Update: Smashed Wrists on the Middle Kings

Here's an update on our recent post on the one-day descent of the Middle Fork of California's Kings River Gorge. Lunch Video Magazine has posted an entertaining phone interview with kayakers Tommy Hilleke and Robin Betz to talk about their six-day Middle Kings expedition, which they did with 13 kayakers—plus the one-day descent completed by Hilleke and John Grace.

Betz describes the Class V approach just to get to the river. "Before you even start the 12 mile hike to the put-in, you have to run shuttle—and that's about an eight hour drive one way on curvy roads," she says. "The hike is intense. Right off the bat you're going straight uphill. It's five miles to the top of the pass. You go through snow fields, switchbacks. Not to mention, you've got 80 pounds of gear on your back."

And then, you've actually got to paddle the gorge. Hilleke talks about what happens when things go wrong:

"It started to get interesting on day three. You wake up and you're faced with two of the steepest miles of whitewater right out of camp. On the last gorge of the day, we had one of the grizzliest injuries I've ever seen," he says. "Dave Simmonite went off a drop into a wall on his right side, broke his wrist—radius and ulna, massive deformity. It was really scary. Our team nurses set it back in place, and we did some rope work to ferry him in his kayak across the river and helped him hike up out of the canyon and back to the trail. He and Ryan Casey hiked back to the put-in—about 23 miles—to be evacuated."

Listen to the interview here.