In the world of whitewater, Russians have a reputation of charging barely navigable craft into the gnarliest of river situations with nary a care for their bodies. “Bubliks,” two-man catarafts, four-man cats, all that look like they were constructed using lodgepole pine, moss and inflatable intertubes (which, sometimes is actually the case).
This group got into a seriously-heavy situation when they charged this tight canyon at significant flow with several burly river-wide holes. They get stuck in a recirculating eddie that fed back into a gnarly ledge. The pair on the two-man cat are able to escape after their craft flips (hard to say what happens to them after) while the four-man rig has to fight for another minute to escape the situation only to get dumped downstream. After this epic, these dudes deserve some Smirnoff.
Editor’s Note: Check out the book Brothers on the Bashkaus for more on the Russian rafting tradition.
