So he’s a whitewater guinea pig?
Todd Gillman and his friends spend their free time traveling the world, kayaking rivers and seeking out this hemisphere’s most untamed whitewater. The more waterfalls, the better. For this 33-year-old Capitol Hill resident, it’s all in the name of fun, adventure and going places no one’s ever been.
Q: How’d you get into extreme kayaking?
A: I grew up on the beach [in Maryland] and my dad was a fisherman, so I was always on the water. When I went to college in West Virginia [later graduating from Colorado State], kayaking was the only water sport I could do in the mountains.
Q: You and your friends [Shane Robinson, Brian Smith and Andrew Oberhardt] won a grant called “Vacation to Hell” to go to Peru’s Rio Huallaga, the last unrun canyon on the Amazon. What possessed you to take a grant by that name?
A: [Laughs] Well, it’s funny. They give you a budget, an assignment and a deadline, and you just go for it. And this assignment seemed really cool - there’s just this canyon lingering out there that no one’s ever been down. People have been exploring and trying it for years, but never made it.
Q: Did you guys make it?
A: Put it this way: There’s still a 20- to 30-km section of gorge - vertical walls, hundreds and thousands of feet straight up on both sides - that hasn’t been run. We got down to a point that, based on our knowledge of rivers, we determined it wouldn’t be safe to just drop into there.
Q: Will you give it another go?
A: We’ve been talking about it. I have friends … going down there and, on one hand, I wish them luck. On the other hand, I’m kind of protective - I want to be the first to run it!
Q: What’s the scariest thing you’ve survived?
A: There are times where you get in over your head on the river and you have to bail out, but I can’t think of a situation where I was really locked up in fear … well, actually, maybe the time I sat down for dinner and there was this guinea pig looking up at me. I got a little freaked out.
Q: How’d it taste?
A: It’s a little like eating a Maryland blue crab - it’s a lot of work for not very much food. But it’s worse because there’s this rodent with claws and little rodent teeth looking up at you. But it wasn’t so bad. I’d try anything once.
Haley Edwards: 206-464-2745 or hedwards@seattletimes.com