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From Wild Rivers to Camp, Two Kinds of ‘First Descents’

By Beacon Staff

Last November, Brad Ludden, a world-class whitewater kayaker who grew up on the waters of the Flathead Valley, notched his latest first kayak descent on the crocodile-infested Betsiboka River in Madagascar. The start of the trip couldn’t have been more anticlimactic.

“As we started to push off, we were so proud to be starting this trip, I think we had tears in our eyes,” Ludden told a crowd at The Summit in Kalispell last week. “Then we looked up and saw people walking across the water.”

The river was only a few inches deep. The crew walked the first eight miles of the river towing their kayaks with curious Madagascar residents following behind. There was still no sign of whitewater. “We’d spent $55,000 and six months planning, and the water was flat,” Ludden, who was filming the first descent with the help of a grant, said.

Christina Schmidt, right, listens to testimonial from Mindy Swan about her experience with First Descents. Both Schmidt and Swan are former First Descents campers.

It was the start of an inauspicious journey. Eventually, Ludden and his fellow kayakers, cameramen and film producers would encounter several sections of Class V rapids, made exceptionally difficult by the river’s sediment-filled, orange water.

“As a kayaker you become skilled at reading the water,” he said. “It became a really dangerous game we were playing just given the color of the water.”

When the group neared the end of their trip, it realized it was without a map for the last stretch of water. A guide assured the group members it was just 10 kilometers of completely flat water to their takeout point.

“That turned out to be a 700-foot gradient, three days and about 70 kilometers,” Ludden said.

Exhausted and running out of food, the kayakers were dismayed to learn that wasn’t the last of their guide’s surprises. He’d had the final map all along, but thought the trip was “too planned.” Worse even, he revealed that Ludden’s crew had actually made a second descent – another group had traveled the river years before by raft.

“It was still one of the biggest life-changing experiences of my life,” he said. “It was still our first descent – no matter who had done it before us.”

Ludden splits his life between two types of first descents – the kinds he does with a boat and paddle on rivers around the world and the metaphorical kind experienced by the people who participate in his foundation. This fall, he’ll premiere a documentary focused on both.

A group of First Descents campers cheer at the camera on the Colorado River. – Contributed photo by Daniel Armstrong

Ten years ago, in the midst of his professional kayaking career, Ludden started First Descents, an organization that provides free outdoor adventure programs for young adults, ages 18 to 39 years old, with cancer. In many ways, Ludden said, his sentiments at the end of the Madagascar trip are similar to what First Descent’s campers experience.

“When we take them on this river, when they kayak down on that last day, it’s the same emotional journey just on a much different kayaking journey,” he said. “They don’t care who’s done it before them – only that they’ve done it.”

First Descents has nine programs in six different states. Campers spend a week at no cost with 14 other cancer survivors or patients learning to kayak, whitewater raft, rock climb, or fish.

Ludden said he chose to aim the camp at young adults for several reasons. It’s the fastest growing demographic of cancer with the lowest cure rates. Last year in the U.S. alone, 70,000 young adults were diagnosed.

When Christina Schmidt’s friends and doctors told her about the camp, she was hesitant. “I don’t know how to swim and can’t stand cold water,” she said. “I can’t even tell you how much I can’t stand cold water.”

She enrolled, though, last summer in the Montana camp, held here in the Flathead along McDonald’s Creek and the North Fork and Middle Fork of the Flathead River. For the first time since being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Schmidt said she was in a place where people “didn’t feel very sorry for me” and had experienced the same “endless needle pokes and hair loss woes.”

“I relearned the joy of taking on new challenges by choice,” Schmidt said. “It restored my self-esteem and renewed by self-image.”

Mindy Swan, who attended the camp after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, echoed Schmidt’s comments, saying First Descents was less about kayaking and more about rebuilding confidence and trust. “I’ve never experienced anything like the week I did with First Descents,” she said, choking back tears.

First Descents Fundraiser

Beginning kayaking seminar at Meadow Lake Resort

March 18 and 19

5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Free, but donations for First Descents requested.

For more information call, Paul Moffatt at (406)253-7285