Kayaker survives new challenges

by Susan Holloway

JoJo, Pam and I were sitting on a ledge halfway up a 250-foot cliff, each of us on the verge of tears, shaking with fear and with no idea what do to next.

We were stuck! Worse still, in an hour we were going to have to scale this cliff, plus an additional 300 vertical feet before rappelling down a 525-foot face, our every move followed by television cameras.

The fact that I rarely even climb a ladder and had never rappelled in my life definitely had me feeling quite apprehensive. We were eventually rescued from our precarious perch by the man who had set up the course. Then, just as we were about to practice the rappel, the producer’s voice came over the walkie-talkie: “Get in the choppers and come down to the start”. The film crew was losing light and he wanted to start shooting.

Such was the first day of competition for the NBC show, Survival of the Fittest. It soon became quite evident that this was primarily a television production, and not a competition as most of us were used to.

The stagers have to set up, the camera-men have to get into position, and then there is sound sync, Y-stops, and numerous other necessary delays.

We seemed to be in a constant state of “hurry up and waif”. The last day was the worst for that. We arrived on-site at about 10:00 a.m. and were ferried across the river to a sand bar where we waited until 4:00 p.m., clad only in our light nylon tops and shorts. That was fine while the sun was out, but in mid-afternoon, the clouds rolled in, the wind blew up and it seemed as though we were in for a blizzard. We were not warmed by the knowledge that very shortly, we were going to have to swim across a glacial river. But more on that later.

I had been contacted early in February by a Los Angeles promotions company to see if I was available to participate in the show. After they explained that the show would be filmed in New Zealand and that there would be prize money, I quickly decided to make myself available. I had never watched the show on television, so I didn’t have a firm grasp of exactly what it entailed.

Although I made no secret of the fact that I had never tried any of the events, they seemed to be looking for a ‘type’ and I fit!

Five other women were involved. Lynn Hill, who successfully defended her title for the third straight year, is a rock climber, runner and stunt woman. JoJo Toeppner, who gave Lynn a run for her money and finished second, is a multi-talented ex-gymnast, kayaker and cross country skier. I was pushed for third place by Sheri Swatek, who was recently the world junior windsurf champion. Pam Weiss, U.S. biathlon champion and Julie Moss, who finished second in the Hawaii Triathlon, tied for fifth place.

The women’s competition consisted of four separate events.

The first was the climb and rappel which I have already described.

The second was a white water swim and kayak which I found equally terrifying as I have a strong aversion to being under water. Decked out in full wet suits, lifejackets and helmets, we all jumped into the rapids and proceeded to navigate gates as we were swept downstream. Then we ran up a rocky beach, hopped into blow-up kayaks and paddled through more white water.

The third event was an aerial obstacle course that took stagers three weeks to set up and which was, in my opinion, a minor engineering miracle. Two parallel courses were suspended 30 to 60 feet above a glacial river. The course consisted of a Tarzan swing, commando lines, a sliding trapeze, 16 stationary trapezes, a cargo net, Burma bridge and, finally, a breath-taking zip line into the ice cold river.

The Survival Run took place on the final day and combined elements of the other three events: a white water swim, heavy uphill climbs, runs up sand dunes and through a very boggy swamp, and finished off with a 75-foot rappel off a cliff into a lake (cold, of course), and a 200 metre swim while wearing gloves, harness and runners.

Since my winter training already involves swimming, running and weight lifting, I didn’t really do anything special to prepare for the events. One of the male competitors, however, who was back for his second year in the competition, had set up commando lines in his backyard and had become very proficient. It paid off when he won the aerial obstacle course quite handily.

I was surprised at how small most of the other competitors were, but their size was actually an advantage in most of the events. Agility, flexibility and reckless disregard for personal safety were characteristic of most of the group, including the cameramen, who placed themselves in the most bizarre locations in order to get a good angle.

My main concern throughout the competition was to avoid injury. Although I was losing two weeks of valuable training time, I did feel that the competition was an outstanding opportunity to see a beautiful part of the world and to make some money. Nevertheless, I didn’t feel anything was worth being out for the season, so I approached each event with a certain amount of caution. The first two events were approached with a great deal of fear as well, but once we had survived those, we felt that there was very little they could throw at us that we couldn’t handle and that’s a great feeling.

It’s hard to say if I would do it again. Having survived once, I’m not sure that I should tempt fate a second time.

Susan Holloway was a member of the 1976 Winter Olympic team in cross country skiing and the 1976 Summer team as a kayaker. Named to the Olympic team again in Summer 1980, she was selected as the flag bearer. Holloway remains one of Canada’s outstanding kayakers on the international scene.

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