Friendship Freefall

Hunt Jennings is about to plunge into a cool pool of water from the top of a waterfall. Dozens of feet above the landing, from the bank of the creek, he's calculating his every move before he ever puts his boat in the water.

He's watching the water. Seeing how it moves. Listening to its flow. Casing the creek. Right stroke, left stroke, right stroke. He repeats it to himself. It fills his head as he enters the water and he matches his actions. There's no time left to calculate what could go wrong; he's going over the falls.

He's determined how many seconds it takes to reach the bottom, because in his mind it feels much longer, and it allows him enough time to orient himself vertically, better for landing. The nose of his boat breaks through the water and he emerges. Hunt is 19 years old. While many of his peers are at college, he's traveling the world to run massive waterfalls that often tower 100 feet or more above the bubbling bull's eye where he plans to land.

It all started, strangely enough, years ago on a soccer field. As a middle school student at McCallie, Hunt played soccer for coach David Levitt and went on to wrestle on Levitt's team. But it was kayaking, Levitt's hobby turned coaching job, that ultimately claimed Hunt's attention.

"My older sister was at (Girls Preparatory School) and she was kayaking. She came to me and said I should try it, that it was fun, so I gave it a shot," Hunt says on his drive home from Washington D.C. He just flew in from Austria, where he competed in the Adidas Sick Line, the extreme kayaking world championship. "Once I got the basics down, it was easy, and then I just went from there."

Levitt was leading outdoors activities at McCallie and pulled Hunt into his orbit. They quickly became close as Hunt continued to learn and grow as a kayaker. Hunt's connection to the sport was cemented during a trip to Idaho, former stomping grounds of Levitt and his wife Kat, also a competitive kayaker. Levitt took Hunt and another student there one summer to run the rivers and expand their paddling know-how.

"You know when I started, way back as a student at McCallie ... we just took some kayaks and got in the Hiwassee. I ended up flipping and my pal ended up flipping and we swam most of the way," Levitt says. "But Hunt was different. He was dedicated from day one. When we were out in Idaho, he was already thinking then, what he was going to be able to do? That's just Hunt, he was always thinking that way."

Hunt says that trip sparked his interest even more in kayaking, leaving him with a difficult decision. He wanted to continue kayaking at a competitive level and being tied to school in Chattanooga didn't help. Hunt made the decision to leave McCallie to attend a private school dedicated to letting kayakers travel the world, perfecting their paddling skills while learning the core classroom subjects as well. Instead of attending football games as a junior or senior McCallie student, Hunt was in Chile, learning to run waterfalls. He traveled a long way from home to chase his dream. Every quarter, a different trip took him to another part of the world.

"My family has been really supportive of me. They started out hesitant, but to let me leave McCallie was a huge leap of faith," Hunt says. "They are a big part of what I am able to do and why I do this. They are amazing."

But why kayaking?

"It combines going to super cool places but there's this technical aspect to it. It' sa sport, but you're in these epic places with epic people," Hunt says. "You have to paddle and think critically. There's a lot of decision making that's going into it, technique and a mental sense that surrounds running these big falls."

And it's something he can continue to share with his friend, life-long coach and mentor, Levitt. Nearly a 10-year-long friendship has afforded Hunt the ability to go far in kayaking, way beyond just his hobby. It's his way of life, much like it is for Levitt. "Now, I think our relationship is so cool. We have a lot of the same interests now too, and to see it evolve from middle school is awesome," Hunt says. "I just learned so much. One thing really stands out to me, though. He told me you have to have the mental attitude and the positive discipline. Those are the keys to success."

Other than sustaining small injuries, Hunt has been pretty fortunate in his endeavors. Good coaching teaches you how to put factors in your favor and work the water. "It can be dangerous. But you become close with your paddling partners and learn to trust them and you put things in your favor," Levitt says. "There are a lot of life lessons. When you're young, you have to go through those to get to my age and realize you needed that."

Running large waterfalls, especially those never run before, seems like such a daredevil stunt, but talking to Hunt and Levitt, you learn how crucially exact and critical each movement must be. Deliberate actions yield results. Any error is costly.

"Last year I was on the West Coast for some expeditions in California and all went well. Then we get up to Oregon, and we're getting ready to come back and we're looking at these falls, wanting to try and run one more before we go," Hunt recalls. It was Koosah Falls, a fall consisting of a 20-foot plunge and then an 80-foot freefall drop. His friend went before him after they spent time assessing the water. When his friend emerged victorious, Hunt says he was more than ready to go.

"I made a mistake freefalling ... I ended up hitting my face on my kayak on the way down, and I paddled over to shore. But then I started forgetting things, and even though my friends thought I was joking at first, I spent the night in the hospital," Hunt says. "I had to be flown home and helped through the airport, and take a month off completely."

There's the risk versus reward in running big falls like that, Hunt says. He's not going to put himself in danger and run anything he stands at the foot of, he's going to assess the situation and think critically. That's where the payoff is. The reward is successfully running a large drop after determining a line, a plan of action.

"There is definitely a sense of accomplishment and being able to say, 'Yeah, I ran that,' is awesome. It feels good to do it," Hunt says. "But it's a little scary, some of these falls haven't been run very much, so there's nothing out there to tell you what to do. There's no one out there to tell you what to do. You have to watch what the water is doing and use your skills to get to the bottom."

There's no panic. There's no time to think of anything other than executing your plan exactly. "It's a really cool mentality. You have to get your lines up and visualize what will happen," Hunt says. "I think very hard about the falls before I even get in my kayak. That's when you assess the water, think about it technically, and it gets imprinted in your mind. That way, when I'm on the water, I can clear my mind and focus on that. If you think about anything else, you get nervous."

A wrong stroke on the way down Koosah Falls forced Hunt's boat further up than he wanted it to be, forcing him to then try to correct the mistake. There's not time, and his face slammed against the kayak."When you're freefalling, you're focused on going down ... and you're really just bracing yourself for impact," Hunt says.

While running waterfalls whenever he can, Hunt has also started competing in creek races. These races are really short, running portions of a creek with crazy rapids and with the falls being much shorter, but they run fast. It's a physical match and knowing the water that counts. He'll compete in a creek race in Asheville at the beginning of this month, where he hopes to do well. He wants to be competitive. He wants to be the best. At the Adidas Sickline race in Austria, he placed in the top 48 of nearly 200 competitors. He wants to finish better in Asheville.

After the race, Hunt plans to go back to running waterfalls. "There's a lot of waterfalls around here that no one has ever run before and I'm interested in exploring those," he says. "There's one on Signal called Rainbow Falls where the rapids below have been run but no one's done the falls yet. I think it's possible to do."

He has a list. Rock House Mountain. Sand Mountain. It goes on and he keeps track of the falls he runs, the conditions and how he runs them. Hunt's already seen some of the falls, watching their flow and planning his moves. It's not unlikely that he'll become obsessed with some falls, which is how he convinced Levitt to run the 100-foot DeSoto Falls with him last spring.

"We had been talking about it for a bit. Hunt kept mentioning that he thought the time was right to run it. I remember the day, after wrestling practice, I noticed that Hunt had tried to call my cell phone a few times and then I look up and there he is with his laptop and GoPro downloading footage," Levitt says. "He wasn't going to wait for me to answer the phone to tell me what he did, he drove straight to the school and showed me."

Later in the spring, Hunt came to Levitt to tell him he thought the conditions were perfect for running the falls. "It takes a lot of rain and I could see that we had pretty much perfect conditions," Hunt says. "I wanted to do it again and I wanted him to go do it with me."

But Levitt had never run a waterfall that tall before. "He put it in my head and everything fell into place," Levitt says. "I just think it was such a special day to do that with him."

But it was more than just bonding over a 100-foot waterfall.

"I was able to lead him into it, since I had done it before, and sort of become the teacher," Hunt says. "I was able to give back to him. He helped me so much and I was able to do something for him."

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