Daredevil Al Faussett

Editor’s Note: This article by Whit Deschner appeared in the book, First Descents, published by Menasha Ridge Press in 1989. Edited by Cameron O’Connor and John Lazenby. Whit Deschner has written several humorous books about paddling, including “Travels with a Kayak” and “Does the Wet Suit You?, the Confessions of a Kayak Bum”. His kayaking adventures took him across the globe–to India, Australia, South America–sometimes accompanied by the paddling legend, Walt Blackadar. Whit was diagnosed with Parkinson’s several years ago and now spends much of his time raising money to benefit the Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Program at the OHSU Brain Institute. Here Whit writes about another risk-taker, Al Faussett.

The black and white photos are original to the article. The color photos were added by CP.

∞∞ Sunset Falls on Washington’s Skykomish River drops 104 feet over a 275-foot granite slide. Many a boater has stood spellbound alongside the roaring explosion of waters and inevitably asked, “Can it be run?” The answer is a fat ho-hum to those who believe they can push the modern limits of whitewater boaitng: It was run in 1936. The man’s name was Al Faussett.

And Sunset Falls was only the beginning of Faussett’s cataract-jumping career. Over a period of four years, he descended six of the Northwest’s most treacherous falls–including 212 Shoshone, 47 feet higher than Niagara!

Up until 1926 Fausett had been a lumberjack or, as they were known back then, a “dirtyneck.” He ran a gyppo operation trying to compete against Weyerhaeuser. Faussett might have kept on running his shoestring logging outfit had it not been for Fox Studios, which was in the area to shoot a western.

The script for Fox’s soundless feature called for an Indian to ride over a falls in a dugout. Their choice for the take was Sunset and they offered $1,500 to anyone who would jump the falls.

Faussett was the lone taker of the bait. However, when he saw Fox’s canoe he claimed it was far from adequate for such a feat. He would craft his own. Faussett felled a spruce and hand-hewed from it a 34-foot canoe.

But when Faussett added safety features to his canoe there was little resemblance to an Indian dugout. He had cowled the foredeck over with sheet metal, the aft deck with canvas. In the stern he left a small opening where he would strap himself in. To absorb the impact of colliding with boulders Fausett fastened to the hull five-foot lengths of vine maple at varous angles. When Fox saw the finished boat they reneged on their offer.

Fausett wasn’t going to collect his $1,500 but his friends convinced him that that was no reason why his canoe should start gathering termites. Thus it was announced that on May 30, 1926, Al Fausett would run Sunset Falls. A dollar admission would be charged.

Whether or not the enterpriser knew what he was in for, he spoke confidently of the ride, telling the Everett News, “It will be a dangerous and thrilling ride. But the people who come will see me make a cool ride, and one they had never anticipated. There is nothing to be afraid of, for I have studied the dangers carefully and believe I can negotiate these falls where 20 men have lost their lives.”

On May 30, a crowd of 3,000 gathered along the banks in the cool mist of the falls. It was not an event to be missed. Some had come the night before and a good share had crashed the gate. The event was to have taken place at one o’clock. It was now four and the crowd was growing impatient. At last word rushed throught the crowd that Faussett was adrift in his canoe, floating to the brink.

At a speed of 80 mph, the canoe crashed through the falls engulfed in tons of pounding water. The boat grazed over a large granite protrusion and shot almost clear of the water only to slam back down and disappear. It was several seconds before the boat and its human cargo reappeared, emerging out of the spray and gliding free into the pool below. When Faussett waved to the crowd they erupted, clapping and cheering.

In the Everette News Faucett wrote of this descent, “People will never know and little did I dream of the power of those treacherous waters in the falls. When I went under the water hit me with a crushing force and hurt my lungs. It twisted my body and head. I was hurt inside and could not breathe. The water came so fast it crammed down my nostrils and throat.

“At no time was I afraid of those falls, not even when the water seemed to be crushing the very life out of me. It was all over in a few seconds, and when I saw the light of day as I rode out of the turbulent waters, I thanked God that I had ridden safely through. I have challenged the world to the effect that I can ride anywhere any human can in my good canoe.”

As Irv, Al Faussett’s son, said of his father, “Dad was another Evel Knievel. He was just born 40 years too soon. There just wasn’t the instant publicity back then to make him rich and famous.”

Three months later and four miles upsteam from Sunset, Fausett chose to run Eagle Falls, a series of jagged tiers dropping a total of 40 feet. This time the daredevil concluded his longevity might be increased if he rode inside of the boat. For his new craft he hollowed out two halves of a log and banded them together. It was 16 feet long, cigar-shaped and had a trap door for access.

Due to low water the Labor Day event was more comical than spectacular. Faussett was bid good luck by his friends, climbed in his boat, shut the hatch and was shoved into the lazy current.

Halfway throught the falls the boat wedged in the rocks. Faussett opened the hatch, yelling for assistance. His friends managed to knock the boat loose with a pike pole, and it and Faussett bounced to the bottom of the falls without mishap.

“On to Snoqualmie and Niagara,” he told the press.

Irv said of his father, “In those days people back East thought of Washington and Oregon as still territories. What people did in the Northwest didn’t matter to others. Dad wanted to go east and do Niagara. He wanted to put Washington on the map.

Since Niagara was too far away, Faussett announced he would run 216-foot Snoqualmie Falls. But Puget Power, which owned the land adjoining the falls, refused to let the adventurer run, for fear of a lawsuit.

Faussett resolved to run one of the obscure falls upstream of Snoqualmie but he was foiled again, this time by the King County sheriff, who figured he was saving Faussett’s life by stopping him.

The next year Faussett announced he would go elsewhere to run his waterfalls. He went to Spokane to run Spokane Falls. The city officials were not sure whose jurisdiction it was to stop Faussett. The buck was passed to the chief of police, who concluded that it was Faussett’s decision whether or not he wanted to kill himself. However, Faussett was not allowed to charge admission.

On June 3, 1927, more than half of Spokane’s population crammed along the banks to watch Faussett get swept over the falls. As Faussett climbed in his 775-pound boat, similar to the one used in Eagle, the crowd crammed closer.

Then the river rushed the craft into the 75-foot staircase cataract–a torrent of awesome power. The boat dropped over the first step, somersaulting in the uproar. It then floated free only to be sucked into a whirlpool, tossed spinning around for over 20 minutes until it finally swept close enough to shore to allow several men to pull it to safety. Faussett staggeeed from the boat with blood dripping down his face and was hurried into an ambulance.

“They’ve got whiskers on ’em (the falls) an’ they sure can give a feller an awful tossing.” he told the Spokesman Review. He had received a slight concussion along with numerous cuts and bruises. Several hours later the boat worked free of its mooring and went over the lower section of the falls, where it was smashed into pieces and never seen again. Faussett quit for the season. One bump on the head was enough.

But next year he was back, this time in Oregon, to jump 40-foot Oregon City Falls. Faussett’s new boat was 30 feet long. His plan was to paddle up to the falls, align the boat bow first, duck inside and close the hatch.

It was the last day of March. A crowd of 10,000 was on hand and as Faussett and boat reached the brink the crowd was aware that something was drastically wrong. Faussett fought to line the boat up but gusting winds and a powerful current spun the boat sideways. And that’s how it went over. Faussett had failed to get the hatch closed. The boat landed upside down, then disappeared into the froth for over a minute before coming into view.

In the swift current below the falls it took the rescue team six minutes to reach the boat. When they finally righted it, a wet and smiling Faussett emerged.

When the Oregonian asked Faussett about the ride he replied, “The canoe is the finest craft on the water. Without it I couldn’t have made it. We hit the middle of the falls just right, but the strong winds and current simply made me powerless to shoot the rapids as I had planned. I had no time to close the trap door above so I just hung on. Air under the upturned boat made it possible for me to breathe.

“Going through those rapids sounded like a million cowbells to me. You can’t imagine the queer sensation of it. How many times the boat turned over I don’t know. About twice, I thought, but others said many times. What I do when I’m buried in water like that I’m not accountable for. I simply hang on. What else is there to do?”

The daredevil’s next exploit was to shoot the 186-foot Silver Creek falls However the group of businessmen who owned the property surrounding the falls refused to let Faussett carry out his plans. In order to run the drop, Faussett first had to buy it along with the adjoining 100 acres.

On July 1, 5,000 people crowded into the area to watch the plunge. Dirt roads were jammed with Model Ts. Some of the people never made it to the event because the traffic was so bad.

Faussett’s new boat looked like an obese rugby ball. It was made with a wooden skeleton, filled with 35 car innertubes and covered with orange canvas. It weighed 180 pounds. In order to avoid bouncing off the rock ledge on the way down, Faussett built a ramp protruding 12 feet out past the brink.

Faussett and his boat arched 186 feet into the pool below. Unfortunately, the boat belly flopped instead of landing nose first as planned.

“There wasn’t a scared bone in his body,” Irv said. But when he crashed into the pond below there were several broken ones; a few ribs, one wrist, both ankles were sprained and he couldn’t move his bowels for four days.

Faussett still wanted to run Niagara but the logistics of getting there with a boat were too complicated. So Faussett announced he would run Shoshone Falls on the Snake River in Idaho. It is 212 feet high–47 feet higher than Niagara.

The date was July 28, 1929 and the water conditions on the Snake were low. To make the ride feasible the Idaho Power Company resolved to open the gates of a diversion dam upstream half an hour before the ride.

Again Faussett used the canvas boat that he had used on Silver Creek. The crowd of 5,000 would be warned with a series of bombs that he was ready to leap–four at 15 minutes, three at 10 minutes ;and two at 5 minutes before the stunt. One bomb would give alarm that Faussett was floating to the brink. A salvo of bombs were to be fired indicating that Faussett was injured and on his way to the hospital.

To deflect the boat from rock jutting out in the middle of the falls a wire was attached upstream to a large boulder, then threaded through a thre-inch diameter ring on the boat. The other end of the wire would be held below by one of the rescue team.

After making adjustments on his boat, Fausett was ready. A single bomb was fired as he was set adrift in the river. Unfortunately the water released from the dam didn’t give the boat enough draw and twice it hung up on hte bottom, the last time right on the brink. Two men waded out to the boat and gave it a shove over the falls.

He dropped 212 feet–the highest falls ever jumped.

Faussett emerged from his boat with only a broken right hand. A salvo of bombs were fired off. For the event Faussett received $733.

The extra 47 feet didn’t mean much to the daredevil though. “Dad still wanted to run Niagara. It was the falls that had a name to it. Things didn’t work out and he never got back there. Even when Dad was in his sixties (25 years later) he still had plans for Niagara.”

In February 1948, the man who once described himself as “feeling more at home in a logging camp than in a crowd”, finally “went west.” He died of cancer.

“That’s not what really killed him,” Irv said. “He couldn’t stand the regimentation of being in a rest home. It was the first time in his life someone told him what to do: when to turn off the light, when to go to bed. It got him down and he just couldn’t take it.”

A segment of the obituary in a Seattle newspaper read: “If there are any rivers where Al Faussett is now, he’ll be hunting for a waterfall over which to leap.”

Irv said of his father, “He lived three lives to most men’s one. He got a lot of fun out of life. Funny thing was he never knew how to swim.”

∞∞∞

Carolina Paddler thanks Menasha Ridge Press and Adventure Keen for the permission to use this article.

“Daredevil Al Faussett” appeared in the wonderful collection, First Descents– In Search of Wild Rivers, edited by Cameron O’Connor and John Lazenby, published by Menasha Ridge Press, in Birmingham, Alabama in 1989. 

First Descents is no longer in publication but can be found at many book resellers and if acquired, will be treasured for many years.