Big Banana

In October of 2021 I ran Big Banana Falls in Veracruz, Mexico. On the day of the descent, Big Banana was the second tallest successfully run waterfall in the world, at 128 feet tall.

Immersed in the curtain of Big Banana. Photo: Alfredo Ramón

I started going to Mexico to paddle soon after graduating from college. On that trip, my friend Andrew expressed interest in running Big Banana. Hearing him want to run it, and seeing the waterfall in person put it in my mind for the first time that this was something that I might be able to do. I was running a lot of other waterfalls in the area on that trip, but after a bad crash on Tomata 1, I realized that I had a long way to go and a lot of lessons to learn if I wanted to run Big Banana.

I went back to Veracruz many times over the next few years, and on my 6th trip down, I finally felt ready to run Big Banana. Most of the previous descents had been done with relatively low water. I had been waiting for a higher flow to hopefully have a softer hit, and on that trip we had the rain event I had been waiting for. The Río Alseseca spiked to the highest level I had seen. We spent a few days waiting for the river to drop and running some of the other big waterfalls on that river.

Kurt Zontek on Truchas a few days before Big Banana

There is no way of knowing exactly what the river level is, but after running Truchas we thought that Big Banana would probably be in. A group of my friends hiked in to set safety below the falls, while I went with another crew to the lip. The only way to scout the entrance to Big Banana is to rappel into the canyon above the drop to a ledge where you can see it.

View of the lip from the rappel

Dangling on the rope I could see that the level was really high. There was a crack on the left, a big curling wave on the right, and a narrow line down the middle. I stared at the entrance for a long time until I felt sure that I could hit the line.

I rapped in the rest of the way to a small ledge at the lip. My friend Jaime lowered my boat and then came down behind me. Jaime was going to signal to the safety team and film while I ran the waterfall. When I was ready to go, Jaime went a short ways back up the rope to get a better angle but ran into a problem. We were using a dynamic rope that had been rubbing against a sharp piece of basalt. The mantle of the rope had worn through, and Jaime couldn't bypass the fray with his ascension system. He came back down the rope and told me that after I ran the waterfall we would have to come back up and pull him out of the canyon.

The whole process took almost 3 hours, and the stress was starting to affect my mental game. With Jaime's rope situation in mind, I warmed back up and put myself back in the headspace to run the waterfall.

Jaime signaled to the safety team and I paddled from the eddy towards the little dagger of light at the end of the canyon. Rolling over the lip, I caught a little more of the wave than I wanted to, and had to take two terrifying correction strokes on my way down. The fall took forever, but eventually I hit the pool. The impact was massive, but I managed to stay in my boat. I rolled up and drifted straight toward Kurt in the pool, who was ready with a stoked yell and a big hug.

Looking small at the lip before disappearing in the vail

We took some time below to celebrate and take some photos. I felt good enough to paddle the section below, but we still had to go back for Jaime. We stashed our boats in the Jungle and hiked back out to the van. We got another rope and drove up the other side of the river to pull him out. The other rope was too think for his gear so we ended up having to pull him straight up out of the canyon with a big team of people. We eventually got him out in the dark after he spent over 5 hours alone on the ledge at the lip of Big Banana.

We went back for our boats the next day and paddled down to Tomata 1. I was able to paddle, but decided to take a few days off from big waterfalls. Carl and Kurt ran Tomata 1, and I took my turn setting safety and shooting photos. The next day we put in on the Jalacingo. Carl ran a ridiculously high descent of Twisted Pleasure, but below this we all realized we were in over our heads with the high water. We bailed on the river and hiked out in the dark again.

Carl Anderson on Tomata 1

I was feeling good on the water those days, but didn't quite walk away from Big Banana uninjured. Three days after the descent I started to feel a lot of chest pain. It worsened that night to the point where I was unable to paddle. The knots in my back were so tight that they caused two of my upper ribs to dislocate. I got them reduced back in the US and spent a little over a month doing PT. The recovery went surprising fast, and I was back on the water that winter for the PNW season. All in all, it was an amazing trip and despite the injury, I'm glad to come away with a successful descent of Big Banana.

Huge thanks to everyone that helped out with this project. Till next time Veracruz!