1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 2 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 3 00:00:29,362 --> 00:00:31,031 [water rushes] 4 00:00:56,181 --> 00:00:58,767 [Scott] When you're standing on top of a rapid, 5 00:01:01,603 --> 00:01:03,313 everything's theoretical. 6 00:01:05,106 --> 00:01:07,567 You're imagining every movement. 7 00:01:08,401 --> 00:01:10,403 Every current. 8 00:01:10,487 --> 00:01:11,821 Every stroke. 9 00:01:14,449 --> 00:01:19,204 And you still know full well 10 00:01:19,287 --> 00:01:22,248 that even though you've done all of this work 11 00:01:22,332 --> 00:01:24,709 to prepare for that one moment, 12 00:01:26,169 --> 00:01:28,004 that it could still all go wrong. 13 00:01:43,853 --> 00:01:46,981 [chanting] 14 00:02:19,722 --> 00:02:22,934 {\an8}When I walked away from kayaking, initially, it was... 15 00:02:25,436 --> 00:02:27,313 {\an8}three months, and I'll be good as new 16 00:02:27,397 --> 00:02:29,065 and I'll be right back at it. 17 00:02:29,149 --> 00:02:32,694 It wasn't like I was planning to walk away from kayaking forever. 18 00:02:34,154 --> 00:02:36,364 But once I wrapped my head around the type of surgery 19 00:02:36,447 --> 00:02:39,325 I was about to have, there were no guarantees. 20 00:02:41,870 --> 00:02:44,956 I had dedicated my life to running the most dangerous rivers in the world. 21 00:02:45,707 --> 00:02:47,876 But this time, it was different. 22 00:02:49,043 --> 00:02:50,837 It was at that moment I knew 23 00:02:51,212 --> 00:02:53,882 I was about to run the scariest rapid of my life. 24 00:02:56,551 --> 00:02:58,261 And it was all in my head. 25 00:03:05,476 --> 00:03:08,688 This is Today with David Bloom. 26 00:03:08,771 --> 00:03:10,231 {\an8}[David] Guys, good morning. Congratulations. 27 00:03:10,315 --> 00:03:11,524 {\an8}-[Scott] Thank you. -[Johnnie] Thanks. 28 00:03:11,608 --> 00:03:13,234 Scott, I mean, you are, we said, 29 00:03:13,318 --> 00:03:14,736 a world-class kayaker. 30 00:03:14,819 --> 00:03:16,654 But even you kind of went, 31 00:03:16,738 --> 00:03:18,740 "Gulp, I can't believe that we're gonna do this." 32 00:03:18,823 --> 00:03:21,826 Why do people call this the Mount Everest of rivers? 33 00:03:26,956 --> 00:03:30,793 [man] In the annals of adventure, this first descent 34 00:03:30,877 --> 00:03:34,213 will be remembered as one of the most accomplished expeditions 35 00:03:34,297 --> 00:03:35,423 of our time. 36 00:03:47,894 --> 00:03:51,064 Scott, what's next for you? I mean, you're 30 now. 37 00:03:51,147 --> 00:03:53,066 So what's the next big adventure? 38 00:04:05,078 --> 00:04:08,623 Well, for me, there's a place in western Tibet. 39 00:04:08,706 --> 00:04:10,166 It's called Mount Kailash. 40 00:04:10,250 --> 00:04:12,835 And there are four rivers that come from this one peak. 41 00:04:12,919 --> 00:04:14,963 And they flow in the four cardinal directions. 42 00:04:15,046 --> 00:04:18,883 And that would be completing the four biggest rivers in the Himalayas. 43 00:04:30,103 --> 00:04:32,647 You don't recommend this to any novice kayakers. 44 00:04:32,730 --> 00:04:34,899 This is something that's just such a challenge. 45 00:04:34,983 --> 00:04:38,778 No, this is for somebody that's completely laser-focused, 46 00:04:38,861 --> 00:04:42,448 and has made the commitment to, you know, running big rivers. 47 00:05:08,182 --> 00:05:12,228 My earliest memory is probably this boat. 48 00:05:13,563 --> 00:05:15,315 My dad was into drag boats. 49 00:05:16,274 --> 00:05:20,069 {\an8}And he would start the thing up, and it would just shake the whole house. 50 00:05:21,446 --> 00:05:23,740 My dad was wild back then. 51 00:05:24,657 --> 00:05:27,869 {\an8}We didn't live near the mountains. We didn't live near the ocean. 52 00:05:27,952 --> 00:05:32,999 {\an8}We grew up in hot valleys, San Bernardino, Fresno, Sacramento. 53 00:05:33,082 --> 00:05:35,626 We're true valley kids. 54 00:05:37,045 --> 00:05:40,256 {\an8}The boys, I'm gonna speak about both of them, 55 00:05:40,339 --> 00:05:43,468 {\an8}'cause one goes with the other almost. 56 00:05:44,218 --> 00:05:46,554 The brothers were very close. 57 00:05:46,637 --> 00:05:49,849 I believe that healthy children were active children, 58 00:05:50,600 --> 00:05:52,351 and meant no doctor bills. 59 00:05:52,435 --> 00:05:55,188 Early years were fun. Really fun. 60 00:05:55,730 --> 00:05:58,566 And then, their dad and I got a divorce. 61 00:05:59,817 --> 00:06:03,613 {\an8}For many years, I've kind of regretted that, you know? 62 00:06:03,696 --> 00:06:06,866 I felt that we should have stuck it out. 63 00:06:07,075 --> 00:06:11,162 But it wasn't to be, you know. It wasn't gonna happen. 64 00:06:13,289 --> 00:06:19,003 [Scott] My mom had just lost her job, and she had decided to go back to school. 65 00:06:19,087 --> 00:06:21,964 At that point, we were living off of student loans. 66 00:06:22,215 --> 00:06:26,803 And my dad was like a traveling salesman. He just wasn't in the picture. 67 00:06:29,889 --> 00:06:33,309 We were living in San Bernardino, and the neighborhood that we grew up in 68 00:06:33,392 --> 00:06:35,311 was definitely rough. 69 00:06:35,728 --> 00:06:37,105 Our home was very safe. 70 00:06:37,188 --> 00:06:40,775 But you walk out the front door, and two blocks down, 71 00:06:40,858 --> 00:06:43,152 it was a completely different world. 72 00:06:43,236 --> 00:06:46,114 There were street hookers on the corner. There were drug dealers. 73 00:06:46,197 --> 00:06:49,617 There were kids carrying weapons to school. 74 00:06:50,409 --> 00:06:54,080 [Dustin] At the time, there was really one way, in our mind, 75 00:06:54,163 --> 00:06:56,999 to climb the ladder in getting any sort of respect, 76 00:06:57,083 --> 00:06:59,293 and that was through being physical, 77 00:06:59,377 --> 00:07:02,130 and getting into a fight to prove yourself. 78 00:07:02,213 --> 00:07:04,465 [Scott] If somebody challenged us, that was it. 79 00:07:04,549 --> 00:07:07,260 We would just pull the shirt off and start throwing blows. 80 00:07:07,343 --> 00:07:10,221 We were heavily picked on, especially me. 81 00:07:12,181 --> 00:07:15,226 I was walking home from a friend's house, 82 00:07:15,810 --> 00:07:17,603 and I got in a fight with a couple kids. 83 00:07:17,687 --> 00:07:20,481 And one of the kids stabbed me in the shoulder. 84 00:07:21,774 --> 00:07:25,069 And, fortunately, I was faster than both the other kids, 85 00:07:25,153 --> 00:07:27,113 and I literally just outran them. 86 00:07:28,489 --> 00:07:33,035 I remember running in the front door and telling my brother I just got stabbed. 87 00:07:33,661 --> 00:07:35,121 [Dustin] I remember him and I talking 88 00:07:35,204 --> 00:07:37,331 about how we were gonna keep it from my mom. 89 00:07:37,415 --> 00:07:39,959 And he wanted to make sure that I wasn't gonna say anything. 90 00:07:40,042 --> 00:07:43,504 [Scott] And we knew that the more we kept from our parents, 91 00:07:43,588 --> 00:07:45,673 the less stress it put on them. 92 00:07:45,756 --> 00:07:47,925 It was like, "Okay, let's bury this thing. 93 00:07:48,009 --> 00:07:50,678 Let's not have a conversation ever again about it." 94 00:07:52,305 --> 00:07:55,933 There were things that throughout our, you know, childhood, 95 00:07:56,017 --> 00:07:58,352 whether it was getting suspended from school, 96 00:07:58,436 --> 00:08:00,771 or Scott getting arrested for stupid stuff, 97 00:08:01,522 --> 00:08:05,026 it kind of created some negatives in our character. 98 00:08:05,568 --> 00:08:08,946 [Mary] We lost the house. I was out of money. 99 00:08:09,530 --> 00:08:11,782 One of those, you know? We were at the end. 100 00:08:13,618 --> 00:08:16,787 It was time to get Scott and Dustin out of San Bernardino. 101 00:08:18,164 --> 00:08:20,333 [Dustin] And so then, my mom got out of college, 102 00:08:20,416 --> 00:08:23,669 and we moved to the Sacramento Valley, to Rocklin/Roseville area. 103 00:08:24,837 --> 00:08:27,215 And that's when things kind of mellowed out a little bit. 104 00:08:28,591 --> 00:08:31,636 [Scott] Our next-door neighbor at the time was the Stanley family. 105 00:08:33,596 --> 00:08:35,681 They lived real close to Mary and the boys. 106 00:08:35,765 --> 00:08:39,143 And got them into rafting. 107 00:08:39,810 --> 00:08:42,230 [Dustin] As soon as school got out, we would head to the river. 108 00:08:42,313 --> 00:08:43,856 We'd head to the mountains. 109 00:08:43,940 --> 00:08:46,567 Did things that Scott and I had never experienced. 110 00:08:46,651 --> 00:08:49,695 And I think that we saw that as an opportunity. 111 00:08:50,404 --> 00:08:54,784 [Scott] Doug, the oldest brother, was running this rafting guide school. 112 00:08:55,243 --> 00:09:00,122 And he really presented the idea that there was something more to life 113 00:09:00,206 --> 00:09:05,711 than partying, getting in fights, and doing illegal shit. 114 00:09:08,506 --> 00:09:11,551 [Mary] Dustin and Scott both went through their guide school, 115 00:09:11,634 --> 00:09:12,802 and became river guides. 116 00:09:12,885 --> 00:09:15,221 And they worked summers doing that. 117 00:09:15,304 --> 00:09:16,347 That's when I was like, 118 00:09:17,098 --> 00:09:19,892 "Wow, this is something that is really singing to my heart." 119 00:09:19,976 --> 00:09:21,269 [men cheer] 120 00:09:21,352 --> 00:09:23,938 ♪ 'Cause I can't let go ♪ 121 00:09:24,313 --> 00:09:27,650 ♪ It's the greatest thrill I've ever known ♪ 122 00:09:28,317 --> 00:09:32,363 ♪ I'm not sure there's somethin' more There's no tellin' what's in store ♪ 123 00:09:32,446 --> 00:09:35,783 ♪ Now I can't let go ♪ 124 00:09:36,450 --> 00:09:39,912 When you're a river guide, you're responsible for people's lives. 125 00:09:39,996 --> 00:09:44,959 And that all of a sudden gave my brother and I both a whole new outlook on life. 126 00:09:45,042 --> 00:09:49,255 We went from up to no good to, all of a sudden, 127 00:09:49,338 --> 00:09:52,675 being in the outdoors with a huge amount of responsibility. 128 00:09:52,758 --> 00:09:56,178 [Mary] I really wanted them to follow their dreams 129 00:09:56,262 --> 00:09:59,015 and their own path and do what they wanted to do. 130 00:09:59,098 --> 00:10:01,767 And I knew they were good at whatever they did. 131 00:10:02,643 --> 00:10:05,104 All I could see was him being up on the riverbank, 132 00:10:05,187 --> 00:10:09,400 you know, sleeping in a sleeping bag, and what future was there in that? 133 00:10:09,483 --> 00:10:11,068 I couldn't see a profession. 134 00:10:11,444 --> 00:10:16,490 And it wasn't until I went with him on the Colorado river. 135 00:10:16,574 --> 00:10:18,618 ♪ I'm out the door for somethin' more ♪ 136 00:10:18,701 --> 00:10:20,453 ♪ There's no telling what's in store ♪ 137 00:10:20,536 --> 00:10:23,372 ♪ Now I can't let go ♪ 138 00:10:24,749 --> 00:10:25,958 I was overwhelmed. 139 00:10:28,294 --> 00:10:30,421 It was an amazing trip, for me. 140 00:10:31,213 --> 00:10:33,466 I knew. That's when I knew. 141 00:10:35,635 --> 00:10:38,554 [Scott] The river enlightened both my brother and I. 142 00:10:39,305 --> 00:10:43,643 It channeled an energy that we had in us 143 00:10:43,726 --> 00:10:47,605 that we were using in a negative way, 144 00:10:48,022 --> 00:10:49,315 to a positive way. 145 00:10:49,815 --> 00:10:53,444 And there was nothing else in life I wanted to do, 146 00:10:53,527 --> 00:10:56,280 other than travel down a river at that point. I was sold. 147 00:10:56,781 --> 00:10:58,074 Hook, line, and sinker. 148 00:11:00,576 --> 00:11:04,038 When I first was exposed to kayaking, it was actually through rafting. 149 00:11:04,121 --> 00:11:08,709 And I remember it being described to me through a friend of mine. 150 00:11:09,293 --> 00:11:13,506 And he's like, "This rafting stuff, it's kind of like driving a bus. 151 00:11:14,215 --> 00:11:17,218 But kayaking is like driving a sports car. 152 00:11:17,301 --> 00:11:19,261 You want to be driving the sports car." 153 00:11:19,345 --> 00:11:21,305 And I was like, "Yes, I do." 154 00:11:22,598 --> 00:11:24,892 For somebody that knows nothing about kayaking, 155 00:11:24,975 --> 00:11:31,649 rapids in a river are essentially made up of waves, holes, 156 00:11:31,732 --> 00:11:33,901 rocks, and currents. 157 00:11:34,568 --> 00:11:38,030 If you don't avoid some of these features, you can get stuck. 158 00:11:38,572 --> 00:11:41,033 You can get flipped over in your kayak. 159 00:11:41,117 --> 00:11:45,162 And if you can't roll the kayak, that can cause a swim. 160 00:11:45,663 --> 00:11:47,623 And then, you're at the mercy of the river. 161 00:11:48,624 --> 00:11:54,213 Kayaks give you this incredible opportunity to navigate down a river, 162 00:11:54,296 --> 00:11:56,340 unlike any other watercraft. 163 00:11:58,175 --> 00:12:01,137 I got in the kayak, and I struggled a bunch at first. 164 00:12:01,220 --> 00:12:05,099 But that was my first real extended period of time in a kayak. 165 00:12:05,182 --> 00:12:08,436 And I came off of that, and I had a decision to make. 166 00:12:08,519 --> 00:12:15,443 Whether to go to college or do this river guiding, kayaking thing. 167 00:12:15,526 --> 00:12:17,528 And I decided to do the latter. 168 00:12:17,611 --> 00:12:20,281 And that spring, when I finished up guiding, 169 00:12:20,364 --> 00:12:24,743 I loaded up my kayak and drove to Banks, Idaho. 170 00:12:25,286 --> 00:12:26,912 And then, boom. 171 00:12:26,996 --> 00:12:29,415 I was paddling North Fork at the Payette every day. 172 00:12:32,001 --> 00:12:35,171 The North Fork, at that time, was the place to be. 173 00:12:35,254 --> 00:12:37,381 You know, that's when I met Charlie Munsey. 174 00:12:41,552 --> 00:12:44,472 At that time, Charlie was king of the North Fork. 175 00:12:44,805 --> 00:12:46,348 {\an8}North Fork at the Payette. 176 00:12:46,432 --> 00:12:49,226 {\an8}I got them to put that on my driver's license, 177 00:12:49,310 --> 00:12:51,812 and probably made, I don't know, 178 00:12:51,896 --> 00:12:55,733 700 or 800 descents down the North Fork at different levels. 179 00:12:55,816 --> 00:12:59,195 Scott Lindgren showed up in Idaho, drove up in a Toyota 180 00:12:59,278 --> 00:13:02,406 that looked like it had a couple million miles on it. 181 00:13:03,699 --> 00:13:06,410 Definitely had a little bit of a chip on his shoulder. 182 00:13:06,869 --> 00:13:09,663 And he was very motivated to kayak. 183 00:13:11,040 --> 00:13:13,375 [Scott] Charlie and I connected immediately. 184 00:13:13,459 --> 00:13:15,711 [Charlie] It was just kind of a natural fit. 185 00:13:15,794 --> 00:13:19,006 I was four or five years older, and he had some natural ability. 186 00:13:19,089 --> 00:13:21,884 I always felt really comfortable having Scott out there with me. 187 00:13:21,967 --> 00:13:25,971 I knew I had a solid partner, and I could count on him. 188 00:13:26,764 --> 00:13:29,642 In the early '90s, I went over to Nepal once, 189 00:13:29,725 --> 00:13:32,186 and did nine or ten rivers. 190 00:13:32,686 --> 00:13:36,065 So I talked Scott into going over there with me. 191 00:13:36,815 --> 00:13:38,984 [Scott] And that was all he needed to say to me. 192 00:13:39,068 --> 00:13:42,321 I was just like, "Yeah, I'll save all my money that I make here, 193 00:13:42,404 --> 00:13:43,697 and we'll go to Asia." 194 00:13:44,406 --> 00:13:46,992 [Mary] He was barely out of school when he went to Nepal. 195 00:13:47,076 --> 00:13:49,745 And that was hard to let him go. 196 00:13:50,454 --> 00:13:56,210 He's very focused, and it became his life. 197 00:13:59,838 --> 00:14:03,050 [Scott] That's when I realized that kayaking wasn't just something 198 00:14:03,133 --> 00:14:06,887 that happened in California, and in Idaho and in the U.S. 199 00:14:06,971 --> 00:14:10,015 It was being practiced all over the world. 200 00:14:20,442 --> 00:14:24,488 I was still super young, you know. I'm 20 years old at this time. 201 00:14:25,447 --> 00:14:26,448 I was a kid. 202 00:14:28,325 --> 00:14:31,453 [Charlie] We always tried to do the things that hadn't been done before, 203 00:14:31,537 --> 00:14:33,205 so that brought an extra element. 204 00:14:33,622 --> 00:14:34,498 And-- 205 00:14:34,582 --> 00:14:37,585 [Craig] I had heard that there was this sacred mountain called Kailash. 206 00:14:39,837 --> 00:14:42,047 [Charlie] Kailash is way out in western Tibet. 207 00:14:42,131 --> 00:14:46,552 And for 5,000 plus years, people had been writing about 208 00:14:46,635 --> 00:14:50,639 how these four great rivers of the Himalayas and Karakoram 209 00:14:50,723 --> 00:14:52,808 drained from its glaciers. 210 00:14:55,603 --> 00:14:59,356 [Scott] Once we started to learn about the mythical lore of Kailash, 211 00:15:00,065 --> 00:15:06,155 the direction for me became really apparent. 212 00:15:06,864 --> 00:15:08,741 I'm gonna drop everything in my life. 213 00:15:08,824 --> 00:15:11,327 I'm just going to go as hard as I possibly can 214 00:15:11,410 --> 00:15:14,079 to get myself in the best shape to run all the four rivers. 215 00:15:16,707 --> 00:15:20,252 [Charlie] And that was really the start of the dream. 216 00:15:24,965 --> 00:15:29,011 [Scott] When I came home from that first year in Nepal, 217 00:15:29,094 --> 00:15:32,473 it was that style of expedition kayaking 218 00:15:32,556 --> 00:15:36,977 that really set the precedent early on for California. 219 00:15:39,730 --> 00:15:45,444 That next spring, I bought this cheap, little Hi8 video camera, 220 00:15:45,527 --> 00:15:48,822 {\an8}and that's when I met John and Willie Kern 221 00:15:48,906 --> 00:15:50,532 {\an8}and Chuck for the first time. 222 00:15:51,116 --> 00:15:52,618 [Willie] It doesn't matter whether you're a kayaker, 223 00:15:52,701 --> 00:15:55,496 {\an8}if your essence started on or near a river, 224 00:15:55,579 --> 00:15:59,500 there's kind of this implied humility, there's a sense of place, 225 00:15:59,583 --> 00:16:00,960 there's like a camaraderie. 226 00:16:01,835 --> 00:16:02,836 Back in the day, 227 00:16:03,170 --> 00:16:05,047 there just weren't that many people doing it. 228 00:16:05,130 --> 00:16:06,590 When you saw a kayaker, 229 00:16:06,674 --> 00:16:09,802 it was an enthusiastic time. When you ended up at a river 230 00:16:09,885 --> 00:16:12,596 where there were other kayakers, you found your family. 231 00:16:13,097 --> 00:16:16,642 {\an8}[Johnnie] As soon as we met Scott, we brought our game, 232 00:16:16,725 --> 00:16:18,143 {\an8}he brought his game, 233 00:16:18,227 --> 00:16:20,646 {\an8}he's a natural leader, there's no question. 234 00:16:21,271 --> 00:16:23,857 [Willie] Scott really gave back to the group with this idea, he's like, 235 00:16:23,941 --> 00:16:27,319 "I'm gonna stick a camera between my legs. I'm gonna carry this thing downriver." 236 00:16:27,403 --> 00:16:29,363 You know, Johnnie had a still camera, 237 00:16:29,446 --> 00:16:31,615 and Chuck definitely incited something else. 238 00:16:32,157 --> 00:16:34,660 [Scott] Chuck was the standout. 239 00:16:34,743 --> 00:16:37,830 He absolutely was the driving force for all of us. 240 00:16:38,455 --> 00:16:41,583 There was nobody better in the world at that time, 241 00:16:41,917 --> 00:16:44,962 and it kind of felt like we were along for the ride. 242 00:16:45,045 --> 00:16:47,047 [Scott] You guys can't make him laugh. 243 00:16:47,798 --> 00:16:50,217 {\an8}Kayaking with Willie and Johnnie, you know. 244 00:16:50,300 --> 00:16:51,802 They're my two best friends too. 245 00:16:51,885 --> 00:16:55,681 {\an8}Kayaking with those guys is, that's one of the goals right there. 246 00:16:55,764 --> 00:16:58,767 And it automatically brings the energy level up. 247 00:16:58,851 --> 00:17:01,729 Makes you feel a lot better at the top of the drop when you look down 248 00:17:01,812 --> 00:17:04,815 and see both of your brothers down there smiling in the eddy. 249 00:17:05,357 --> 00:17:07,943 For me, my role became like I'm the guy without a camera. 250 00:17:08,027 --> 00:17:10,487 I'm not thinking about that. I'm thinking about the group, 251 00:17:10,571 --> 00:17:11,780 and wear safety, and what's going on. 252 00:17:11,864 --> 00:17:15,200 And so we all kind of established our places on the river. 253 00:17:15,284 --> 00:17:18,078 [Dustin] And we started firing as a team. 254 00:17:25,252 --> 00:17:29,590 [Scott] It was an eclectic group of kids from all over the world, 255 00:17:29,673 --> 00:17:32,176 and we all were just, for whatever reason, 256 00:17:32,259 --> 00:17:34,178 seeing it all at the same time. 257 00:17:34,261 --> 00:17:35,971 [Willie] There was a base of knowledge, 258 00:17:36,055 --> 00:17:39,850 but there was a lot of room to expand on that knowledge. 259 00:17:40,476 --> 00:17:45,022 I truly believe that was the turning point in what was possible in a kayak, 260 00:17:45,105 --> 00:17:48,192 because of the equipment, and because of my brother's movies. 261 00:17:48,275 --> 00:17:51,236 We'd go back and look at his little video camera footage, 262 00:17:51,320 --> 00:17:53,739 and like no one's ever documented stuff like this. 263 00:17:53,822 --> 00:17:56,158 And then, we were like, "Let's start a production company 264 00:17:56,241 --> 00:17:57,618 and see where it takes us." 265 00:17:58,827 --> 00:18:00,788 And there was just opportunity everywhere. 266 00:18:01,205 --> 00:18:05,501 ♪ If I fall back down You're gonna help me back up again ♪ 267 00:18:05,584 --> 00:18:07,503 ♪ If I fall back down... ♪ 268 00:18:08,462 --> 00:18:11,465 [Scott] And for the first time in kayaking history, really, 269 00:18:11,548 --> 00:18:17,513 you had a group of people, their sole focus was to kayak. 270 00:18:17,596 --> 00:18:18,472 That was it. 271 00:18:18,555 --> 00:18:20,474 {\an8}[Todd] I literally remember going, 272 00:18:20,557 --> 00:18:23,519 {\an8}"Well, how can you make money doing that?" 273 00:18:24,561 --> 00:18:27,231 [Knapp] We'd watched some of the other extreme kayaking films 274 00:18:27,314 --> 00:18:28,857 {\an8}and there wasn't that much out there. 275 00:18:28,941 --> 00:18:30,442 {\an8}There was Southern Fried Creekin'. 276 00:18:39,284 --> 00:18:40,160 Uh... 277 00:18:40,244 --> 00:18:43,205 now, let's see, what would you do in a situation like this? 278 00:18:43,747 --> 00:18:47,417 That's how you could do that. You can start making kayaking films. 279 00:18:47,835 --> 00:18:51,296 Their filmmaking started with Good 2 the Last Drop. 280 00:18:51,380 --> 00:18:52,840 Fucking awesome film. 281 00:18:53,757 --> 00:18:57,553 ♪ If I fall back down You're gonna help me back up again ♪ 282 00:18:58,428 --> 00:19:02,558 ♪ If I fall back down You're gonna be my friend ♪ 283 00:19:03,392 --> 00:19:06,019 Fuck, that was so good. Did you guys ever see that? 284 00:19:06,103 --> 00:19:09,439 [Dustin] As cheesy as those very first movies were, 285 00:19:09,523 --> 00:19:12,651 at the time, they were mind-blowing to the white-water world. 286 00:19:13,610 --> 00:19:16,572 {\an8}[Scott] And that was the beginning of Driftwood Productions. 287 00:19:17,281 --> 00:19:21,410 [Dustin] I went from being a river guide to shooting kayaking for my brother. 288 00:19:21,493 --> 00:19:23,787 He realized the better he got at using cameras, 289 00:19:24,204 --> 00:19:25,789 and winning things like his Emmy 290 00:19:25,873 --> 00:19:28,000 were avenues for him to get bigger budgets, 291 00:19:28,083 --> 00:19:30,210 which led to going on bigger trips. 292 00:19:30,294 --> 00:19:33,547 It was exciting to be their mom. [laughs] 293 00:19:34,423 --> 00:19:36,341 They were becoming quite well known. 294 00:19:36,675 --> 00:19:39,386 We were in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. 295 00:19:40,304 --> 00:19:43,473 {\an8}And kayaking was blowing up. 296 00:19:50,355 --> 00:19:51,773 [Dustin] Come on, Scott. 297 00:19:56,195 --> 00:19:58,030 Woo-hoo! 298 00:19:58,780 --> 00:20:00,324 -Yeah! -You saw it? 299 00:20:00,407 --> 00:20:01,450 That was sick. 300 00:20:03,577 --> 00:20:05,495 [Willie] That was a really happy time, you know? 301 00:20:05,579 --> 00:20:07,581 Everything was sort of right in the world. 302 00:20:07,664 --> 00:20:08,790 We had wings. 303 00:20:08,874 --> 00:20:09,708 [men yell] 304 00:20:10,500 --> 00:20:12,211 -[Scott] How was that, dude? -That was sick. 305 00:20:12,878 --> 00:20:14,922 That's the best ride I've ever done. What about you, Scotty? 306 00:20:16,632 --> 00:20:18,300 {\an8}[Scott] So where are you going now? 307 00:20:18,800 --> 00:20:22,304 {\an8}I'm gonna drive to Colorado, go kayak there. 308 00:20:25,140 --> 00:20:26,350 [Dustin] It was that summer, 309 00:20:26,850 --> 00:20:28,810 we hear about the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. 310 00:20:28,894 --> 00:20:30,437 It's a national monument. 311 00:20:30,520 --> 00:20:34,733 Just this super deep cut in the Colorado plateau. 312 00:20:34,816 --> 00:20:37,486 [Willie] We decided that we would stay closer to river level. 313 00:20:37,569 --> 00:20:41,156 We might be able to find a new way to kind of piece the puzzle together. 314 00:20:41,365 --> 00:20:44,451 As we're coming down it, there's a lot of water that's disappearing 315 00:20:44,868 --> 00:20:46,745 and you gotta be sure that you can make a move. 316 00:20:47,955 --> 00:20:50,207 Chuck went to go make the move. 317 00:20:51,833 --> 00:20:55,337 [Dustin] Chuck paddles into this flat, kind of submerged rock, 318 00:20:55,671 --> 00:20:57,589 and gets pinned fairly quickly, 319 00:20:57,673 --> 00:21:01,218 and he's up to his waist or so, and he disappears. 320 00:21:01,843 --> 00:21:04,179 Within the span of me looking, 321 00:21:05,264 --> 00:21:07,599 turning to check upstream, and looking back, 322 00:21:07,933 --> 00:21:11,520 Chuck was overcome by the water, by the force of the water at his back. 323 00:21:12,729 --> 00:21:18,068 It was just the moment, the momentum, the whatever it was, you know? 324 00:21:18,360 --> 00:21:19,653 It was that spot. 325 00:21:42,050 --> 00:21:45,470 I would say that the closeness that existed between Chuck and Scott 326 00:21:45,971 --> 00:21:50,058 is not too dissimilar to the closeness that existed between me and Chuck. 327 00:21:50,517 --> 00:21:51,601 We were brothers. 328 00:21:52,436 --> 00:21:54,396 And so they grew around that, you know? 329 00:21:54,479 --> 00:21:57,357 They grew around that relationship, as we all did. 330 00:22:04,281 --> 00:22:08,368 [Scott] That year, that was the seventh person that had drowned, 331 00:22:09,369 --> 00:22:11,997 and four or five of them were in our circle. 332 00:22:12,080 --> 00:22:14,333 It just became brutal. 333 00:22:15,542 --> 00:22:17,377 Like, "What the fuck are we doing?" 334 00:22:24,092 --> 00:22:25,218 [Willie] When Chuck died, 335 00:22:25,761 --> 00:22:29,848 that's when things, I think, really became way more serious for Scott. 336 00:22:31,016 --> 00:22:34,269 It compelled him to be that much more edgy. 337 00:22:37,522 --> 00:22:41,193 And the emotion that I got stuck in was anger. 338 00:22:41,568 --> 00:22:42,986 I became super angry. 339 00:22:44,488 --> 00:22:48,575 [Scott] If you showed up out of shape, or if you were mentally unstable, 340 00:22:48,658 --> 00:22:52,746 or if you showed any sort of emotional weakness, 341 00:22:52,829 --> 00:22:55,499 you were a threat to the safety of the trip. 342 00:22:55,832 --> 00:22:58,543 And so you were instantly ostracized. 343 00:22:59,753 --> 00:23:04,508 Instead of coming over and asking, like, "Hey, man, are you okay?" 344 00:23:05,425 --> 00:23:07,302 We were like, "Harden the fuck up. 345 00:23:07,385 --> 00:23:10,555 If you're falling apart, you should get your shit and hike out." 346 00:23:13,308 --> 00:23:16,103 It's like standard protocol, isn't it? It's the reverend. 347 00:23:16,728 --> 00:23:19,606 Reverend, will you take away all my sins? 348 00:23:20,398 --> 00:23:23,068 [Willie] We didn't have a lot of touchy-feely conversations 349 00:23:23,151 --> 00:23:24,653 about how people were feeling. 350 00:23:24,736 --> 00:23:27,906 We debriefed experiences in the way that we knew best, 351 00:23:27,989 --> 00:23:32,202 which was bust open a bottle of whiskey and spend a little time with it, 352 00:23:32,285 --> 00:23:33,662 and reminisce, 353 00:23:33,745 --> 00:23:36,581 but we weren't necessarily learning a lot about ourselves. 354 00:23:37,666 --> 00:23:40,836 {\an8}He shared with me, in the early years, 355 00:23:40,919 --> 00:23:43,338 {\an8}how, you know, he had it pretty rough growing up. 356 00:23:43,421 --> 00:23:47,008 You know, I think that all kind of put a chip on his shoulder 357 00:23:47,092 --> 00:23:50,720 and forced him to kind of find a way to protect himself. 358 00:23:50,804 --> 00:23:55,934 And the way that he did that was to be hard, and hard on other people. 359 00:23:57,018 --> 00:24:00,730 I'd lost too many friends, lost too many friends. 360 00:24:00,814 --> 00:24:03,191 And so it was easy to be a dick about it. 361 00:24:03,525 --> 00:24:07,154 You know? It was just like, "You're not cut for this. Beat it." 362 00:24:12,409 --> 00:24:14,578 None of us knew how to cope. 363 00:24:15,996 --> 00:24:21,209 Anytime it became challenging, I would just run to the river. 364 00:24:23,378 --> 00:24:25,046 [Johnnie] You lose this person, right? 365 00:24:25,130 --> 00:24:27,924 You want to... uh... 366 00:24:29,718 --> 00:24:32,345 You want him back, right? So you want to find him. 367 00:24:32,429 --> 00:24:34,347 So not paddling wasn't finding him. 368 00:24:34,431 --> 00:24:38,435 The best way to connect with him was to get back to the river. 369 00:24:39,853 --> 00:24:42,564 [Willie] We had to go fall in love with kayaking again 370 00:24:42,647 --> 00:24:45,692 and re-inspire what started in California for all of us, 371 00:24:46,193 --> 00:24:48,778 but overlay it on a much bigger geography. 372 00:24:49,571 --> 00:24:53,241 It also, for Scott's sake, it really started to set this tone 373 00:24:53,325 --> 00:24:55,160 for that, you know, the four rivers. 374 00:25:04,836 --> 00:25:09,216 And the first time we kind of really got back on that horse together 375 00:25:09,299 --> 00:25:11,092 was the Upper Karnali. 376 00:25:18,308 --> 00:25:19,851 Are you rolling? 377 00:25:19,935 --> 00:25:23,438 As river runners, Mount Kailash really holds a very special meaning. 378 00:25:23,897 --> 00:25:27,150 As the Hindu believe, when it rains on top of Mount Kailash, 379 00:25:27,692 --> 00:25:31,613 it goes underground and circles seven times around the mountain. 380 00:25:31,863 --> 00:25:35,992 And it comes out in four cardinal directions through the Locks of Shiva. 381 00:25:36,076 --> 00:25:40,914 In the west flows the Sutlej River. In the north flows the Indus River. 382 00:25:40,997 --> 00:25:45,877 In the east flows the Tsangpo River. And in the south flows the Karnali River. 383 00:25:46,628 --> 00:25:49,464 The Karnali River is where we're gonna start our journey. 384 00:25:50,298 --> 00:25:52,175 [Charlie] Making a pilgrimage into Kailash, 385 00:25:52,259 --> 00:25:55,804 and then, being able to kayak the four great rivers that come off it, 386 00:25:55,887 --> 00:26:00,350 in my mind it was kind of like, as high as you can go in the sport. 387 00:26:01,893 --> 00:26:05,855 Now, we've made our way down the source of the Karnali river here. 388 00:26:05,939 --> 00:26:09,150 And we're looking at the first descent of the Upper Karnali gorges. 389 00:26:09,234 --> 00:26:11,569 This is day one of about 20. 390 00:26:14,781 --> 00:26:19,244 [Scott] We drop in and it takes us seven days to navigate the head waters. 391 00:26:21,496 --> 00:26:24,124 [Johnnie] The first canyon was totally inescapable, 392 00:26:25,417 --> 00:26:27,335 six to eight-thousand-foot walls. 393 00:26:36,469 --> 00:26:39,889 [Scott] You're in a canyon. You're in the middle of fucking nowhere. 394 00:26:39,973 --> 00:26:41,891 The only way out is downstream. 395 00:26:42,392 --> 00:26:43,560 You're on your own. 396 00:26:45,186 --> 00:26:46,563 {\an8}[Charlie] What's up, Scott? 397 00:26:49,024 --> 00:26:50,150 [Charlie] You worried? 398 00:26:55,822 --> 00:26:57,699 [Willie] When we got into the heart of the Karnali, 399 00:26:57,782 --> 00:26:59,534 it was a gut check for everybody. 400 00:27:00,577 --> 00:27:03,163 But probably nobody more acutely than for Charlie. 401 00:27:03,621 --> 00:27:10,253 He felt it very strongly that we had potentially taken it a little too far. 402 00:27:12,213 --> 00:27:16,217 This is a... big canyon, I'll tell ya. 403 00:27:16,301 --> 00:27:17,969 [Scott] He was out of his comfort zone. 404 00:27:18,053 --> 00:27:20,305 It started feeling like I was in a war zone 405 00:27:20,388 --> 00:27:22,807 when I was out there, and it messes with your mind. 406 00:27:23,224 --> 00:27:27,979 I felt they were stronger paddlers, and that really broke me down. 407 00:27:28,063 --> 00:27:30,023 It was some really hard stuff. 408 00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:32,776 [Scott] I've witnessed a lot of people. 409 00:27:33,234 --> 00:27:36,363 I've witnessed their moment when they've walked away. 410 00:27:37,822 --> 00:27:41,451 This doesn't last forever. You got to have an inner fire. 411 00:27:42,452 --> 00:27:47,791 And the second that it becomes unstable, it becomes dangerous. 412 00:27:48,625 --> 00:27:51,127 [Willie] And then, we came out of that gorge. 413 00:27:51,211 --> 00:27:52,379 And the next day, 414 00:27:52,921 --> 00:27:56,424 he decided that he wasn't going to move downstream with us from there. 415 00:27:56,508 --> 00:28:00,178 And I don't think I realized that that meant forever. 416 00:28:01,596 --> 00:28:04,182 That was a monumental moment for Charlie and I, 417 00:28:04,265 --> 00:28:06,476 because that was the last time I paddled with him. 418 00:28:07,644 --> 00:28:10,438 Charlie understood the history, like the ancient history. 419 00:28:11,147 --> 00:28:13,608 [Scott] It was Charlie's dream just as much as my dream 420 00:28:13,691 --> 00:28:14,818 to run all four rivers. 421 00:28:14,901 --> 00:28:16,486 -[indistinct] -There you go, buddy. 422 00:28:16,569 --> 00:28:19,072 -All right. You guys be safe. -You, too. 423 00:28:19,155 --> 00:28:20,156 We'll see you back. 424 00:28:20,240 --> 00:28:23,034 [Charlie] I saw myself as a mentor of Scott's. 425 00:28:23,118 --> 00:28:27,914 And you know, he's got more talent than I, and gosh, Scott's got a good shot at this. 426 00:28:28,706 --> 00:28:33,002 [Scott] And we were clearly operating on another level, 427 00:28:33,878 --> 00:28:35,672 and uh, it kind of broke my heart. 428 00:28:37,257 --> 00:28:42,137 We ended up finishing it, and it was, at that time, 429 00:28:42,220 --> 00:28:45,306 one of the most impactful river trips I had ever done. 430 00:28:46,307 --> 00:28:49,561 It wasn't too long after that, I meet Mikey and Allan 431 00:28:49,644 --> 00:28:51,896 for the first descent of the Sutlej. 432 00:28:55,191 --> 00:28:57,318 [Mikey] Scott first told me about the dream 433 00:28:57,402 --> 00:29:00,864 to run the four rivers from Kailash while we were on the Sutlej. 434 00:29:02,991 --> 00:29:07,537 {\an8}To compare that with another sport, I guess it's like climbing four faces 435 00:29:07,620 --> 00:29:10,373 {\an8}on the highest mountain in the world. 436 00:29:10,457 --> 00:29:12,792 [Allan] One of the main features of the Sutlej 437 00:29:12,876 --> 00:29:17,756 {\an8}is a eight, 900-meter vertical rock wall and the river down the bottom. 438 00:29:21,301 --> 00:29:24,137 For me, that was the first time I paddled with Scott. 439 00:29:24,220 --> 00:29:27,474 He might have got a bit frustrated because maybe we're a bit slow, 440 00:29:27,557 --> 00:29:29,601 and he was used to charging into things. 441 00:29:30,810 --> 00:29:32,979 But by the end of it, we were all charging. 442 00:29:36,357 --> 00:29:38,902 [Mikey] Sometimes the scale can be a bit daunting 443 00:29:38,985 --> 00:29:41,404 when you know you have thousands of meters of gradient. 444 00:29:43,114 --> 00:29:44,532 But just one day at a time. 445 00:29:44,616 --> 00:29:49,537 And that trip I remember well as being one of the first times the realization hit me 446 00:29:49,621 --> 00:29:52,540 that these rivers that we had been paddling in the Himalayas, 447 00:29:53,291 --> 00:29:57,170 we're racing against a dam and the river being destroyed from this. 448 00:29:58,755 --> 00:30:01,382 And now, that section, one of the coolest, deepest, 449 00:30:01,466 --> 00:30:03,384 best white-water sections, is flooded. 450 00:30:05,261 --> 00:30:06,513 Brilliant white water. 451 00:30:07,639 --> 00:30:09,891 And we've got a big party of people 452 00:30:09,974 --> 00:30:12,602 waiting to celebrate with us here in Rampur. 453 00:30:14,062 --> 00:30:16,940 [Allan] I think we were really fired up after the Sutlej, 454 00:30:17,023 --> 00:30:20,401 Mainly because we spent every night talking about the Tsangpo. 455 00:30:24,572 --> 00:30:27,033 [Scott] The Tsangpo, logistically speaking, 456 00:30:27,116 --> 00:30:29,702 was on a whole 'nother level. It was a beast. 457 00:30:30,829 --> 00:30:32,664 And I remember reaching out to Charlie. 458 00:30:32,747 --> 00:30:36,376 I was like, "Hey, I'm making a full court press for the Tsangpo, 459 00:30:37,168 --> 00:30:38,878 and I want you there." 460 00:30:39,838 --> 00:30:42,841 [Charlie] By then, you know, I was really into photography, 461 00:30:42,924 --> 00:30:46,427 and I was getting a little older, and not kayaking as much. 462 00:30:46,511 --> 00:30:50,515 And so it wasn't so important to me to try to get all four rivers. 463 00:30:50,598 --> 00:30:54,477 But really, my future was photographing the next generation. 464 00:30:55,311 --> 00:30:58,857 [Scott] For Charlie and I, we were obsessed with the Tsangpo. 465 00:30:59,607 --> 00:31:02,151 [Charlie] That's really the deepest gorge in the world. 466 00:31:02,235 --> 00:31:05,113 You've got 25,000-foot Gyala Peri on one side, 467 00:31:05,196 --> 00:31:08,491 and 25,000-foot Namcha Barwa on the other. 468 00:31:10,076 --> 00:31:12,871 And you drop through this gorge for 150 miles. 469 00:31:13,454 --> 00:31:19,419 [Scott] It's a 12,000-foot descent through something that's dropping 470 00:31:19,502 --> 00:31:22,547 off the Tibetan plateau at an astronomical rate. 471 00:31:23,464 --> 00:31:27,677 At the same time, there was another crew, the Whitwalker crew. 472 00:31:28,303 --> 00:31:32,140 I basically start to get nervous that these guys are gonna go bag this thing. 473 00:31:32,724 --> 00:31:34,851 Those guys showed up over there and put on, 474 00:31:34,934 --> 00:31:39,230 and it wasn't too long after putting on, Doug Gordon missed a move, 475 00:31:40,148 --> 00:31:43,192 and got pushed into the center of the river and was never seen again. 476 00:31:47,780 --> 00:31:50,199 You know, when that happened, as tragic as it was, 477 00:31:50,283 --> 00:31:53,953 we kind of, we realized we needed to take our time. 478 00:31:54,913 --> 00:32:01,669 There was a ton of buildup and months of staring at satellite maps, 479 00:32:01,753 --> 00:32:03,338 and being terrified. 480 00:32:03,713 --> 00:32:07,175 You layer up this like, political inaccessibility, 481 00:32:07,258 --> 00:32:10,720 and it becomes bigger than life really quickly. 482 00:32:16,601 --> 00:32:19,145 [indistinct chatter] 483 00:32:19,228 --> 00:32:21,439 [Scott] And there were so many components, 484 00:32:21,522 --> 00:32:25,902 and I had so many sleepless nights planning for that expedition. 485 00:32:25,985 --> 00:32:28,988 I mean, I sold my soul on so many different levels. 486 00:32:33,242 --> 00:32:35,536 For me to pull that thing off, 487 00:32:35,620 --> 00:32:38,623 I had to bring in just the very best of the best. 488 00:32:39,832 --> 00:32:43,044 {\an8}Today is quite a day in history. 489 00:32:43,127 --> 00:32:46,714 {\an8}Today, Scott Lindgren, Johnnie Kern, Willie Kern, 490 00:32:47,382 --> 00:32:51,970 Dustin Knapp, Mike Abbott, Allan Ellard, and Steve Fisher 491 00:32:52,887 --> 00:32:56,099 are gonna run the Yarlung Tsangpo river. 492 00:32:59,852 --> 00:33:04,941 [Scott] It's gonna be pretty full on. The river, it's definitely big. 493 00:33:18,287 --> 00:33:20,832 [Allan] [indistinct] out in the backwash, and... 494 00:33:21,374 --> 00:33:24,377 and when I rolled up it was, uh, it hit him straight back up. 495 00:33:24,460 --> 00:33:26,587 It's turning into a pretty ugly spot. 496 00:33:36,931 --> 00:33:39,058 [Scott] I don't know if Dustin got that shot or not, 497 00:33:39,142 --> 00:33:40,601 but I just got absolutely hammered. 498 00:33:43,146 --> 00:33:44,188 Went into a hole. 499 00:33:45,023 --> 00:33:46,733 I didn't think I was gonna come out. 500 00:33:48,860 --> 00:33:49,986 Long day. 501 00:33:50,737 --> 00:33:53,823 We're about six miles above Rainbow Falls. 502 00:33:53,906 --> 00:33:58,494 This rapid right here is the entrance to a major gorge 503 00:33:58,995 --> 00:34:01,497 that was a major problem on our maps. 504 00:34:12,967 --> 00:34:14,677 [Scott] It was the endurance. 505 00:34:16,012 --> 00:34:18,306 It was the long haul. It was the suffering. 506 00:34:20,892 --> 00:34:22,894 Nothing better than a good suffer fest. 507 00:34:24,437 --> 00:34:27,482 I mean, I don't know, I was attracted to it. I kind of liked it. 508 00:34:28,524 --> 00:34:30,860 Where I'm sitting is right above 509 00:34:30,943 --> 00:34:34,030 what I believe is one of the more powerful places on the planet Earth, 510 00:34:34,113 --> 00:34:37,075 Rainbow Falls, which is a 70-foot waterfall. 511 00:34:37,158 --> 00:34:40,620 And directly below it is a 110-foot waterfall 512 00:34:40,703 --> 00:34:43,956 that just harnesses the power of the Himalayas. 513 00:34:47,710 --> 00:34:51,672 And our journey ahead of us now is taking a different road. 514 00:34:51,756 --> 00:34:54,467 We're having to hike up over a pass 515 00:34:54,550 --> 00:34:57,595 that is still a major obstacle to this expedition. 516 00:34:58,387 --> 00:35:01,224 That was one of the gnarliest little sections right there. 517 00:35:01,724 --> 00:35:05,478 One slip and you're 2,000 feet down to the river. 518 00:35:07,063 --> 00:35:10,525 No one told me we were climbing Namcha Barwa on the way. 519 00:35:10,608 --> 00:35:14,362 I just hope that all of us will safely make it off of this thing, 520 00:35:14,445 --> 00:35:18,658 because we've got a descent here that's gonna be harrowing. 521 00:35:18,741 --> 00:35:22,078 You learn a lot about somebody and the way they operate pretty quickly 522 00:35:22,161 --> 00:35:25,206 when you sign up for something that's not necessarily easy. 523 00:35:25,289 --> 00:35:27,375 It's the life under a magnifying glass. 524 00:35:28,668 --> 00:35:32,296 [Scott] We had just walked over a 12,000-foot pass. 525 00:35:33,506 --> 00:35:38,386 And the porters say, you know, "If you don't give us twice as much money 526 00:35:38,469 --> 00:35:42,473 as you were gonna pay us, we are gonna leave you guys up here." 527 00:35:43,057 --> 00:35:47,478 [Scott] And they were threatening violence. 528 00:35:47,562 --> 00:35:48,396 What's the number? 529 00:35:48,479 --> 00:35:50,273 [Willie] These people are gonna come steal everything 530 00:35:50,356 --> 00:35:51,607 and hurt us. 531 00:35:51,691 --> 00:35:55,695 [man speaking in local language] 532 00:35:55,778 --> 00:35:58,573 Stop the fucking money talking! You hear me? 533 00:35:58,656 --> 00:36:03,202 I think Scott had no bandwidth left. 534 00:36:04,579 --> 00:36:10,459 That was the one time where I saw a part of this rawness, 535 00:36:10,543 --> 00:36:12,336 people might say his edginess. 536 00:36:12,420 --> 00:36:13,421 Fuck! 537 00:36:14,005 --> 00:36:17,300 [speaking in local language] 538 00:36:17,383 --> 00:36:19,802 [Scott] Yeah? What are you gonna fucking do? 539 00:36:19,886 --> 00:36:21,387 [Dustin] That surprised me. 540 00:36:21,470 --> 00:36:25,516 Is this stress? Or is there something more going on? 541 00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:27,310 Is there something going on in his head? 542 00:36:27,393 --> 00:36:30,605 -We're already fucked. -We're not fucked, we're in trouble. 543 00:36:30,688 --> 00:36:32,940 But we're not absolutely fucked. 544 00:36:33,900 --> 00:36:35,860 -Um... -Right now we have no options 545 00:36:35,943 --> 00:36:37,904 except for to pay them what they want. 546 00:36:38,154 --> 00:36:40,907 Once you start hitting the 25, 30-day range, 547 00:36:40,990 --> 00:36:44,076 everything becomes a little different dynamic. 548 00:36:44,160 --> 00:36:47,413 [yelling in local language] 549 00:36:50,333 --> 00:36:51,792 It becomes a lot more sensitive. 550 00:36:51,876 --> 00:36:54,212 And I hadn't had a break the entire time. 551 00:36:57,715 --> 00:37:02,970 What happened today was the first time in my ten years of coming to the Himalayas 552 00:37:03,054 --> 00:37:08,100 where I've been held hostage and robbed by our 43 porters. 553 00:37:08,893 --> 00:37:12,605 We're off to Payu, which is a good thing. 554 00:37:12,688 --> 00:37:14,815 I think everybody's ready to get out of here. 555 00:37:15,942 --> 00:37:20,154 We should have failed a thousand times in there. 556 00:37:20,488 --> 00:37:22,698 I mean, every day there was something happening 557 00:37:22,782 --> 00:37:25,910 where the livelihood of the expedition was being threatened. 558 00:37:27,536 --> 00:37:30,206 The fact that we made it, even to this day, 559 00:37:30,289 --> 00:37:33,751 I look back on it, and it just blows me away. 560 00:37:36,254 --> 00:37:38,089 When I came home from the Tsangpo, 561 00:37:38,172 --> 00:37:42,593 I was emotionally and physically so drained. 562 00:37:43,302 --> 00:37:44,929 [David] Guys, good morning. Congratulations. 563 00:37:45,012 --> 00:37:46,555 {\an8}-[Scott] Thank you. -[Johnnie] Thanks. 564 00:37:46,639 --> 00:37:49,642 Scott, I mean, you are, we said, a world-class kayaker. 565 00:37:49,725 --> 00:37:52,019 But even you kind of went, "Gulp." 566 00:37:52,103 --> 00:37:56,607 The Tsangpo experience definitely, it took a lot out of everybody, 567 00:37:57,066 --> 00:37:59,652 but I would venture to say it took a lot more out of Scott. 568 00:38:00,486 --> 00:38:02,363 [Johnnie] And it changed everything. 569 00:38:04,282 --> 00:38:07,618 [Scott] This sport, mental focus-wise, 570 00:38:07,702 --> 00:38:12,164 you would hold for days, and days, and days on end, 571 00:38:12,248 --> 00:38:14,083 and then, when we would get off, 572 00:38:15,126 --> 00:38:18,254 we'd be so exhausted from holding that space, 573 00:38:18,879 --> 00:38:21,966 the only way we knew how to release it was to send a bender. 574 00:38:22,967 --> 00:38:28,764 Reentry is one of the hardest parts about putting yourself in these places. 575 00:38:28,848 --> 00:38:31,600 ♪ Another pocket of beer ♪ 576 00:38:33,686 --> 00:38:36,397 ♪ It's all I ever have ♪ 577 00:38:37,273 --> 00:38:41,402 [Johnnie] How do I absorb this into my life and use it for good 578 00:38:41,485 --> 00:38:44,989 and not just a point where I'm like, "I wish I was still there?" 579 00:38:46,240 --> 00:38:49,577 [indistinct chatter] 580 00:38:49,660 --> 00:38:52,455 [Scott] And so then, you just find yourself in this pattern 581 00:38:53,080 --> 00:39:00,046 where you're full throttle, locked down for days on end, 582 00:39:00,129 --> 00:39:04,091 come out, send a bender, gear up, right back at it, 583 00:39:04,508 --> 00:39:06,344 and you just repeat the behavior. 584 00:39:07,011 --> 00:39:09,555 And it's a crazy way to live. 585 00:39:12,850 --> 00:39:18,064 {\an8}When you finish some big expedition that gets a lot of attention, 586 00:39:18,397 --> 00:39:21,859 the very first thing everybody asks you is what's next? 587 00:39:23,361 --> 00:39:25,071 This is what you wanted to do. 588 00:39:25,154 --> 00:39:27,573 You're 30 now, so what's the next big adventure? 589 00:39:27,656 --> 00:39:30,618 At that time, I was looking at the Indus. 590 00:39:30,743 --> 00:39:32,536 You know, that was the fourth and final river. 591 00:39:32,620 --> 00:39:37,124 And I've done now the Sutlej, the Karnali, and the Tsangpo. 592 00:39:37,208 --> 00:39:38,751 And that leaves the Indus. 593 00:39:38,834 --> 00:39:42,546 And then, Pakistan's completely off-limits to any sort of tourism. 594 00:39:43,089 --> 00:39:45,633 I felt I just needed to take some time off, 595 00:39:45,716 --> 00:39:47,802 and breathe a little bit. 596 00:39:48,094 --> 00:39:50,805 And that was the thing. I wasn't getting any time off. 597 00:39:51,931 --> 00:39:56,310 We've done a tour throughout the U.S. And it's been a success, 598 00:39:56,394 --> 00:39:58,687 and I really hope you guys enjoy the show tonight. 599 00:39:58,771 --> 00:40:03,067 I was being flown all over the country to do premiers for the movie, 600 00:40:03,150 --> 00:40:05,653 and I had a television show to deliver. 601 00:40:05,736 --> 00:40:08,489 It was something that I wasn't really used to. 602 00:40:08,572 --> 00:40:11,992 I didn't know how to handle, and I let it get the best of me. 603 00:40:14,120 --> 00:40:16,330 Before, everything was about kayaking. 604 00:40:16,414 --> 00:40:21,961 And then, all of a sudden, now, it was more about the production. 605 00:40:22,503 --> 00:40:25,214 [Willie] It was clearly a transition for him 606 00:40:25,297 --> 00:40:28,843 to bigger budgets, and now, you're on the hook for results. 607 00:40:28,926 --> 00:40:31,137 Now, you're on the hook for accomplishments. 608 00:40:31,220 --> 00:40:34,348 People have a whole different set of expectations for you. 609 00:40:34,432 --> 00:40:36,809 [Scott] It was more of like, a full-time job, 610 00:40:36,892 --> 00:40:41,313 and it was more about playing that sort of corporate role 611 00:40:41,397 --> 00:40:44,817 in working with bigger sponsors, and more money. 612 00:40:46,402 --> 00:40:50,156 I think that that was a big turning point for everybody 613 00:40:50,239 --> 00:40:53,701 in terms of hanging out with Scott, and going on trips with him. 614 00:40:53,784 --> 00:40:57,830 There's a conversation he had with me, and it's a standout conversation. 615 00:40:57,913 --> 00:41:01,167 He said, "I don't care about high-fiving down this river. 616 00:41:01,667 --> 00:41:05,629 All I care about is getting my shots and paying my mortgage." 617 00:41:06,505 --> 00:41:09,800 And I'd never heard that kind of language from Scott before. 618 00:41:10,301 --> 00:41:12,887 That's the opposite of what we're trying to do. 619 00:41:12,970 --> 00:41:16,098 We literally are there to high-five down the river. 620 00:41:17,892 --> 00:41:21,645 [Scott] The next several years, I started going to Africa. 621 00:41:28,110 --> 00:41:32,031 I probably physically and mentally wasn't in the best space ever, 622 00:41:32,114 --> 00:41:35,159 but we were headed into Murchison Falls. 623 00:41:39,622 --> 00:41:46,170 As far as river trips are concerned, one of the scariest things I've ever done. 624 00:41:46,962 --> 00:41:52,301 You have the river right side, which is the Lord's Resistance Army. 625 00:41:53,177 --> 00:41:56,263 You have insanely huge white water. 626 00:41:56,972 --> 00:42:01,477 You have the highest concentration of crocs and hippos anywhere in the world. 627 00:42:02,478 --> 00:42:05,397 [Mikey] It's the kind of place that you've got to take very seriously. 628 00:42:05,481 --> 00:42:07,149 Something goes wrong in the white water, 629 00:42:07,233 --> 00:42:10,819 well, there could be somebody waiting for you at the bottom of the rapid. 630 00:42:11,570 --> 00:42:15,407 It's the kind of stretch that I've only done once, 631 00:42:15,699 --> 00:42:17,493 and I don't plan to go back to. 632 00:42:23,415 --> 00:42:27,836 {\an8}On that trip, I could tell something was up with my brother. 633 00:42:28,629 --> 00:42:33,008 He was feeling weak physically. 634 00:42:34,134 --> 00:42:35,511 He knew he had to bury that fear. 635 00:42:35,594 --> 00:42:40,933 He knew that he couldn't be the guy that brought the group down. 636 00:42:41,016 --> 00:42:42,476 He knows the rules. 637 00:42:43,602 --> 00:42:47,648 The first thing I noticed was that his paddling wasn't up to par. 638 00:42:49,984 --> 00:42:54,655 [Scott] What started happening was that when I would flip over, 639 00:42:55,948 --> 00:42:58,158 I was starting to lose spatial awareness. 640 00:42:59,493 --> 00:43:03,914 I wasn't blacking out, but like, I didn't know where I was at. 641 00:43:04,373 --> 00:43:06,083 And I was struggling to roll. 642 00:43:07,710 --> 00:43:10,296 And this was the last place in the world 643 00:43:10,379 --> 00:43:14,633 you wanted to be struggling with a roll upside-down. 644 00:43:15,759 --> 00:43:20,014 The kind of pressure that Scott would put on people in the group was 645 00:43:20,431 --> 00:43:23,517 if somebody wasn't paddling up to par, he would tell them, 646 00:43:23,601 --> 00:43:25,019 "You need to sit this one out." 647 00:43:25,102 --> 00:43:27,646 So, on the Murch section for the first time, 648 00:43:27,730 --> 00:43:31,442 he was the guy that he would have given the pep talk to. 649 00:43:34,695 --> 00:43:38,949 I came off of that expedition, I told myself, 650 00:43:39,033 --> 00:43:42,870 "I'm going to take three months off. I gotta figure out what's going on here." 651 00:43:44,580 --> 00:43:47,625 And I couldn't put my finger on it. 652 00:43:47,708 --> 00:43:49,293 I went to the doctor a few times, 653 00:43:49,376 --> 00:43:53,339 and all my vitals seemed to be, you know, pretty good. 654 00:43:54,548 --> 00:43:57,343 Maybe that's it, you know, I'm just getting old, and... 655 00:43:57,968 --> 00:43:59,261 I had a hell of a run. 656 00:44:00,304 --> 00:44:02,056 But I think, intuitively, 657 00:44:02,139 --> 00:44:05,726 I kind of felt like something deeper was going on at that point. 658 00:44:05,809 --> 00:44:09,146 You can't operate at that level forever. 659 00:44:09,229 --> 00:44:12,441 This is the guarantee, right? You can try. 660 00:44:13,651 --> 00:44:15,235 [Scott] And the one thing 661 00:44:15,361 --> 00:44:20,741 that I was really hanging onto the most was the Indus. 662 00:44:21,367 --> 00:44:24,536 It was the hole in my soul. 663 00:44:24,620 --> 00:44:31,251 I mean, I knew that I was letting that go when I walked away. 664 00:44:32,419 --> 00:44:33,420 And... 665 00:44:36,757 --> 00:44:38,008 I walked away. 666 00:44:40,386 --> 00:44:42,888 [Willie] For Scotty, to see that transition, 667 00:44:43,347 --> 00:44:46,016 like, professional, to like, 668 00:44:46,100 --> 00:44:48,727 professional, now, I don't even know if I love what I loved. 669 00:44:48,811 --> 00:44:51,063 Now, I'm out on the river, and now, I'm not healthy, 670 00:44:51,146 --> 00:44:53,107 and now, I'm not on the river 'cause I'm not healthy. 671 00:44:53,190 --> 00:44:57,486 What a crazy spiral that is, and can be for somebody. 672 00:44:58,487 --> 00:45:02,616 [Dustin] He was going to the bar. He was taking everything too far. 673 00:45:03,158 --> 00:45:06,120 [Scott] I used everything. I was a, "More, please," guy. 674 00:45:06,662 --> 00:45:08,497 Anything that made you feel better. 675 00:45:09,498 --> 00:45:11,417 And then, what ended up happening is 676 00:45:11,500 --> 00:45:18,215 that slowly but surely, one by one, everyone started to go away. 677 00:45:19,591 --> 00:45:23,804 And that was the fucked-up prison, 678 00:45:24,471 --> 00:45:27,933 because you're just alone. 679 00:45:31,812 --> 00:45:36,817 Three months off the river turned into eight long years. 680 00:45:44,074 --> 00:45:46,702 I'm at home by myself, 681 00:45:48,745 --> 00:45:50,372 and I start getting a headache. 682 00:45:52,291 --> 00:45:55,794 I just start seeing double. And I start moving. 683 00:45:58,297 --> 00:46:00,841 And then, I kind of just black out. 684 00:46:03,969 --> 00:46:06,305 I was just laying there, 685 00:46:07,931 --> 00:46:11,685 and woke up, and my head, it was splitting in two. 686 00:46:12,811 --> 00:46:17,065 Like, something's wrong. I gotta figure out what's going on here. 687 00:46:19,568 --> 00:46:21,111 I go to the doctor. 688 00:46:21,778 --> 00:46:23,614 I kind of told him what was going on, 689 00:46:23,697 --> 00:46:25,991 and he's like, "Let's take a picture of your brain." 690 00:46:30,120 --> 00:46:33,040 That was the beginning of it all. 691 00:46:35,000 --> 00:46:38,295 Got the call, was at night. 692 00:46:40,756 --> 00:46:41,882 And then, he said, 693 00:46:41,965 --> 00:46:46,845 "It turns out that I have a brain tumor the size of a small baseball 694 00:46:46,929 --> 00:46:48,430 in the back of my head." 695 00:46:49,473 --> 00:46:51,016 I went to my knees. 696 00:46:53,101 --> 00:46:55,395 Probably one of the worst moments of my life. 697 00:47:02,152 --> 00:47:03,904 [Dr. Jian] Scott has a pituitary adenoma. 698 00:47:03,987 --> 00:47:07,241 Pituitary tumors are basically found in a few ways. 699 00:47:07,324 --> 00:47:10,035 {\an8}People have a severe headache, they show up to the emergency room. 700 00:47:10,118 --> 00:47:11,537 {\an8}They get a scan. And we see it. 701 00:47:11,620 --> 00:47:15,707 The major concern that we have is vision loss. 702 00:47:15,791 --> 00:47:17,709 The tumors can occasionally bleed. 703 00:47:18,168 --> 00:47:22,005 And when they bleed, the tumor's not growing quickly, 704 00:47:22,089 --> 00:47:27,678 but the volume is growing quickly because the bleeding fills up the space 705 00:47:27,761 --> 00:47:30,097 and pushes on the optic nerves right away. 706 00:47:30,180 --> 00:47:34,017 And so when people present with the worst headache of their life 707 00:47:34,101 --> 00:47:37,980 and sudden vision loss, that's a medical emergency. 708 00:47:38,063 --> 00:47:41,275 They go to the emergency room and get operated on 709 00:47:41,358 --> 00:47:43,068 usually within the next 24 hours. 710 00:47:43,944 --> 00:47:47,447 His tumor was of a very large size pushing on his optic nerves, 711 00:47:47,531 --> 00:47:50,701 and it needed to be dealt with surgically. 712 00:47:50,784 --> 00:47:53,954 I knew that I was looking at an eight-to-ten-hour brain surgery, 713 00:47:55,080 --> 00:47:57,916 and there were no guarantees. 714 00:47:59,501 --> 00:48:01,837 [Dr. Jian] His wrapped around his right carotid arteries. 715 00:48:01,920 --> 00:48:06,091 That made his surgery more complicated than the average pituitary surgery. 716 00:48:06,174 --> 00:48:10,137 There are injuries to the carotid artery when you're operating on them. 717 00:48:11,555 --> 00:48:14,349 Let's just say, if he were to become completely incapacitated 718 00:48:14,433 --> 00:48:17,936 from the surgery, right? What kind of a lifestyle is that for him? 719 00:48:20,939 --> 00:48:23,066 But worst-case scenario would be death. 720 00:48:27,446 --> 00:48:30,949 [Scott] I was walking down the hallway with my family and Johnnie and Willie, 721 00:48:31,033 --> 00:48:33,452 and it was the longest fucking hallway ever. 722 00:48:34,870 --> 00:48:38,040 We get to the door to where we walk into the operating room, 723 00:48:38,332 --> 00:48:41,168 and the nurse looks back at me 724 00:48:41,251 --> 00:48:45,005 and was like, "Okay, this is hugs and kisses, goodbye." 725 00:48:59,353 --> 00:49:03,607 I have a picture of him in the ICU after the surgery, 726 00:49:03,690 --> 00:49:08,153 and seeing Scott in that way is also scary. 727 00:49:08,236 --> 00:49:13,033 I don't believe anybody's invincible. I lost that perspective when Chuck died. 728 00:49:13,116 --> 00:49:16,036 But to see your friend hooked up to all the machinery, 729 00:49:16,119 --> 00:49:19,665 was an interesting pivot point for us, like, "Okay, what's next?" 730 00:49:21,208 --> 00:49:23,293 [Dr. Jian] When we removed it, 731 00:49:23,377 --> 00:49:25,295 we took everything off of his optic nerves, 732 00:49:25,379 --> 00:49:28,757 took everything that filled up that saddle area. 733 00:49:28,840 --> 00:49:34,596 There was just maybe not even a peanut's worth size of tumor left. 734 00:49:36,306 --> 00:49:41,311 His has the threat of regrowing because the stuff to the outside 735 00:49:41,395 --> 00:49:45,857 of the carotid artery was unreachable without excessive risk. 736 00:49:49,486 --> 00:49:52,906 [Scott] A month goes by, and my head was clear, 737 00:49:52,989 --> 00:49:54,449 my ears were clear, 738 00:49:54,533 --> 00:49:57,744 things were coming back that I didn't even know existed 739 00:49:57,828 --> 00:49:59,705 because they'd been gone for so long. 740 00:49:59,996 --> 00:50:04,334 When you physically feel good it helps your mental stability. 741 00:50:05,085 --> 00:50:09,715 But I wasn't talking to anyone about it. 742 00:50:10,298 --> 00:50:12,092 And I fell right back into pattern. 743 00:50:13,009 --> 00:50:15,637 [Dustin] It's no different than when he got stabbed as a kid. 744 00:50:15,721 --> 00:50:17,848 It's like stuff that stuff away, hide it. 745 00:50:17,931 --> 00:50:20,517 It was super important to him that nobody knew. 746 00:50:21,351 --> 00:50:24,438 [Willie] I mean, the easiest way to not deal with something 747 00:50:24,521 --> 00:50:27,190 is to bottle it up and block it out. 748 00:50:28,567 --> 00:50:31,319 That doesn't really equal out to dealing with anything, right? 749 00:50:31,403 --> 00:50:33,947 That just relies on your ability to absorb it. 750 00:50:34,948 --> 00:50:37,492 [Scott] I looked at my tumor as a weakness. 751 00:50:39,369 --> 00:50:43,832 And I spent my entire life not being weak. 752 00:50:44,833 --> 00:50:47,002 [Willie] Vulnerable is a scary place to be 753 00:50:47,085 --> 00:50:50,547 when you have fought to be secure your whole life. 754 00:50:51,298 --> 00:50:55,886 The further along I got in the physical healing part of it, 755 00:50:57,471 --> 00:51:00,432 the more I slid backwards mentally. 756 00:51:02,392 --> 00:51:05,312 [Dr. Jian] The pituitary tumor pushes on the pituitary gland. 757 00:51:05,395 --> 00:51:10,275 The gland is important in making you feel how you feel every day. 758 00:51:10,358 --> 00:51:13,820 Those hormones don't rebound that quickly. Sometimes they don't rebound at all. 759 00:51:14,529 --> 00:51:15,947 So I tell patients, 760 00:51:16,031 --> 00:51:19,242 "Listen, you may feel lethargic, you may feel depressed." 761 00:51:19,785 --> 00:51:22,454 It takes months for the body to recalibrate itself. 762 00:51:23,371 --> 00:51:26,875 [Dustin] Scott idling and waiting around for scans for a year, 763 00:51:26,958 --> 00:51:28,919 and "Oh, you got six more months." 764 00:51:29,294 --> 00:51:31,129 You know, you need to be mellow. 765 00:51:31,213 --> 00:51:34,341 And the way he dealt with it was not the best thing for his tumor. 766 00:51:35,217 --> 00:51:39,346 It's always hard to say as a friend, "Is this life bearing down on you? 767 00:51:39,429 --> 00:51:42,557 Is this the long, slow ramp after your peak adventure?" 768 00:51:43,058 --> 00:51:45,018 How do you even reconcile that? 769 00:51:45,769 --> 00:51:49,689 I just was screaming for help, and just didn't know how to ask for it. 770 00:51:53,068 --> 00:51:55,403 [siren wailing] 771 00:52:03,745 --> 00:52:05,914 [Dustin] I think the turning point for Scott, honestly, 772 00:52:05,997 --> 00:52:07,707 and I've never even told him this, 773 00:52:07,791 --> 00:52:11,169 but actually, him hitting rock bottom, and getting that DUI. 774 00:52:11,253 --> 00:52:13,338 And that morning, when I went to pick him up 775 00:52:13,421 --> 00:52:15,799 at Sac County Jail, and we're driving home, 776 00:52:15,882 --> 00:52:18,343 and, you know, I think things hit him pretty hard. 777 00:52:23,306 --> 00:52:25,100 That DUI saved his life. 778 00:52:33,149 --> 00:52:34,568 [Scott] I've always believed 779 00:52:34,651 --> 00:52:37,696 that the universe brings people together for a reason. 780 00:52:41,074 --> 00:52:43,201 {\an8}I do remember the first time we met. 781 00:52:44,786 --> 00:52:47,581 {\an8}Scott and I were introduced by a mutual friend. 782 00:52:47,664 --> 00:52:50,917 We met on a ski hill, and it was a blind date, 783 00:52:51,001 --> 00:52:53,169 and definitely there was a magnetism. 784 00:52:54,296 --> 00:52:55,839 When I first met Scott, 785 00:52:55,922 --> 00:53:00,760 it was the hard Scott coming out of healing through his brain tumor. 786 00:53:01,678 --> 00:53:03,430 [Scott] She was intuitive, 787 00:53:03,513 --> 00:53:09,019 and she had this way of communicating with me. 788 00:53:09,477 --> 00:53:12,314 And I instantly fell in love with her. 789 00:53:15,984 --> 00:53:17,110 [laughs] 790 00:53:18,069 --> 00:53:24,409 To my lovely Patricia, I love you so much. 791 00:53:24,492 --> 00:53:26,077 -[Patricia giggles] -Mwah. 792 00:53:27,120 --> 00:53:30,498 [Patricia] We had this fierce and incredible love. 793 00:53:30,582 --> 00:53:35,754 He surrounded me in this bubble of protection and strength. 794 00:53:35,837 --> 00:53:40,926 It was undeniable that we both were healing layers upon layers 795 00:53:41,468 --> 00:53:43,345 of history together. 796 00:53:43,762 --> 00:53:46,264 But still, there was an ocean between us. 797 00:53:47,599 --> 00:53:53,647 It was like feeling trapped in the greatest love of my life 798 00:53:54,189 --> 00:53:57,484 with someone who didn't know how to allow me in. 799 00:53:59,819 --> 00:54:02,572 I couldn't understand why I couldn't get closer, 800 00:54:02,656 --> 00:54:06,576 and I believe that mindset that he needed to have on the river, 801 00:54:06,660 --> 00:54:11,581 also translated into a relationship of him just being walled off. 802 00:54:12,540 --> 00:54:16,086 If I was having a bad day at home, or if I called him crying, 803 00:54:16,169 --> 00:54:18,296 it would be like, "Harden the fuck up, Trish." 804 00:54:20,715 --> 00:54:25,303 She approached me and was like, 805 00:54:25,387 --> 00:54:27,180 "I can't do this anymore. 806 00:54:28,723 --> 00:54:32,936 You're totally emotionally unavailable." 807 00:54:33,687 --> 00:54:36,523 And so for me, it was like, 808 00:54:37,190 --> 00:54:39,985 "We've got to find a different language for us to communicate.": 809 00:54:40,068 --> 00:54:44,280 And it was at that time I encouraged him to go 810 00:54:44,364 --> 00:54:49,035 on this therapeutic process of exploring our negative love patterns 811 00:54:49,119 --> 00:54:53,164 and the way and why's of how we show up in this world. 812 00:54:53,248 --> 00:54:54,666 Who uses therapy? 813 00:54:54,749 --> 00:55:00,672 I spent the better part of my youth making fun of that shit. 814 00:55:00,755 --> 00:55:03,508 [Patricia] There was so much he hadn't dealt with in his childhood. 815 00:55:03,591 --> 00:55:05,844 There was so much that was glaringly clear 816 00:55:05,927 --> 00:55:08,555 that needed to be healed in his relationships. 817 00:55:09,931 --> 00:55:14,352 5I had started to wrap my head around the idea of surrendering, 818 00:55:15,020 --> 00:55:18,940 and I, at that point, 819 00:55:19,774 --> 00:55:24,070 listened to what she had to say, and uh... 820 00:55:26,531 --> 00:55:27,991 I went and got help. 821 00:55:30,285 --> 00:55:35,165 I very slowly started having conversation. 822 00:55:36,708 --> 00:55:38,793 The more I started to talk about it, 823 00:55:39,878 --> 00:55:44,340 the more healing started to happen. 824 00:55:45,800 --> 00:55:50,847 I could feel that vulnerability was strength, it wasn't weakness. 825 00:55:50,930 --> 00:55:54,851 And vulnerability was the way forward. 826 00:55:54,934 --> 00:55:59,105 [Patricia] You know, he really took a deep dive into yoga, and meditation, 827 00:55:59,189 --> 00:56:01,900 and reading, and aligning for once, 828 00:56:03,276 --> 00:56:07,864 that he could lead with his heart and also be a fierce athlete. 829 00:56:09,199 --> 00:56:12,911 [Willie] At some point, he couldn't live behind that curtain anymore. 830 00:56:13,953 --> 00:56:17,082 He saw the benefit of coming out from behind that a little bit. 831 00:56:17,707 --> 00:56:19,626 And putting himself forward, 832 00:56:19,709 --> 00:56:22,420 not what he had done in his life previously, 833 00:56:22,504 --> 00:56:25,715 not his accomplishments, not his, you know, the feathers in his cap, 834 00:56:25,799 --> 00:56:30,136 but more like, "Who am I right now? What's my truth?" 835 00:56:31,888 --> 00:56:35,100 [Scott] Now, I was not only physically healing, 836 00:56:35,642 --> 00:56:38,436 but I was mentally and spiritually healing. 837 00:56:38,937 --> 00:56:42,690 He was wanting to try on kayaking again. 838 00:56:43,441 --> 00:56:46,402 And I don't think I fully understood 839 00:56:46,820 --> 00:56:49,906 or could comprehend the magnitude of what that meant for him. 840 00:56:51,741 --> 00:56:56,037 [Dustin] The only thing left for him to do is get back on the horse 841 00:56:56,121 --> 00:56:58,289 and start being the athlete that he was. 842 00:57:00,208 --> 00:57:03,002 [Scott] I just told myself, "Get out of bed and go. 843 00:57:03,586 --> 00:57:07,924 Don't worry about anything else other than just put yourself in a space 844 00:57:08,007 --> 00:57:11,052 to go sit in the thing, force yourself to get in there." 845 00:57:12,095 --> 00:57:14,430 And I slowly start getting back into kayaking. 846 00:57:15,515 --> 00:57:19,394 And the first month was humbling. 847 00:57:26,943 --> 00:57:28,236 I swam a lot. 848 00:57:29,863 --> 00:57:30,905 [faint scream] 849 00:57:32,115 --> 00:57:33,700 I missed a lot of moves. 850 00:57:49,174 --> 00:57:52,177 I was getting my ass kicked on a regular basis. 851 00:58:04,564 --> 00:58:07,358 It was literally like starting over from scratch. 852 00:58:11,070 --> 00:58:14,908 But then, I started to feel better. 853 00:58:19,996 --> 00:58:22,874 It started to become like second nature. 854 00:58:32,842 --> 00:58:36,846 And I was starting to feel that love again 855 00:58:37,514 --> 00:58:40,266 from having the river back in my life. 856 00:58:41,434 --> 00:58:42,727 I was healing. 857 00:58:46,481 --> 00:58:49,317 I knew I had to go back to the North Fork of the Payette. 858 00:58:49,400 --> 00:58:54,322 It was where it all began, and it's a place that meant so much to me. 859 00:58:54,989 --> 00:58:57,283 I'm getting in my car to go up to the North Fork, 860 00:58:57,367 --> 00:59:01,246 and this kid comes out, and I had met Aniol. 861 00:59:02,330 --> 00:59:03,623 [crowd cheers] 862 00:59:13,216 --> 00:59:16,844 And I knew he was one of the best kayakers in the world. 863 00:59:21,307 --> 00:59:22,850 He's like, "Hey, you going up to the river?" 864 00:59:22,934 --> 00:59:24,435 I was like, "Yeah, I'm going up to the river." 865 00:59:24,519 --> 00:59:27,063 And he was like, "Cool. Can I catch a ride with you?" 866 00:59:27,146 --> 00:59:29,482 And I was like, "No problem, kid. Go grab your shit." 867 00:59:30,108 --> 00:59:32,151 {\an8}Back in the day, yeah, he was the idol. 868 00:59:32,235 --> 00:59:34,362 {\an8}You know, he was the person to look up to. 869 00:59:34,445 --> 00:59:36,781 And many stories came on that one-hour drive. 870 00:59:36,864 --> 00:59:40,952 We talked about how he really wanted to paddle the four rivers. 871 00:59:41,995 --> 00:59:45,081 [Scott] And he was like, "What's the fourth river?" 872 00:59:45,623 --> 00:59:49,127 [Aniol] It happened to be that that year I was going to Pakistan. 873 00:59:49,544 --> 00:59:51,337 [Scott] And he invited me to the Indus. 874 00:59:52,088 --> 00:59:54,882 {\an8}It just sent a bolt of lightning down my spine. 875 00:59:55,466 --> 00:59:59,345 {\an8}I won't believe it until I'm going, but yeah, let's do this. 876 01:00:00,805 --> 01:00:02,682 What Aniol did for me, 877 01:00:02,765 --> 01:00:08,146 I would have never done for somebody else in my situation. 878 01:00:09,188 --> 01:00:14,736 Taking me back in and letting me relearn something that I had lost. 879 01:00:15,570 --> 01:00:18,406 At the beginning, he was more like an idol to me. 880 01:00:18,990 --> 01:00:22,410 You know, the great Scott, the great kayaker, the legend. 881 01:00:22,994 --> 01:00:24,412 As months went by, 882 01:00:24,495 --> 01:00:26,914 he just has become a really good friend of mine. 883 01:00:28,041 --> 01:00:32,754 [Scott] I had spent the better part of my kayaking career 884 01:00:32,837 --> 01:00:37,592 ostracizing any form of weakness. And here I was, 885 01:00:37,967 --> 01:00:39,552 by far the weakest link, 886 01:00:39,886 --> 01:00:44,932 and my friends in the kayaking community didn't ostracize me. 887 01:01:03,534 --> 01:01:07,163 I've surrendered to the fact that if I get hurt, it wasn't meant to be. 888 01:01:07,246 --> 01:01:09,957 If I die trying, so be it. 889 01:01:10,291 --> 01:01:15,088 And that's when the work really started to pay off. 890 01:02:10,435 --> 01:02:14,605 That was insane. I'm so fucking grateful for you guys. 891 01:02:14,689 --> 01:02:15,815 Holy shit. 892 01:02:21,195 --> 01:02:25,908 I was looking towards a bunch of 20-something year old kids 893 01:02:25,992 --> 01:02:27,577 to get me back in shape 894 01:02:28,202 --> 01:02:30,705 to go run the Indus. 895 01:02:32,206 --> 01:02:34,917 And I'm set to go in for an MRI. 896 01:02:38,504 --> 01:02:41,340 This is kind of my reality once a year. 897 01:02:41,424 --> 01:02:42,258 Um... 898 01:02:43,176 --> 01:02:44,635 I go get a picture taken 899 01:02:44,719 --> 01:02:48,973 and basically it lets me know if my tumor's stable or not. 900 01:02:50,933 --> 01:02:55,021 Doctor Jian called me up, and he's like, 901 01:02:55,104 --> 01:02:59,525 "Hey, it's time to do radiation. Your tumor's growing." 902 01:03:00,485 --> 01:03:04,739 And I remember they explained what it is that he would need to go through, 903 01:03:04,822 --> 01:03:07,241 radiation, and different treatment options. 904 01:03:07,909 --> 01:03:12,371 And I remember so distinctly at that time, Scott was like, "Fuck it." 905 01:03:12,622 --> 01:03:15,500 And so I canceled all my doctor's appointments. 906 01:03:15,583 --> 01:03:18,836 I didn't want to know. I didn't fucking care. 907 01:03:18,920 --> 01:03:20,421 The only thing I thought about 908 01:03:20,505 --> 01:03:23,508 was getting myself in a space to safely go kayak the Indus. 909 01:03:23,591 --> 01:03:24,842 That's all I cared about. 910 01:03:25,468 --> 01:03:31,516 [Patricia] Pakistan became this rift, I think, in our relationship. 911 01:03:31,766 --> 01:03:36,521 Thank you, thank you, for letting me go. Oh, my God. 912 01:03:37,647 --> 01:03:39,857 [Patricia] Me or God? [laughs] 913 01:03:39,941 --> 01:03:43,361 Everything, you, God, my body, 914 01:03:43,903 --> 01:03:48,199 my brain, my tumor, everything. It's so good. 915 01:03:49,492 --> 01:03:53,830 At that point, he had made it so crystal clear in his mind 916 01:03:53,913 --> 01:04:00,336 that no one and nothing would come in the way of him running the Indus. 917 01:04:01,587 --> 01:04:03,047 And I think, for me, 918 01:04:03,548 --> 01:04:08,719 you know, not only did I have a partner that had a brain tumor, 919 01:04:09,512 --> 01:04:14,642 I then had a partner who was going to go risk his life in another way. 920 01:04:15,476 --> 01:04:20,022 How do you sit back and wait for what's going to come of that? 921 01:04:22,817 --> 01:04:25,194 We were faced with this choice point 922 01:04:25,278 --> 01:04:28,614 of do we continue on this path of our love, 923 01:04:28,698 --> 01:04:32,535 or do we honor our souls and go our separate ways? 924 01:04:32,618 --> 01:04:36,873 And I think that we made the choice to honor ourselves. 925 01:04:36,956 --> 01:04:40,626 And for Scott, it was to go run this river. 926 01:04:45,006 --> 01:04:48,301 [woman] Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for flying with us... 927 01:04:52,805 --> 01:04:56,392 [Scott] Where this all goes at the moment is like the biggest question mark ever. 928 01:05:12,199 --> 01:05:14,702 I'm scared shitless to do radiation, 929 01:05:14,785 --> 01:05:18,497 and I'm scared shitless to do another surgery. 930 01:05:18,581 --> 01:05:20,833 I'm a fighter, and I'll fight, 931 01:05:20,917 --> 01:05:24,420 but I think, you know, if it gets the best of me, it gets the best of me. 932 01:05:34,096 --> 01:05:35,806 [Aniol] I think, for me, there's no doubt 933 01:05:35,890 --> 01:05:38,517 that the Indus is the hardest river I've ever done. 934 01:05:40,269 --> 01:05:44,357 And not only because of the number of rapids, which is tremendous. 935 01:05:44,440 --> 01:05:46,275 There's over 200 class five rapids. 936 01:05:51,697 --> 01:05:53,866 {\an8}It's the length, and being there every day, 937 01:05:53,950 --> 01:05:56,577 {\an8}pushing yourself and being in a gorge locked in. 938 01:06:00,790 --> 01:06:03,376 [Scott] To be here right now is surreal. 939 01:06:03,793 --> 01:06:06,087 With where I'm at, and how much I've forgotten, 940 01:06:06,170 --> 01:06:08,965 what I've been through, I just didn't think it was gonna happen. 941 01:06:09,048 --> 01:06:10,591 I had given up on it. 942 01:06:12,635 --> 01:06:17,473 The surgery from my tumor was the single most humbling thing 943 01:06:17,556 --> 01:06:18,766 that's ever happened to me. 944 01:06:18,849 --> 01:06:23,896 And then, to find out that my tumor was growing again 945 01:06:24,647 --> 01:06:27,316 was another insanely humbling moment. 946 01:06:29,276 --> 01:06:33,531 Got the next eight to ten days to put it all together. 947 01:06:34,323 --> 01:06:37,201 Super, super, super blessed, and super, super grateful. 948 01:06:40,121 --> 01:06:42,873 [Aniol] Well, having Scott here is really, really great. 949 01:06:42,957 --> 01:06:49,338 It's a culmination of a life's work, and to be able to share that with him, 950 01:06:49,422 --> 01:06:54,260 with a person that I admire so much, it's really a very unique experience. 951 01:06:57,263 --> 01:07:01,767 [Mike] I'd never met Scott until yesterday when we arrived here in Pakistan. 952 01:07:01,851 --> 01:07:04,729 I didn't know anything about his illnesses, 953 01:07:04,812 --> 01:07:07,023 or the troubles he'd had in the last few years. 954 01:07:07,106 --> 01:07:08,774 {\an8}And he'd kind of been out of the scene for so long, 955 01:07:08,858 --> 01:07:10,317 {\an8}and that was something in the back of my head. 956 01:07:10,401 --> 01:07:12,778 {\an8}I was like, "Man, has this guy still got it? 957 01:07:12,862 --> 01:07:15,448 Is he going to be able to step forward and run the Indus?" 958 01:07:15,531 --> 01:07:17,408 Because we're not running a chill river. 959 01:07:17,491 --> 01:07:19,744 You know, the Indus is the top of the game. 960 01:07:21,120 --> 01:07:23,330 [Benny] The fact that, you know, after this trip, 961 01:07:24,165 --> 01:07:27,251 he's going home to an MRI to check tumor growth. 962 01:07:27,334 --> 01:07:33,632 {\an8}He might not have the full life expectancy that, you know, we all hope he would have. 963 01:07:37,553 --> 01:07:40,306 Woo-hoo! Here we go. 964 01:07:48,355 --> 01:07:52,610 [Aniol] I definitely have some responsibility to guide the crew, 965 01:07:52,818 --> 01:07:55,988 help them out with our lines, and know where we're going. 966 01:07:58,407 --> 01:08:01,994 I feel pretty confident that I know the most important parts, 967 01:08:02,078 --> 01:08:05,873 but we are talking about a couple hundred rapids out there. 968 01:08:05,956 --> 01:08:07,541 Some of the rapids are back-to-back, 969 01:08:07,625 --> 01:08:10,086 so if you were about to swim on the top rapid, 970 01:08:10,169 --> 01:08:12,088 you would flash into the next one, 971 01:08:12,171 --> 01:08:16,634 and that just gives you a feeling of never being safe. 972 01:08:17,176 --> 01:08:18,677 You are always on the line. 973 01:08:18,761 --> 01:08:22,056 {\an8}You are always on the edge, and there's pressure out there. 974 01:08:22,139 --> 01:08:24,558 {\an8}It's not paddling without consequence. 975 01:08:47,957 --> 01:08:50,668 [Scott] Holy shit. Fuck! 976 01:09:12,898 --> 01:09:15,401 Hang on to that one. Grab on. Grab on. 977 01:09:17,319 --> 01:09:18,612 Grab on! 978 01:09:28,998 --> 01:09:32,251 I can't get you over this. Sorry. Get out, get out. 979 01:09:36,797 --> 01:09:40,759 When Aniol took that swim, I think all of us realized, 980 01:09:41,969 --> 01:09:45,014 if he could swim, anyone of us could swim. 981 01:09:47,016 --> 01:09:50,269 And that changed the tone for me, personally. 982 01:09:54,356 --> 01:09:58,235 None of us really have much left in us to take a big beat down at the moment. 983 01:09:58,319 --> 01:10:03,782 We're ready to get warm and, uh, get a good night's rest, 984 01:10:03,866 --> 01:10:05,492 and go at it again tomorrow. 985 01:10:08,704 --> 01:10:13,167 I don't feel any pressure to do anything more than I'm comfortable doing. 986 01:10:13,250 --> 01:10:16,462 And I'm just going to listen to my heart. 987 01:10:16,545 --> 01:10:20,716 And I hope that I end up in one piece at the bottom of this thing. 988 01:10:22,718 --> 01:10:25,387 I'm not in a space to be paving roads anymore. 989 01:10:25,638 --> 01:10:31,435 I'm more in a space of being blessed to be back on the road. 990 01:10:53,040 --> 01:10:55,542 Just feeling super small in here at the moment. 991 01:11:00,547 --> 01:11:03,968 [indistinct] 992 01:11:08,514 --> 01:11:09,640 Hey! 993 01:11:13,269 --> 01:11:14,186 Fuck! 994 01:11:14,853 --> 01:11:19,733 The rapids are long, they're complex, and it's just a big puzzle. 995 01:11:19,817 --> 01:11:21,902 We're just slowly putting it together. 996 01:11:24,780 --> 01:11:29,660 There's multiple moves around, just massive pour over holes 997 01:11:29,743 --> 01:11:32,079 that if you went into you were going to for surely swim. 998 01:12:30,304 --> 01:12:36,310 With any sport, you have the generations before you who set a precedent. 999 01:12:36,393 --> 01:12:41,523 Who take something and push it as far as possible 1000 01:12:42,107 --> 01:12:47,404 until something else comes along that's younger, that's more creative, 1001 01:12:47,488 --> 01:12:49,281 that's been studying what you've been doing 1002 01:12:49,365 --> 01:12:51,283 from a very early age. 1003 01:12:53,452 --> 01:12:56,538 And now, I'm paddling with all of these kids 1004 01:12:56,622 --> 01:13:00,501 that have taken the sport to such an incredible level. 1005 01:13:00,876 --> 01:13:05,381 You know, I feel like I'm growing, and I'm learning again. 1006 01:13:06,548 --> 01:13:10,636 Every single person on this expedition has been unbelievable. 1007 01:13:10,719 --> 01:13:13,722 It was a lot different than it was when I was their age. 1008 01:13:14,473 --> 01:13:16,392 There was no ego involved. 1009 01:13:17,393 --> 01:13:19,603 Woo! That was fucking awesome! 1010 01:13:20,312 --> 01:13:21,397 [all cheer] 1011 01:13:21,855 --> 01:13:26,443 It's been the most supportive expedition that I've ever been in. 1012 01:13:30,989 --> 01:13:34,368 To be able to embrace that and encourage that behavior 1013 01:13:34,451 --> 01:13:38,997 and to be a part of that is an honor at this point in my life. 1014 01:13:43,752 --> 01:13:49,383 To see Benny, and to watch Aniol shred that river apart. 1015 01:13:49,842 --> 01:13:52,010 {\an8}I was just blown away. I was awestruck. 1016 01:14:55,782 --> 01:14:57,493 [indistinct] 1017 01:15:02,831 --> 01:15:05,209 I've traveled a lot of places in the world, and I love them all. 1018 01:15:05,626 --> 01:15:08,754 But this place has something special for me. It's very unique. 1019 01:15:08,837 --> 01:15:12,799 I feel like at home, and the rivers, the mountains, the good people, 1020 01:15:12,883 --> 01:15:17,471 it all makes a really good combo of a good place to come and enjoy 1021 01:15:17,554 --> 01:15:20,641 and discover, because this area is unlike anything I've seen. 1022 01:15:20,724 --> 01:15:21,850 Cheers, bro. 1023 01:15:21,934 --> 01:15:22,809 Yeah, thanks. Thank you. 1024 01:15:22,893 --> 01:15:24,019 Salud, amigo. 1025 01:15:24,102 --> 01:15:25,604 Damn, that's damn good. 1026 01:15:29,525 --> 01:15:34,655 [Scott] To know that we're about to drop into is the crux of the run. 1027 01:15:34,738 --> 01:15:39,785 The anticipation is definitely there. The nerves are a little bit there. 1028 01:15:57,010 --> 01:16:01,306 Just downstream here is a rapid that I've had a little anticipation for. 1029 01:16:01,390 --> 01:16:04,726 It's called "Need for Speed." It's so intimidating. 1030 01:16:19,408 --> 01:16:21,577 I tried to control everything in my life. 1031 01:16:23,912 --> 01:16:30,419 And once I realized, with my tumor, that I had no control over that, 1032 01:16:31,837 --> 01:16:34,506 I just surrendered to the flow of life. 1033 01:16:42,931 --> 01:16:46,768 And I no longer try to control the outcome to anything. 1034 01:16:48,312 --> 01:16:50,731 I just show up with my heart. 1035 01:16:53,650 --> 01:16:57,112 And it gave me so much freedom. 1036 01:17:40,322 --> 01:17:41,323 Yeah, dude. 1037 01:17:41,990 --> 01:17:43,158 We made it! 1038 01:17:43,241 --> 01:17:44,159 Thanks, buddy. 1039 01:17:44,242 --> 01:17:46,870 [Aniol] The fourth! Awesome, dude! 1040 01:17:46,953 --> 01:17:48,955 -I'm so glad we did it. -[Scott] Thank you so much. 1041 01:17:54,127 --> 01:17:56,672 [Benny] I could see out of the corner of my eye, Scott just... 1042 01:17:57,964 --> 01:17:59,716 He had his head down on the spray deck. 1043 01:17:59,800 --> 01:18:01,843 And I could see how much that meant to him 1044 01:18:01,927 --> 01:18:06,223 to finally knock off this fourth river. You know, it's been a 20-year journey. 1045 01:18:06,640 --> 01:18:07,974 Fuck, yeah. 1046 01:18:13,480 --> 01:18:15,982 [Scott] Never, ever would I have thought I could have made it. 1047 01:18:51,601 --> 01:18:52,728 Made it. 1048 01:18:53,979 --> 01:18:56,815 [indistinct chatter] 1049 01:18:57,482 --> 01:18:59,317 This is a true story. 1050 01:19:03,697 --> 01:19:07,701 When I finished the Indus, I had an MRI lined up. 1051 01:19:10,704 --> 01:19:15,041 And I thought for sure it had grown. For sure. 1052 01:19:17,085 --> 01:19:20,255 It was told, once it starts growing, it typically doesn't stop. 1053 01:19:22,674 --> 01:19:24,885 And I go in for the MRI, 1054 01:19:25,427 --> 01:19:29,598 anxiously waiting to hear how much it's grown. 1055 01:19:32,934 --> 01:19:37,063 And I get a call from Doctor Jian, 1056 01:19:38,940 --> 01:19:41,568 "Hey, I just want to let you know that, um... 1057 01:19:43,445 --> 01:19:45,489 there's been no growth in your tumor." 1058 01:19:48,992 --> 01:19:51,578 I couldn't believe what had just happened. 1059 01:19:52,829 --> 01:19:56,333 It's just unbelievable to me that kayaking, 1060 01:19:56,416 --> 01:19:59,711 and opening yourself up to the people around you 1061 01:19:59,795 --> 01:20:03,465 would have ever had an effect on tumor growth, 1062 01:20:03,548 --> 01:20:05,509 or anything, for that matter. 1063 01:20:07,969 --> 01:20:09,012 Imagine that. 1064 01:20:22,651 --> 01:20:27,948 I ended up with something that, initially, I looked at as... 1065 01:20:29,241 --> 01:20:32,410 a weakness, and was the thing that brought me down. 1066 01:20:33,453 --> 01:20:36,373 And now, I look back at it. 1067 01:20:39,125 --> 01:20:41,127 It's like the best thing that ever happened to me. 1068 01:20:44,047 --> 01:20:45,966 And I'm here to live to tell about it. 1069 01:20:54,182 --> 01:20:56,977 [outro music] 1070 01:25:33,128 --> 01:25:34,838 There's an amazing guy. 1071 01:25:40,760 --> 01:25:42,554 Very, very good. 1072 01:25:44,472 --> 01:25:46,224 Okay. Good.