Amazon Express

Amazon Express

Photography by Erich Schlegel

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rom August to December, 2012, Texas marathon paddler West Hansen completed the first complete descent of the Amazon River starting from the headwaters of the Rio Mantaro in the Peruvian Andes. Previous Amazon source-to-sea expeditions have begun on the Rio Apurimac, on a route that according to river explorer James “Rocky” Contos is shorter than the Rio Mantaro. Despite traveling some 50 miles farther than his predecessors, Hansen’s descent was the fastest Amazon sourceto-sea. However it was anything but easy.

This is the Amazon? Near Lago Acucocha, Peru August 17, 2012.

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Team leader West Hansen (foreground) and paddler/filmmaker Tino Specht negotiate low water in the upper reaches of the Rio Mantaro basin. Downstream the river became a gorged-in Class V monster and, eventually, the largest river in the world.

The Amazon’s most-distant source is 14,800 feet above sea level and 4,103.2 river miles from the Atlantic Ocean. The team started paddling in a driving blizzard, and staggered back to camp hours later after covering just 1.8 miles. Here the team assists Jeff Wueste, 53, who was hypothermic and stricken with altitude sickness. Wueste found his rythm on the flatwater, becoming one of three team paddlers who reached the Atlantic.

The team scouts the Rio Mantaro below the Presa Tablachaca. The dam diverts some 3,400 cfs through a mountain to a powerhouse about 100 miles downstream.

At the height of the Andean rainy season it accounts for about 10 percent of the Mantaro’s flow, but during the dry season it consumes almost the entire river, turning the Caùon Tablachaca below the dam into a jumbled chain of boulders and stagnant pools.

Hansen at the head of the Mal Paso reservoir near Paccha Peru. The Rio Mantaro is dammed in several places, with more construction underway.

Daily Grind: Hansen and a Peruvian woman, both hard at work on the Rio Gashan. September 5, 2012.

Tiger Team: At left, Hansen and whitewater team leader, Juanito de Ugarte negotiate a rapid in the Mantaro’s lower canyons.

Above, the team plans the next day’s action. As part of Hansen’s source-tosea expedition, the Amazon Express team made the second complete descent of the Rio Mantaro.

Hansen and de Ugarte at the outflow of the Tablachaca diversion tunnel.

This water--a volume roughly equivalent to West Virginia’s Gauley River on a release weekend--passes through a 12-mile-long tunnel that drops 2,450 vertical feet, feeding turbines that generate some 25 percent of Peru’s electricity. The added volume instantly ramped up the intensity of the whitewater in the canyons below.

Nearly 3,600 miles of flatwater brought new challenges, including five separate confrontations with armed men. After firing a warning shot and some tense negotiations, shotgun-toting ronderos on the Rio Tambo in eastern Peru help carry the kayaks to a campsite on high ground.

“We’d stopped in Porto Prado and the alcalde there gave us a glossy tourist map and the paperwork not to be shot,” Hansen explains.

With the whitewater behind them, the men rose at dawn and paddled until dark, averaging 57 miles per day.

They sang, played trivia games, and talked. Only one subject was off-limits. “Ian and I couldn’t talk about our daughters. That was just too much,” says Hansen.

Team members Pete Binion and John Maika rest on a Peruvian Navy patrol boat in Iquitos, where they abandoned the expedition due to illness after about 1,500 hard miles.

A torn tendon robbed Hansen of the smooth stroke he’d honed in 20 years of ultramarathon racing, but it couldn’t erase what all those miles had taught him: How to keep going. On Dec. 5, 2012, Hansen, Ian Rolls and Jeff Wueste reached the end of their journey, a GPS waypoint they called “Stop Forrest.”