Never Turn Back: The Life of Whitewater Pioneer Walt Blackadar [Paperback]

His solo run of Turnback canyon was one of the major breakthroughs in the history of white water kayaking and has been compared to the first ascent of Everest without oxygen. Although techniques and technologies improve, psychological barriers define what is possible. Walt's run of Turnback, no matter how exaggerated it may have been in hindsight, blew those definitions wide open.

In Never Turn back, Ron Watters, himself no slouch when it comes to river running, tells the story of this impressive man. Although born in the eastern united states, Blackadar went west looking for adventure. He didn't take up white water kayaking until he was in his forties. He quickly established a reputation though his pioneering runs on the biggest white water in the states.

The chapters dealing with Blackadar's solo run are the core of this book, an inspiring description of one man pitting himself willfully against the possibility of his own annihilation. Turnback made Walt a celebrity. Seven years later he was dead.

Watters deals honestly with Blackadar; he comes across as a loud, brash boozy man. He also describes Walt's failures and there are some great stories along the way.

Blackadar, like Mike Jones, died in 1978. Unlike Jones, Walt died in what seems a stupid accident on a Saturday morning paddle on a local river. The image of him causally trying to drawstroke his boat from under the log he was pinned against is one of the book's most haunting images.

There are two underlying themes which make this so much more than an accumulation of well told kayaking stories. The first is the tragic story of a man forced to be the impotent witness to his body's slow decay, a man who was terrified by the thought of dying in bed of cancer and old age, who constantly looked for new challenges to prove he was till young and strong. This is the man who constantly claimed that was invincible, that he would never die on a river and that he could, and would, one day paddle over Niagra falls and live to tell the tale.

Walt was also a representative of a certain, almost specifically American hero. He comes across as John Wayne in a kayak. Loud, bursting with energy, he went west to find adventure and the adventures he sought were the traditional test of "man in the wilderness". But there was no longer any social purpose to these adventures and the people of salmon recognised this and protested against their doctor continually risking his life. The days of the great individual , if they ever really existed, were disappearing fast. Salmon was changing from wild west town to settled community. Blackadar's lone yellow kayak in a world of ice grey is a symbol of the final fling of a man unencumbered by corporate sensibility, innocent of economic calculation, impervious to social pressure.

Never Turn Back is meticulously researched and written in a stylish, understated prose that artfully lets the subject tell itself. If you know nothing about Blackadar and have no interest in white water kayaking, this is still a rare book, intelligently and honestly written, an entertaining and thought provoking biography.