Video - Sam Grafton runs Sunset Falls

Imagine a peaceful toboggan ride with your friends on a sunny afternoon. Now imagine instead of a sunny, snow filled slope to toboggan down, you have a 275 foot ramp of death and destruction, and none of your friends want to have anything to do with said death ramp. Now you have Sunset Falls in Washington state.

Sunset Falls is the largest and the final stage of the three major waterfalls on the South Fork of the Skykomish River. The cascading drop falls about a 100 vertical feet over a 275 foot long, sloping granite chute of raw power.

Al Fausett ran Sunset Falls back in 1926 in a 30 foot canoe. They don't grow balls this big these days. Apparently Al used to charge admission to watch him do stunts like this as a means of passive income, charging a  crowd of around 3000 who gathered to watch the show.

Sunset Falls was run by Rob McKibbin back in October of 2008 (while on a lunch break from work). After cracking a couple ribs, he lost a paddle midway down the final chute and was forcibly ejected from his boat. Rob tried to pull himself back into his boat, but was unable to do so.

Then in April of 2010, Tyler Bradt stepped up to the plate. Despite running the slide on his head and breaking his paddle, Tyler made the first successful kayak descent of Sunset Falls.

Then, in comes Sam Grafton. Sam scouted and thought he saw his line. Then destroyed it. Sam has an ability to stay out of holes and hydraulics that is not natural. I have no idea what kind of a deal Sam made with the Devil, or Poseidon, but it goes contrary to the same deal that Rob made. While Rob is blessed with the ability to fight out of holes no one should be allowed to exit, Sam never even touches them.

I wasn't able to be there on the day that Sam ran the waterfall, but I was able to get my hands on the footage for a little bit of editing. So sit back and get ready to squeeze out your adrenal glands.