Tao calls me up on Thursday November 30th. "Nate, can you go to Meico on Wednesday? We're shooting another Stunt Junkies." "Absoutly!", after all how could I decline, after how much fun I had at the last one on Superior Falls. "Where are we headed to?" "San Louis Potosi, to El Salto Falls."
Tao had run this drop about ten years ago, only thing is, is that he had run the first two drops but pitoned off the second drop and ran the third one backwards. This was his revenge, he was coming back to claim victory on this drop.
So we left on Wednesday night and flew into Los Angeles to meet up with some of the crew. The next morning we met up with the rest of the crew and flew from Los Angeles to Mexico City and continued to Tampico. We arrived in Tampico at about 10:00 pm, and we still had a two and a half hour drive ahead of us, which would put us at our hotel at around 12:00pm - 1:00am, the only problem with this is that we needed to wake up at 4:00 am to head out to the falls. Luckily they let us sleep in and we didn't have to leave until 6:00 am.
The next morning we left on the two hour drive to the falls, with the weather being around 60 deg and rainy. On our drive we passed the typical Mexico scenery, jungle, sugar cane fields, small villages, and also the Rio Micos. The Rio Micos is a pretty chill run but the top section has two class V+ drops on it that you can see from a half mile away.
Finally, we pulled to the side of the road next to a falls, one of the hosts, Eli, asked Tao, "Are we just taking a look at this one?" Tao: "Nope, this is the one I'm going to run." Eli: "Holly S#!*"
So we all walked up to the falls and tried looking at it from every angle, for the initail scout. As I was talking to Tao he said it was much lower then the last time he ran it, which for this falls was probably not a good thing. This falls was beautiful, it dropped about fifteen feet into a clear blue pool which went directly over a thirty foot slide that landed into an three foot pool, that went directly over a sixty foot falls, and at the base of the falls, was the most beautiful aqua green pool I have ever seen. So we decided to start throwing some logs over the last two drops, Tao was in the center of the river standing on a rock outcropping, Eric Link was at the lip of the thirty foot slide and I was above him peering down on the whole drop. Eric throws the first log in, it gets to the lip of the slide and stalls for a second before it turns sideways and tumbles down the slide, hits the pool and gets pushed to the right and pinned on a shelf in the center of the river. This is not good considering the right side lands on rock and the center goes into a jumble of piton rocks then has a shallow landing. Eric throws the other five logs in, with Tao telling him where to put them in at the lip. None of them had a line I would want. I went down and talked to Eric, "What do you think?" "I think we need more water, this travertine is way to sticky and will proabaly screw him up on the slide." Eric fully agreed.
For the next two days we were scouting the falls and looking for camera and safety positions. It seemed that every day we came back the water got higher and higher, this was a good sign. Tao was getting a bit more excited with the rising water levels, a little softer landing. Although with the rising water levels Tao's line started changing ever so slightly.
Finally the day came to run the falls, Tao and I put in at the beginning of the run, it was a narrow river covered in jungle. I had never been here before and Tao was here ten years ago so he didn't remember any of the lines. As we put on a local Grant Amoral was telling us the line on the first two drops, "Yea the last time I swam was on one of these drops, make sure you run it...." as I got distracted and missed what he was telling me. So we put on the river and it was gorgeous, class III continuous whitwater with no sunlight reaching in because of the covering jungle. We paddled down and reached the first horizon line, then I thought back to what Grant was saying. Oh, that's right, I wasn't listening. I looked at Tao and asked "what did Grant say on this one?" "I'm not sure I wasn't really listening". We just looked at each other and laughed. SO Tao went first and made it through and told me to head right and boof, so I did. We ventured down just a little further and came to a much bigger horizon line, again not sure on where we were supposed to go Tao went first and I followed. We arrived at the top of a twenty foot falls greeted by some of the camera men and the hosts, they filmed Tao running this drop and we headed down. Tao and I had a blast on this section, it was so beautiful and secluded.
Finally we arrived at the top of El Salto falls and Tao took me to the top of the first drop. "Look at this, doesn't it make you feel insignificant?" as I'm peering down as far as I can in my boat, but never seeing the pool about a 110 feet below me. "yea, you could say that". From the top of this drop in your boat it didn't look like there was any possible way to run this drop.
So we took out at the top of the drop and I headed down to the bottom of the falls to hold safety. I paddled directly to the base of the falls and just watched, waiting for Tao to come over the lip of the drop ninety feet above me. Finally after twenty or so minutes I see the front of his red boat.
This stunt junkies will be showing in Feburary, check my site or discovery channel for when this show will be on.
