling practice after school, you go to kayaking practice. From 8 AM to 4 PM would be classes, and then evening would be kayaking, and then eat dinner, do homework, and do it again the next day.

Tom Rowland: Camping right there next to the river, and you're having classes right next to the river?

Hunt Jennings: A lot of times, that's how we did it. If it was remote and there were no hostels to stay in, we'd camp on the side of the river. Ideally they'd try to find somewhere that had a pavilion or picnic tables to do class on.

Tom Rowland: And the workload was similar to a regular high school year? History and math and science?

Hunt Jennings: Yeah, it was fairly similar. I tried to take everything I was going to be taking at my high school in McCallie and just take those credits there.

Tom Rowland: Is that kind of school something people go to for a semester or two and then return to their high school, or are people career students there?

Hunt Jennings: There's probably more students that do it for a semester or a year. That was originally my dad's plan. My dad actually made me sign a contract with him saying I would only go for a semester, and I kind of talked my way out of it. Partially because of the cost, it's expensive to travel. And I think parents like their kids to be in a more stationary school and home.

Tom Rowland: For the listeners who may not be familiar, McCallie is an excellent school in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It is one of the top schools in the country. I also went to McCallie, which is how I know about Hunt through my friend David Levitt, who's a wrestling coach there and has coached both my boys. So why did you think this kayaking school was going to be what you wanted to do, when a lot of people are super happy at McCallie?

Hunt Jennings: For me, I was just very passionate about it from the beginning. Starting in sixth grade, the only opportunities to go kayaking were through the school's trips on weekends. But I was always so excited about it, and my passion just kept growing. Getting the opportunity to go out west a couple times kindled that more and more. And when I found out about the opportunity to go to a school that would foster just kayaking, that idea just stuck in my head until I tried to make it happen.

Tom Rowland: And what were the teachers like at this school?

Hunt Jennings: It's hard to find teachers that are qualified to teach subjects and are competent kayakers as well. They were all qualified in what they taught, had degrees in what they're teaching, and they were all kayakers. But I don't think it was a requirement for them to be expert kayakers. They'd have a kayaking coach to be the expert and guide all of us. So kayaking-wise, the teachers were more or less on the same level as the students, and the coach was there to teach us.

Tom Rowland: Were the teachers managing safety on the river? How many students would be out in a standard kayak practice?

Hunt Jennings: Depending on the difficulty of the river, we'd either all be out there together, or sometimes they'd separate us into a more experienced group on the harder river and a less experienced group on the easier river. The teachers corresponding to their skill level would go with that group. A lot of times the teachers were involved in the leadership and logistics. But a huge part of the school to me was the life lessons it taught us aside from academics. We were also involved in the logistics and coordination of safety. That subconsciously gives you a sense of responsibility to your group of people, and teaches you lessons like that.

Tom Rowland: That's what you took away from the school. Obviously you became a much better kayaker, but it's interesting to hear you say the responsibility is what stuck with you.

Hunt Jennings: The kayaking is amazing, and I'm definitely much better at that. But lessons like that were the most valuable to me. You have the ability to think on your feet and for yourself, and to think about more than yourself, because you can't be successful unless your whole group is successful. And the places we went to get to the rivers are remote, so you get exposed to things I probably wouldn't have seen growing up in Chattanooga at McCallie. We were around a lot of poverty, a lot of people that were way less fortunate than we were. That was a big point in my life where I was exposed to a lot more than I'd ever been before.

Tom Rowland: It's so important for young people to travel and get a bigger worldview than just your hometown. Like you say, there's poverty, there are people that are super disadvantaged, and you're like, wow, these are the happiest people I've ever been around. They're not being held down with any possessions or responsibility. It's just them and their family. There's a documentary called Happy that goes into trying to find the happiest people on the planet, and a lot of them don't have much. So when you were at this school, what was your skill level going in?

Hunt Jennings: I'd say I was competent, not an expert by any means. Whitewater is ranked in difficulty from class one to class five rapids. As you get better, you can say you're comfortable running class three, comfortable running class four, and so on. When I went there, I was comfortable running class three. I could handle class four, but maybe needed a little more support to make it down.

Tom Rowland: And then when you got the coaching, did you experience a few things at that school that put you on a different level? And was that pretty early?

Hunt Jennings: I think so. It's interesting because you're there every day with the same people, so the change was gradual and I didn't notice it as much until I came back home and was kayaking with people I'd been with before I left, or on the same rivers I'd paddled before. I was like, whoa, I'm so much more comfortable on this river now. I had an epiphany one day: the time you spend doing something really matters to how much you improve. It just wasn't as apparent to me while I was in that setting until I had something to contrast it to.

Tom Rowland: And also who you surround yourself with matters greatly. So with that moment of, wow, I'm pretty good now, is that when you might have looked at something you previously thought was impossible and thought, I could do that?

Hunt Jennings: I think so. When I came home from the school, in Chattanooga we're blessed to have a lot of rivers and creeks. But there's a handful of harder creeks because they run off the mountains, Lookout Mountain, Signal Mountain, and they have class five whitewater. Those had been off my radar. I didn't think I had the skills. I remember coming back and watching videos of those and being like, I think I could do that, and then starting to branch out and do some of that stuff. Toward the end of going to that school, I began to be able to see things as, I could probably do that now.

Tom Rowland: A lot of the buddies you had kayaked with before, you'd surpassed their ability. So who do you go do this new thing with? Do you find a whole new group of paddlers?

Hunt Jennings: Chattanooga has a good community of people that run these creeks, and some of the people I went to the kayaking school with were from this area, so I was lucky to go out with them. I also had two really good friends and teammates from the wrestling team who were kayakers too, and they really put in work to make kayaking a priority. To this day, we still go kayaking together. It's not easy to do that at McCallie, or any high school, because you have a lot of responsibilities studying. But we made it a priority to do it together because we love doing it together.

Running 100-Foot Waterfalls

Tom Rowland: One of the things you're known for, outside of being a very good technical kayaker at a young age, is doing some waterfall drops that seem impossible. David told me you had done a hundred-footer.

Hunt Jennings: Yeah, I've done a couple around that height. That's kind of the peak of the height I've gone to.

Tom Rowland: Are there people that go higher?

Hunt Jennings: There are, but not a ton. If you calculate acceleration in free fall, once you start getting above a hundred feet, you start landing a lot faster with more impact. So despite however easy the waterfall is, the sheer height makes it kind of a numbers game. It's very calculated, but everyone makes mistakes, and a mistake from a hundred feet is not usually good.

Tom Rowland: That could easily be death. And that's something you're trying to factor in. Can I do this safely? You don't want to just do it once, you want to do it again.

Hunt Jennings: For sure.

Tom Rowland: So you've done a couple of hundred-footers, around 90 to 100 feet. There's one in Oregon and one close to here in Alabama. And what's the next step down easier from that, like 60 feet?

Hunt Jennings: There's a couple of 60- and 70-footers near here and in South America that have been good practice.

Tom Rowland: Good practice. So how many people in the world are doing these kinds of things? Because when I think of a hundred-foot waterfall, I don't think of a lot of people who want to go off of that in a kayak.

Hunt Jennings: It's grown for sure. When I started doing it, there were a lot fewer people. In terms of the whole world, very few people desire to do that. But in kayaking, the number of people that do waterfalls has grown, partly because of video. GoPros and stuff let you see firsthand what you need to do. Waterfalls are a weird thing, because anyone can sack up and go off a big waterfall. You have to just be willing to fall. There's a lot of calculation that goes into it, but there are also a lot of people that are just emotionally fired up and don't think through everything like they should. The height of a waterfall, the rapid coming into it, what the landing is like, everything comes together to make each one very different. A lot of people are drawn toward what we call clean waterfalls: easy at the top, big pool at the bottom. You're at risk of landing flat and hurting your back, but in the grand scheme it's safe because you're going to be in a big pool.

Tom Rowland: That's what I was going to ask. You grew up around a fall in Alabama. Was that DeSoto Falls?

Hunt Jennings: DeSoto Falls, yeah.

Tom Rowland: You can go there in the winter, summer, spring, and see what's there. What's the process in scoping out a fall and thinking, that one's clean, I can do this, but I need certain water conditions?

Hunt Jennings: Some of them have been done by a lot of people, so judging off of that, if 20 people go over it and don't hit the bottom, it's probably deep enough. But others that have been done less are the ones you really have to put your work into. That became my passion around here. I started noticing all these waterfalls and thinking, why have people not done them? Because, one, they don't run, the water level has to be perfect and you have to wait for the right rainfall. And two, it's unknown, no one's done it before, so no one knows what's going to happen. I've gone swimming in a ton of waterfalls, especially around here in the summer, to see where the water's landing when it's low, come back when it's higher, swim at the bottom, see how deep it is, and mark the pool around the edge. A lot of times when it rains, the pool level rises five or ten feet, which makes the depth better. We've even gotten fish tanks and made a waterfall going into it so we could see from the side, and made little wooden kayaks to see how they land and how much depth you really need. It's surprising how little depth you really need to land a kayak.

Tom Rowland: So are there special kayaks you're using? When I drive by the Ocoee, I see every manner of kayak, the long skinny ones, the little short ones. What are you looking for in a giant-waterfall kayak?

Hunt Jennings: The amount of kayak designs has increased, so there's a lot to choose from. Ideally, we call them creek boats. They're not the short ones used for tricks, and not the long racing ones. It's a happy medium, easy enough to control and make adjustments, but not so short that you don't have speed or protection. They're usually about eight to nine feet long. If you get picky, the bottoms of some are flat, and if you land on a flat-hulled kayak, it's a lot harder of an impact than one that's displaced or rounded. And the shape of the rocker matters, some bows scoop up, and when you land, that can cause it to G out really hard and stop abruptly, which is not exactly what you're looking for. Some have less of that and it allows them to pencil. Essentially, what you want off of a tall waterfall is to land straight and then go down.

The Physics And Danger Of The Drop

Tom Rowland: With the nose of the kayak going in first?

Hunt Jennings: It's basically like cliff diving. If you belly flop off of a tall cliff, right. Same thing. You're sitting, so if you land flat, that compresses your spine a lot. There are a lot of back injuries in kayaking. That's basically the main danger, you want to land straight in.

Tom Rowland: Well, there's also drowning and hitting the bottom. There are a number of things that could go wrong. When I see pictures of you going off these giant waterfalls, some of them it looks like you're almost leaning back and trying to keep the boat level, but you really want it to nose in, depending on the height?

Hunt Jennings: Yeah. The tall ones, you want to go straight in. If there's a margin, like 20 feet, you can land flat and be fine. Some 30-footers, depending on the water at the bottom, you can be fine. I've seen people boof, sorry, I'm using kayaking lingo, boof is where you land flat. I've seen people land flat off of 40, 50, 60-foot waterfalls and be fine.

Tom Rowland: Really? Seems like that would hurt, knock the teeth out and do all kinds of damage to your back.

Hunt Jennings: It definitely has potential, but people get away with stuff. I have a couple friends, one broke his back on a 20-footer, and another broke his back on a 30-footer.

Tom Rowland: Were you with them?

Hunt Jennings: I was with both of them.

Tom Rowland: In situations like that, did this school or other opportunities train you in wilderness EMT? You're going into remote areas with a group, and probably every one of you needs some medical training. What's your protocol?

Hunt Jennings: We were all certified in CPR and stuff like that. They have wilderness first aid programs, and that stuff is good, but honestly, you learn it, remember it for a week, and if you don't use it, you forget it. The best way to learn is to do it. The more you go kayaking, the more you're exposed to situations where people need help, and you learn quickly the most efficient way to get stuff done. After one thing happens to you, you start thinking, when you're putting on a river, what am I going to do if something goes wrong? Can we hike out, or are there walls on both sides? Where's the closest hospital? Where's the takeout? And you communicate that with your crew. We do things down to telling each other where we hide our keys on our car, because if something happens to you and you have the only car, how are they going to help you? Over time, learning from people better than you, seeing stuff happen, and making mistakes is the best way, surrounding yourself with people more experienced than you.

Wrestling, Kayaking, And Reading The Water

Tom Rowland: We do some similar things in fishing, mostly because we're afraid we might drop the keys in the river. But it happens. You're in a drift boat going down class one whitewater with two guests, you don't have a lot of freeboard, you get sideways, the oar gets stuck in a rock, and next thing you know you're taking half the river inside the boat. But kayaking is such an extreme sport. You're getting pushed underwater, rolling your kayak, there are giant rocks, the river is taking you and in control. It's kind of like in wrestling. I'd be interested to know what you think the similarities between wrestling and kayaking are. If you're wrestling someone super strong, you're not going to outpower them, so you use their strength against them. A river, there is no overpowering it, you have to go with the river. Have you ever thought about that?

Hunt Jennings: You kind of nailed it. On a surface level, you have to be tough for both of them. Wrestling made me a lot tougher mentally and physically, knowing your limits and mentally preparing. There are a lot of people good enough to do a lot of whitewater who choose not to, because the stress and anxiety from the risk is too much, and that's fine. But wrestling helped me be mentally tougher. And like you said, learning to work with something instead of opposing it, wrestling is a lot about momentum and angles. Sometimes you can just completely overpower someone, but if two guys are equally strong, it's different. And in kayaking, the river is way stronger than you, you have no chance. So it's a balancing game of trying to harness the energy of moving water and use that to your advantage. It's funny, I've taught kayaking a good bit, and a lot of times the football players come in, they want to learn how to roll, they're super athletic and never had problems learning something athletic. And they get really frustrated because they're trying to use their power to roll up. Even rolling up is not about how strong you are, it's about technique. People used to doing something athletic have trouble because kayaking is more about letting go, learning when to let go and when to use strength, and when to back off and let the river do the work for you.

Tom Rowland: There are a lot of similarities to wrestling. One of the tricks Gordon Connell showed me was, the guy won't give you your leg, so push it down, and now he wants to lift it up, and he puts it exactly where you want it. You're using the opposing force to fool somebody, and I imagine you can do the same thing with the river. One of my favorite things fishing out west was fishing the eddies. On the South Fork of the Snake River, it had a lot of volume, moving fast, and I'd hit an eddy and just sit there inches away from the main river cruising past. If I put the oar down, I was going to be taken, but if I could just stay there, the river would hold me. I love how you do that in your videos, you go through something and turn into an eddy, and the river is cruising by, and you just sit there. That has to be one of the coolest things when you're learning how to kayak. You've learned how to read this water and put the boat in a place just big enough, and the river holds you there.

Hunt Jennings: That is one of the coolest parts. It's kind of like learning a new language. I've always been interested in how our brains work. When you're learning to read, you sound out the letters, piece them together, sound out the words, and gradually read sentences. But once you know how to read, you don't do that anymore, you just recognize the word. Our brains are programmed for pattern recognition of things we do repetitively. Whitewater is like that. When you start out, it's just intimidating, and you know there's some rhyme or reason because you see other people doing it, but you can't do it yet. For me, one of the things was, I just really want to know how to navigate this and read it for myself. Over time you learn how to pick those things out and read the water.

Tom Rowland: Don't you think it's important that there's a stair-step process to that? You can go to the Hiwassee, then the next one up. At any point you could go to the Ocoee and be like, whoa, that's way too much, that's impossible. But if you keep stair-stepping up, learning little skills and becoming more comfortable with more volume or a steeper river, then all of a sudden the creeks that seemed so intimidating don't, and you didn't even realize it was happening.

Hunt Jennings: Yeah, for sure. That's why my passion for it came from that progression, and the constant puzzle of figuring stuff out and gradually understanding more complicated things. It's an adrenaline rush, but people view us as adrenaline junkies. For me, my passion came from that progression and the puzzle.

From The River To Nursing School

Tom Rowland: Do you think that process of understanding more and more complicated things has helped you off the river, in your academics?

Hunt Jennings: I think so. I took about three and a half years off after high school to focus just on kayaking. Then I started taking some college classes, and now I'm about to graduate from nursing school. The mindset it gave me, kayaking is very abstract, most people don't know how to understand water, and if you can understand this, then myself and everyone else included can understand anything. I see a lot of people that limit themselves because of their own mindsets. School was intimidating to me because I hadn't been in school for almost four years, and everyone talks about how hard nursing school is. I relate back to the underlying lessons I learned in kayaking and draw confidence from that. I know that if I put the time and work in and try to understand it, over time I'll be able to. I'm reading the book A River Runs Through It right now for the first time, and it's cool seeing how they grew up learning the river. Although they're fishing and reading the water in a different way, they're learning the same lessons from the river, and those lessons become more evident in how they view life. That's one of the coolest things about kayaking, or any sport that teaches you those lessons. You can get really good and competitive at it, but you also take away lessons that carry over to other parts of your life.

Tom Rowland: You started kayaking at a very young age. Do you look back now and realize you were learning a lot more out there than just how to paddle a boat, or do you think you were taking those lessons in all along?

Hunt Jennings: A little bit of both. I've always tried to consciously take out what I'm learning, but a lot of the time my focus has been just kayaking, especially when I was younger and all fired up about it. A lot of those lessons I learned and didn't become aware of until later. I look back and I'm like, the way I'm viewing this now came from what I've done in the past, but I didn't know that then. I can tell now that it's helping me.

Tom Rowland: I find it kind of hilarious that somebody who will run a hundred-foot waterfall is terrified of nursing school. It's all about perspective. You've been out of school three and a half years, and going back is intimidating. I like it when you can take life lessons from something else and apply them over here: I was afraid of that hundred-foot waterfall at one point, but I went in there and learned what I needed to learn. So what drew you to nursing school?

Hunt Jennings: Several reasons. I don't think I ever had quite the passion for school that I did for kayaking. But I started dating the girl that's now my wife.

Tom Rowland: I saw that. Congratulations. That's recent, right?

Hunt Jennings: Thanks. Yes, a little less than a year now. When we started getting more serious, I figured I probably needed to do something besides teaching kayaking. I could make enough teaching kayaking for myself, but maybe not for both of us. So it was a long-term decision. I also had several friends that were nurses, and there are a lot of different ways you can go with it, so it's not limiting. And it's the closest thing to what I was good at in the way of thinking I was used to, thinking critically, not having a right or wrong answer necessarily, piecing puzzles together, recognizing things going wrong. And it's hands-on, you're not just sitting at a desk. It's a two-year program after prereqs, so I decided to go with it.

Tom Rowland: And you're almost finished, one more semester?

Hunt Jennings: Yes, I'm going to be done in December.

Tom Rowland: So how are you balancing your kayaking? Do you have to put it aside a little?

Hunt Jennings: Definitely not going every day. I've tried to manage it by being more focused. When I do go kayaking, I know I might not have tomorrow, so I put all my focus and energy into it right now. And other ways to get better, like watching video or thinking about new things to do. They complement each other, so I've been able to maintain a skill. Although I get scared sometimes, like, I'm not kayaking every day like I used to. But once you go out and paddle, it feels normal. As far as the big waterfalls go, I've backed off of that a little while I'm in school, because that takes all of my mental energy and focus to scout out what I want to do and be in the right mindset.

Mindset And Decision-Making

Tom Rowland: What is the mindset of taking on a hundred-footer, or a first descent, or something super challenging? Mindset is something I talk about a lot on the podcast. I believe that when you can control your mind, you can control your body, and your attitude going into something is everything. When you're going to do a first descent, does that process start weeks or months ahead of time?

Hunt Jennings: It's rare that I show up to a tall waterfall and impulsively run it. It's usually something I've really been wanting to do and watched a lot of video of, or read about, or been there myself and scouted a lot. So the preparation, you feel like you put the work in for it. And going back to the similarities between wrestling and kayaking, that's where I started learning how important your mindset is, from wrestling. You go into a match and so much is dependent on your mindset. You may not feel good, you may have been cutting weight late, but your mindset in that match is the only thing that matters. Win or lose, if you go in knowing you're not going to quit until the end and you're going to do your best, you can't always control if you win or lose, but you can control your effort. Taking that to kayaking, it's complicated, because you want to make good decisions, and sometimes you need to call it off and say, this is going in a negative direction, we need to not do this today. That's sometimes harder to do than running it, because you want to run it so bad. I had a rule for myself: I would never go to a waterfall and say for sure I'm going to run it until I'm getting in my boat.

Tom Rowland: When you're planning one of these, it's not like you just happen down to the river and decide to run a 60-footer. You need support, a few buddies. So instead of just going and having fun, you've all decided this is what you're going to do, and then you bail. How does that work? Your crew has to feel the same way. But there had to be times where you're like, am I just chickening out, or am I making a good decision? How do you tell the difference between looking at something and going, I'm not going to do that one, and basically quitting on the idea, versus making a good decision and saying, it's not today?

Hunt Jennings: That's one of the trickiest parts, at least for me. Being able to analyze yourself. There are so many feelings. When you get there, humans aren't really meant to fall that far, so you're anxious and nervous. And there are other people involved. A lot of times the crew momentum is weird. Even if things are going negative, we talk a lot about the concept of multiplying negative factors, and no one wants to be the one to call it off. It's raining, the water's coming up, it's late in the day, someone's not feeling good, we forgot our safety equipment. One of those things isn't a reason to not do it.

Tom Rowland: But all of them are.

Hunt Jennings: But all of them are. You need the judgment and the courage to be the one to say, I think we should call it. A lot of times it's amazing, you just say that, and everyone else is like, yeah, we're good too. But sometimes people are bummed you didn't do it. Being able to analyze where the different feelings are coming from takes a lot of discipline and mental toughness. One of my kayaking mentors told me to think about it: are you trying to talk yourself into it? If you're trying to talk yourself into doing something, it may not be for the right reasons. But if you truly feel it's something you want to do for a good reason, like you want to test yourself. Running a waterfall is a test of, have all my other practice waterfalls and everything I've worked for, can I put it together under pressure and make it work here? It's a pinnacle analyzation of your abilities. Do you want to do it for that reason and to push yourself? You can want to do it and still be terrified at the same time. Or are you trying to talk yourself into it for some other reason, like being cool on Facebook, or being the first one to do it? I'd really try to ask, why do I want to do this, and is it a reason I should do it? That's something you can carry over to life in general. If it was something I wanted to do and everything logistically was working out, the outcome was usually good. If it was something impulsive or I was talking myself into it, I'd try to call it off, or set safety and help out.

Tom Rowland: Those decisions have served you well. Have you had any accidents?

Hunt Jennings: I've been pretty lucky. I had one concussion, and that was my worst injury in kayaking. I'm thankful for that, because it could be a lot worse. I try to surround myself with good people that are respectful of those decisions. People get so fired up and they want to go, and they don't realize we're all doing things that are inherently endangering ourselves. People should be entitled to their own decisions, at least whether they want to go or not, and not be pressured into doing something. But it happens, it's peer pressure. The key to longevity in kayaking, or any extreme dangerous sport, is being able to make those decisions and see the big picture.

Tom Rowland: Do you ever get in a situation where, when you put in, you're basically making the decision that all of you are going to run it, because the cliff walls are so steep there's no way to hike around? Once you get there, you're running it. That seems like it would be very difficult, because you put in a half mile above it and then notice the water's higher than last time.

Hunt Jennings: There definitely are, and those are things you want to be aware of ahead of time, and the decision has to be made beforehand. After that, it's kind of a cool experience, because everything goes away. Once you're in there, your only option is to go downstream and figure it out. But going in, you need to assess how everyone's feeling and make the decision as a group. There are a lot of times where things change, like you come to a harder, more committing section and some people want to not go. So you reorganize the group. You might have five people and only three want to do that part, and you ask, is it still safe, do we still want to do it? It's a constant game of decision-making.

Family And Community

Tom Rowland: The way you're describing it, the group you're with is incredibly important, beyond just if anything goes wrong. One person running one of these big waterfalls is way more of a team than I would have imagined. I'm sure you have to place careful consideration of who those people are. There might be other kayakers you respect who are great and know safety, but for whatever reason you just don't have the juju, the mix. What about your family? Does everybody understand this lifestyle?

Hunt Jennings: I think so. It took a while for them to adapt. Me going to the kayaking high school exposed everyone to it, and they've always been really supportive. My grandparents are always shaking their heads when they watch the videos. It's probably hard because it's inherently risky, but I tried to develop the trust with them and show them I'm not being reckless or doing things in an uncalculated manner. So they were always pretty supportive.

Tom Rowland: Does anybody else kayak in your family?

Hunt Jennings: My older sister actually started kayaking first, which is why I decided to try it in the first place. She was kayaking with her high school's outdoor program, and I was like, well, I'll try that too.

Tom Rowland: And you've done a lot of kayaking with her? Does she like to do these waterfalls?

Hunt Jennings: She hasn't ever really enjoyed the super tall ones, but she definitely runs some and enjoys it. It's cool to go with your family and see each other progress. She's a really good paddler, she runs most of the rivers we run.

Tom Rowland: Has she ever talked you out of trying to do one of these things?

Hunt Jennings: At first, when I came back from the kayaking school and started trying to do more of the hard creeks, she knew what they were just as well as I did, and it was kind of an unknown realm for us, so she thought I was being reckless. But when she saw that was something I really cared about and wanted to work at getting better, she was always supportive. If she didn't want to do it, she'd come set safety. She runs most of the rivers we run with us.

Tom Rowland: What does she do for a living now?

Hunt Jennings: She's one of the outdoor program leaders at Wake Forest University right now.

Tom Rowland: That's cool. I just did a podcast with Ethan Reeve, who was the strength and conditioning coach at Wake Forest. Wake Forest seems to have a lot of opportunities. They don't have a wrestling team, but we won't hold that against them.

The Top Three Descents

Tom Rowland: So what's been the hardest? Are waterfalls the most challenging thing you do, or are there other rivers that have presented a major challenge? What's the brass ring?

Hunt Jennings: There are several. Waterfalls, I like the ones that are like puzzles, the ones that haven't been done before, that you need to study and figure out yourself, that maybe aren't so calm going off. You have to run a rapid just to get to the top of it. Personally, my ultimate satisfaction is taking a complex waterfall that's not straightforward and piecing it together and making it work. But there are other rivers that are harder in a lot of ways technically. Just because you're not free-falling doesn't mean it's not dangerous, the rapids are technical and hard. A waterfall might be hard, but whatever happens is over in ten seconds. One of the coolest rivers I've done was the Middle Fork of the Kings River in California. You hike in like 12 or 13 miles and go over a pass.

Tom Rowland: With your kayak.

Hunt Jennings: The typical number of days is five. You load your kayak up according to how many days you plan on spending, hike in over Bishop Pass, and put in, and then it's 40 or 50 miles of class five whitewater to the takeout.

Tom Rowland: Hold on. You're carrying a kayak and supplies for five days. How do you carry your kayak?

Hunt Jennings: They make these where you can rig them up yourself. It's basically cam straps, and you attach them to the different grab loops and make a backpacking system out of it. You're carrying your kayak like a backpack.

Tom Rowland: Isn't the back hitting the ground behind you?

Hunt Jennings: Kind of. You adjust it so the stern's probably two or three feet off the ground, and you can put a rope on the front so you pull it over your head and elevate it even more.

Tom Rowland: And your head's in the hole?

Hunt Jennings: There's a couple ways you can set it up. It's not comfortable, but it works.

Tom Rowland: Twelve miles, plus five days of food. What do you do for water?

Hunt Jennings: It depends on where you are. In California, we were just drinking straight out of the river.

Tom Rowland: You didn't get Giardia?

Hunt Jennings: I never did.

Tom Rowland: That's incredible. A lot of people think you can't do that. I had Giardia one time, so I don't take any chances. I either filter everything or take my own water. It's not a pleasant illness.

Hunt Jennings: It's probably a better idea, what you were doing.

Tom Rowland: As a kayaker, you're probably getting plenty of water up your nose and down your throat accidentally.

Hunt Jennings: Might as well boost your immune system.

Tom Rowland: So you go in 12 miles and then put in. What do you do on this river?

Hunt Jennings: It's just making it downstream. There are a lot of different types of whitewater, and it increases in volume as you go down. You put on high in elevation where it's more like a little creek, and it confluences with another creek and gets bigger and bigger over 40 or 50 miles. By the end, the Middle Fork and the South Fork of the Kings River come together and you're in a pretty big river. The goal is to do it and make the logistics work. You have someone picking you up at the bottom, and if you're a day late they'd be worried about you. In that situation, the decisions you make are even more important, because if something happens, you're between two mountain ranges. We had a GPS spot beacon, so the only way out would be to call a helicopter, which is expensive and maybe not possible depending on where you are. I've only done it once, and I was more conservative than I would have been on a river by a road, because any mistake is a lot more costly out there.

Tom Rowland: So if you were to rank the top three most crazy, dangerous, extreme things you're most proud of, starting with three and ending with one, what would they be?

Hunt Jennings: That one's probably up there, the Middle Fork of the Kings River. But my biggest passions were piecing together waterfalls no one's done before. There's a lot near Chattanooga. Have you been to Cloudland Canyon State Park? If you hike down that trail, there are three waterfalls, and the top one is called Cherokee Falls. I did that one, and that's probably maybe number three.

Tom Rowland: Wow, that's a serious waterfall. And a lot of the time there's not a lot of water coming over it, so that had to be at a rainy time of year.

Hunt Jennings: The first time I saw that waterfall was when I was at McCallie, and David Levitt took me hiking there just for fun. I was like, oh, these waterfalls. So over the course of three or four years, I didn't even think it was possible, and then came back and did it and caught it at the right level. It has to rain a lot, right now probably seven inches for it to have enough water. In the winter, probably four inches.

Tom Rowland: When you show up at Cloudland Canyon with a kayak at the top, that's not common. Did you run into any rangers?

Hunt Jennings: I didn't, thankfully. I don't know that they would have been super pleased with it, but it was during the week on a rainy, cold day when no one wanted to be there. Bear Creek, which comes into that from the other side, people kayak a lot and that's fine.

Tom Rowland: When you kayak that, do you pick your kayak up and walk back up all the stairs?

Hunt Jennings: I walked back up to my car. There are like 2,000 stairs.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. So that's number three. What's number two?

Hunt Jennings: I'd probably say there's a waterfall in Minneapolis.

Tom Rowland: I saw that one online. That was a first descent, right?

Hunt Jennings: That was cool because my dad has a little cabin up near the border of Minnesota and Canada, and he's always loved it up there. I'd been to Minnesota before but never seen the waterfall. I started researching it and found out no one had really done it. Talking to a lot of the locals, I started getting discouraged because they all said it was really shallow at the bottom. But from the videos, it looked to me like a runnable waterfall. Usually when something's super shallow, you can tell from the way the water's landing and reacting at the bottom.

Tom Rowland: Did you swim that one?

Hunt Jennings: No. I didn't live there and didn't have an opportunity to go swim. I scouted it for like three days before I did it. The water was kind of low, lower than I wanted to kayak off of it. Then the last day I was there, it rained a lot and the water came up. They have a USGS gauge on that creek, and I think the highest recorded flow on that creek was that day.

Tom Rowland: You were there at the right place at the right time, and you'd already scouted.

Hunt Jennings: It was actually too high. I came there that morning and didn't want to do it because it was too high, and I only had one person to help me with safety. And there's a bridge right above the lip of the waterfall, and a chain that goes across the river under it. With the high water, the water was almost up to the chain, it would have closed on you right at your waist. I don't know why they put that there. It ruins the possibility of doing it at that water level. So I left and went to eat breakfast, and I was like, I kind of want to go back just to look at it one more time. That's the decision-making stuff too, it's a bad idea, it's in downtown Minneapolis so there are hundreds of people around, and regardless if it's a good or bad decision, if you mess up you're going to look dumb. But I went back, and the water had dropped just enough to what I thought was the perfect level, and this log had floated down the river. The end of the log was shaped like a Y, and it hit the chain, and the water pushed the log and it chocked on the bottom and pushed the chain up enough out of the water that I could get under it. I was like, man, that's hard to not take as a sign that I should run it.

Tom Rowland: Did it lift the chain up so you could take your original line, or did you have to choose a slightly different line to get under it?

Hunt Jennings: If the chain wasn't there, I probably would have come more straight downstream. But since it was there, there was a little eddy over on the side. So I caught the eddy, ducked under the chain, and then peeled out. The eddy was there because the water had come down a little, and the chain was just high enough to get under it in the eddy.

Tom Rowland: And what's the runway between getting under the chain and getting to your line on the brink of the falls?

Hunt Jennings: Once I ducked under the chain, you peel out into the flow, and it was about 30 feet from there to where it started dropping.

Tom Rowland: And is it true that Obama mentioned you going off that falls in his speech the next day?

Hunt Jennings: I think he did. I didn't know he was going to make a speech there. I found out from the news the next day. He briefly said something like, well, I didn't go off in a kayak today, but it was a cool place. It was funny, but I didn't intend for it to turn into anything like that. Because of the record-high flows, there were a lot of news stations out there filming just the high level. So all those things I wasn't even aware of combined, there happened to be a lot of cameras there.

Tom Rowland: I love that video. You're just looking at that falls, and then you go right down, and you're down for one Mississippi, two Mississippi, and then you pop up. On the video I saw, you came back and it looked like you had a pretty good handle on this log going into the water. That was the first video I saw when I started doing my homework. It looked like you were held underwater for a while. Where have you put most of your videos, Vimeo or YouTube?

Hunt Jennings: My friend and I have a Vimeo channel. It's called OGP Productions.

Tom Rowland: Do you get a lot of views over there?

Hunt Jennings: A good number. That one in particular got shared by so many media places, it got a lot. I haven't had as much time to manage our videos over the past year or so because of school, but I've always enjoyed making videos, so hopefully I can get back on it.

Tom Rowland: It seemed like in one of those schools, maybe the gap-year one, there was a portion of the course that was video production?

Hunt Jennings: Yeah, there was. It worked its way into the school's own marketing. A lot of the kids had scholarships or financial aid, and they would film and edit videos for the school, and the school would use that as their marketing. So it made a circle, but it was cool.

Tom Rowland: All right, we're at number one.

Hunt Jennings: Number one for me would be a waterfall called Wolf Creek Falls in Colorado. Wolf Creek Ski Area is a pretty popular ski area in Colorado, and you drive up a pass past the ski area. Just a little ways past it on the left, there's a pulloff. You can tell there's a creek on the left side of the road, but you can't really see it. So you hike down there. It had been run by one of my good friends and hiking mentors four years before, but that was the only time it had been run. People kind of thought he was a nut for doing it. The whole time we'd been in Colorado, I'd been studying the video he made, talking to people who'd been hiking there, and I wanted to go look at it. Part of me wanted to run it and part of me was like, I don't know if I want to do it. The water was a little higher than I wanted when I went, so I left it that day and drove on to Durango. There's an outfitter shop called Four Corners Outfitters in Durango that does all sorts of guided trips. Someone put me in touch with the owner, who had a bunch of kayaking guys working for him. They came up with me the next day to look at it again. The water level had dropped, or it's just lower in the morning because of the snowmelt, and it looked like a pretty good level. They were really patient. I spent a long time looking at it. For me, that was probably one of the biggest decisions I made of, am I doing this for the right reasons or not? But I decided I wanted to do it, so we set up a big safety plan and made it happen. Essentially it was probably a 70- or 80-foot drop, but it lands right against a rock shelf at the bottom, so you have to get further out from that. The goal is you free fall for about 20 feet, and then there's a shelf you try to hit, and that bounces you out, and then you gap the shelf at the bottom. So you have to hit the first one to miss the second one.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Hunt Jennings: And right after that, there's a 30-footer right below it. By itself it's not too bad, but because it's right below, if anything went wrong on the big one, it's right there. So it's kind of a double-sequence thing.

Tom Rowland: And then the safety's down below the second one?

Hunt Jennings: There's not much you can do between them. So I had one person in between the two, tethered into a harness and rope. If something happened, he had a chance to grab or something. If not, you'd probably go off the second one. So I had most of the safety at the bottom of the second one.

Tom Rowland: Did you hit the ledge?

Hunt Jennings: Yeah, that was the whole crux of it, to line up the rapid going into it and know exactly where you were. If you're in the right spot going off, you'd hit that ledge, and that would help you miss the second one. I spent hours trying to find the right spot to go off.

Tom Rowland: You're going into this Four Corners Outfitters and you're like, hey, I'm going to run this falls. Do they know who you are? You're just a kid coming in going, I'm going to run these falls. How do you do that without sounding like a crazy person and asking for help?

Hunt Jennings: The guy I talked to at Four Corners, I was introduced to him through a mutual friend, so that helped. For the most part in kayaking, if someone wants to do something like that, they kind of know what they're talking about. You come in sounding like you know what you're talking about, and you have the confidence behind it.

Tom Rowland: But somebody could also come in and be like, hey, I'm going to run Wolf Falls, and they're like, yeah, sure you are. It's only been run once, and all the locals respect it too much to do it. Now you're going to take a swipe at it, and you need their help. You'd have to be careful how you originally went in there so they'd be like, okay, this kid can do it, and we want to be part of it.

Hunt Jennings: You definitely need to be respectful, because there's the aspect of the local scene, and people are protective of their rivers. You don't want to sound cocky or arrogant. That's why I had one of my friends introduce me to that guy, so he was already open to the idea. And the people that came to help me, in kayaking in general I think everyone deserves equal respect despite their skill level, and that goes for anything in life. I viewed it as, if they came, they'd be helping me, and that could be an inconvenience to them, so I tried to make sure it was something they wanted to do. They genuinely seemed like, even if none of us ran it, they wanted to go check it out, it'd be a cool place to hike. A couple of them ran the bottom, the one right below it. Viewing everyone with equal respect, being respectful of your own skills and knowing your own limitations, and not sounding like I'm going to fire this up. Honestly, especially the one in Minnesota and this one, I walked away from both of them at one point and came back. There are some things I really wanted to do, but that I was willing to let go of, out of respect for the river and the people involved.

Tom Rowland: It's an interesting perspective, because a lot of people wouldn't see it that way. It's almost like you're taking a zen approach to it. Everything's got to be right, technically and physically with the water levels, but then you have to be at peace with the decision yourself, and your crew needs to be at peace with everything, whether it's walk away or run it. I would think somebody jumping something on a motorcycle, when you look at old Evel Knievel, there was more of an attitude going in, and there was some salesmanship. Behind the scenes it was probably more like this, is everything going well, is this a good decision, am I doing this for the right reason. So what's next? You're going to get out of nursing school. Are you going to continue kayaking to this level, or back off? What are your goals?

What's Next: Slalom Racing

Hunt Jennings: I have one more semester left, and then I'll play it by ear. One of my big goals, I bought a slalom kayak a couple years ago.

Tom Rowland: I'm familiar with those, the Olympic style.

Hunt Jennings: Yeah. I've been getting in that as much as I can. We actually have a race this Friday, I might have to skip class. That's what I really miss from wrestling, being competitive. Running waterfalls and hard creeks, I'll always love that, but it's kind of competing against yourself. I miss organized competition, like wrestling, and the team and community that surrounds that. One of my goals is to get better at slalom, and I've been doing that as much as I can while in school. When I get out, I'll have a lot of time to focus on it.

Tom Rowland: What's the best training for slalom kayaking? Actually kayaking, or do you do some gym work?

Hunt Jennings: There'd be people who say different things. The Europeans are all about scheduled focused training, and there's a place for that depending on what level you want to take it to. But sometimes it can be taken too seriously, you have to have fun with it. Most people in slalom kayaking are brought up in slalom and then branch into creek boating. I don't think there have been as many people primarily in technical creek boating who then come over to slalom. So I'm interested to see, because I'm fairly confident kayaking, but it's a weird feeling. The timing is precise, you're trying to make it through these gates, if you touch one you get penalties, if you miss it you get a huge penalty. It's weird to feel like a beginner. But I have a lot of confidence in reading water and lines, so I'm excited to get the timing in and combine it with what I already know. As far as training, being out there as much as possible is a big part of it. I think sometimes people view slalom as the only thing they do, and in the long run that's a little self-limiting. You can always tell a slalom kayaker when they come on the creeks, they've had a little different upbringing.

Tom Rowland: That's probably what they're saying about you when you go into the slalom. Look at that creek boater. Do you know who Kelly Starrett is?

Hunt Jennings: I don't think so.

Tom Rowland: Kelly Starrett has MobilityWOD.com, WOD as in Workout of the Day, and he wrote a book called Supple Leopard and several others, one's Deskbound. He's a PT, but before that he was an Olympic kayaker. I think he might be a good resource for you, because a lot of what he's seeing, from so much sitting like that, he was getting really tight in his hip flexors, and he's developed stretches and mobility exercises for shoulder impingements and all kinds of stuff that he's brought into the mainstream. He comes from a kayaking background and a PT background, and he's really changed a lot of how people take care of themselves.

Hunt Jennings: That's awesome.

Tom Rowland: Anyway, man, I wish you all the best with this. If you decide you're going into slalom kayaking, I'm sure you're going to be a force to be reckoned with. How can people find you and learn more about you?

Hunt Jennings: I have a Facebook account, I stay in touch with a lot of kayakers that way. And we have a Vimeo channel, OGP Productions. Those are my two main ways of staying in touch.

Tom Rowland: And if you want to see some of these waterfalls he's run, you can look up Hunt Jennings Waterfall or Hunt Jennings Kayak, and that's how I found them. There's a bunch on there, not just the waterfalls, but running really technical rapids and all kinds of stuff. It was pretty easy to find you. I love the conversation, and I love the alternative education path that you took. I think it's really neat, and I'm sure the listeners will find it the same. Hunt, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. We'll do it again.

Hunt Jennings: Thanks for having me.

Tom Rowland: Man, I enjoyed that conversation with Hunt. I hope you liked it too. Until next week, we'll see you on the water.