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Men's Journal

Inside Knox Hammack's and James Shimizu's April 2019 runs of Washington's Palouse Falls, matching the world record of 186 feet. Directed and edited by Liam Fournier

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00:00Yeah, we're just dropping off about 30 seconds in to kill some air right here.

00:11Palouse became a dream of mine when I was 10 years old.

00:15That was the first time I saw the video of Tyler running it, and it just blew my mind.

00:23I wanted nothing more than to do that.

00:26I think the first time it really crossed my mind was living at the Beaver Lodge in White Salmon.

00:33There's a pretty big poster of it on the wall inside.

00:37I think everyone's looked at that poster at one point or another and thought about it.

00:44I genuinely didn't think anyone would want to run Palouse other than me.

00:50It's double anything I had run before it.

00:54It's a really scary spot even just to look at.

00:57It just demands respect.

01:01If you, say, land flat on something that you're trying to pencil in or plug,

01:05you could break your back, you could knock yourself out, you could fold your boat.

01:12Any movement you make on a waterfall is just going to get extrapolated on the way down.

01:23You need to have extremely good boat control and body control so you don't make any big movements

01:28because you're more likely to be injured that way.

01:54It's just extremely strong currents down at the bottom.

01:58It's 2,300 cubic feet of water falling off 186-foot cliffs.

02:06And water will do whatever it wants to you, so you're totally at the mercy of it.

02:12You just have to be really, really chill and not do anything too crazy.

02:18It's all about just being calm and really stable at the lip.

02:24I was actively just trying to envision the line in my head

02:27so that once I got to the lip I had already, in my mind, done it so many times

02:32that the feeling would just be natural with my body to do it again.

02:37I knew that everything I'd done would have been worth it to be at the bottom,

02:43be in one piece and feel okay.

02:45I knew that everything I'd done would have been worth it to be at the bottom,

02:46be in one piece and feel okay.

03:16When you're at your limit, I feel like that's when your true colors show, you know?

03:21Once people reach their limit, you can really see who they are for who they are.

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