Residents of Moshav Odem in the Golan know the spectacle that is about to repeat itself soon. The heavy rains that hit the region every winter will begin to fall heavily, and Gilad Lahiani will once again be at the mouth of the mountainous Jordan. While most of them will be tied up in their homes, the 36-year-old Lahiani will place his hard plastic kayak in the frozen and stormy waters of the Jordan, and throw himself straight into the brown and raging eddies that rush down to the Sea of Galilee. The ones that are able to bury a person in seconds.
Those powerful sights of nature, which on the one hand inspire astonishment from its strength, and on the other hand from its unpredictable dangers, are the playground of Lahiani and his friends in the field of “white water” – the wild, niche stepbrother of the traditional kayaking industry. A handful around the world are a rare breed of highly skilled paddlers who will venture into the most hidden parts of the globe in search of the perfect river. One that passes through narrow and steep ravines that a person’s foot has not yet set foot in, it is desirable for them to contain as many cascades and waterfalls as possible. There lies the excitement, the speed, the struggle. Examining the technical and physical limits is a necessity for them.
“You are actually trying to manipulate a force of nature to your advantage,” Lahiani explains to “Calcalist”, “this is of course dangerous because it is a force of nature that is much stronger than you. Dealing with him requires a lot of humility because these are laws that no human wrote. Rules that if you don’t follow them, you won’t be. You will just die.” Lahiani is a father of four who himself met death as a soldier when he was mortally wounded in the Second Lebanon War. He says that moments of horror he experienced while rowing down rivers flowing around the world, the turbulent waters and dealing with them, were an integral part of his rehabilitation.
Today he runs a school for challenging rowing in mountainous Jordan, which teaches teenagers the skill, precision and confidence required to sail safely and with pleasure in the “white water”. According to his opinion, those who start at a young enough age, just as he did when he went down to Jordan every day from his home in Yosod Ma’ala, will be able to acquire the necessary tools, and perhaps even be among the leaders in the field in the future. In his eyes, the mountainous Jordan is “a crazy playground, a real national asset for kayakers”, which, surprisingly, many countries may be jealous of. this year”. According to him, our beloved and historic national river sometimes receives a “rating of 5” (out of 6) at its mountainous end that descends from the Daughters of Ya’akov Bridge to Kharkum. Such a rating is only given to rivers that are characterized by a strong flow, and contain a large number of cascades and sometimes even waterfalls, which require an extremely high level of control and experience. The level of the mountain Jordan during normal days (the summer period) is close to level 3, which does not pose a real danger to experienced paddlers. In winter it’s a completely different story.
The one who lives the upper end of the rating scales is Nuria Newman. After years in which she ruled the top of the world in the field of the traditional Olympic “slalom”, the 31-year-old French turned her attention and time to the adventurous brother (“Newman’s influence on the field is unimaginable”, says Lahiani). In the last decade, Newman has reached rivers and canyons to which there is no possibility of access except by sailing that lasts for days down rushing waters that hide waterfalls that are tens of meters high. So many times in her life the eyes of the French champion rested on landscapes that no man had seen before her. She and her small group, which includes the most daring paddlers in the world, can certainly be considered world explorers. As part of her adventures, Newman even became the first woman in the world to jump with a kayak from a waterfall over 100 feet (31 meters) high, when she floated down the remote Fucano Falls in Ecuador. The crazy jump was carefully planned and performed in pouring rain so that the river and the pool under the waterfall would be as high as possible. She tells Calcalist that she acquired the skill and courage over the years in which she gradually raised the bar in order to arrive technically and mentally prepared for the moment of truth – to meet the “laundry” or “grinder”, as Lakhiani calls the raging water and the terrifying currents that lurk at the bottom of the falls. “This is also why I can’t necessarily call it a risk. I trained for a very long time and came away with very high skills that will allow me to solve problematic situations that can occur.”
Although she is currently heading for a challenging competition in one of India’s unfamiliar and torrential rivers, it seems after talking with her that today victories, titles or influence are less interesting to the world’s best and best-known kayaker. “It is much more important to me to show young girls, women and children that they are capable of anything if they work hard.”