By Jeff Moag
“Picture a world without laws, manners, social mores or assistance for hundreds of miles,” Hansen wrote. “Rape does not exist, because there is no reason to report it. Killings are a daily occurrence because bodies are easy to dispose and disappearances are common for innocent reasons, so they are written up as simply that: disappearances.”
Kelty knew about these attacks. Hunter-Smart told her about them in that pizza restaurant in southwest London. “In the Red Zone you’re coming up to a village and you hear these whistles and little clicks going down the river, and then someone pops out on the riverbank with a shotgun,” says Hunter-Smart, whose local guide Cesár Peña was shot at when they passed through the area. “He put his arms over his head and felt the birdshot hit him, but he was far enough away that he wasn’t injured.”
Kelty listened carefully and took copious notes. But in typical problem-solving mode she sought a solution.
Kelty didn’t respond. “She didn’t want to hear it. She completely shut me down,” Hansen says. “She basically said ‘I handle the world with a giggle. I’m pretty tough.’”
The Marañon is a high-volume whitewater river akin to the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. The rapids are powerful but straightforward and usually have a portage option. It’s the sort of river a new whitewater paddler can get down with help. Kelty contracted with Contos to provide a three-person support crew, including a raft and two kayakers. Kelty paddled an inflatable kayak on the upper stretches of the river and a Dagger Nomad 8.1 creekboat on the easier sections. She ran the Class II and many of the Class III rapids, swimming about half a dozen times. She walked the two Class V drops and most of the Class IVs.
The guide Contos assigned to her, Guillermo “Momo” Castillo, was charged with deciding which rapids she could paddle and which she would walk. The two clashed from the start, when Castillo had her hike a 50-mile section below the source, judging the rapids too difficult for her limited skills.
Two weeks into the trip, the river funneled into a gorged-in Class IV with no easy portage option. Kelty at first agreed to ride through the rapid on the support raft, then ordered an early camp and put on her can-do hat. That evening she announced to the dismay of her guides that she would portage the rapid, carrying all of her own food and supplies. The trek took two full days. Castillo and another kayaker attached to the trip left in protest—“It’s not fun anymore. I don’t expect any more pay,” he told Contos—but Kelty stuck to her principles and the narrow definition of her “unassisted” descent.
The episode reveals much about Kelty’s character and toughness. She was used to making things happen her way. Every successful adventurer shares some measure of this trait, but in concentrated form it can be dangerous stuff.
Kelty spent 45 days descending the Marañon, arriving at Sarameriza on July 29. The next day she began the 3,000-mile “solo and unassisted” portion of her trip. Contos, who had urged her earlier to hire an escort boat, renewed the offer. “I told her if she changed her mind we could still arrange it,” Contos says, “But she wasn’t interested. She wanted to travel solo and made the decision to accept the risk.”
In late August dreadful news filtered out of the jungle. One of the guides who had traveled with Kelty on the lower part of the Marañon heard by word of mouth that she had been murdered. The report seemed credible, and Contos relayed the news to Kelty’s brother in England. At the same time, he sent a message via her Garmin InReach satellite messenger. After several fraught hours she texted back.
“Let’s hope it’s not a premonition!!” she wrote.
It was on one of these islands that Kelty set up her tent on the evening of Sept. 13. The previous day she’d tweeted about passing 30 or more men with guns and arrows, writing “My face must have been a picture!!” The scare didn’t last; the next morning she posted about meeting “three lovely locals and 2 kittens that slept next to my tent for the night.” Coari was a few miles behind her, and those watching her progress felt she was past the danger zone. She didn’t know that the island she chose to camp on that evening, Sept. 13, is a frequent stopping point for Colombian drug traffickers.
Reports of her murder are vague and contradictory. We have only the testimony of the accused killers and those they bragged to afterward, via Brazilian authorities who quickly rounded up the suspects. According to all accounts, the gunman opened fire with a .20-gauge shotgun without warning. Kelty was struck twice while still in her tent. She was stabbed and violated. Reports suggest she was still alive when the murderers, seven men in their teens and early 20s, threw her from their boat several hundred meters from shore.
They’re right of course. All of them. Kelty’s bravery was admirable, and her death was predictable. She never should have been on that river. Not alone. Not without an escort. I don’t say that to disparage Kelty or her accomplishments or ambitions. It is simply the truth.
I have written often about paddlers who have made life-affirming trips despite having little or no paddling experience when they set out. Aaron Carotta canoed nearly 5,000 miles down the Missouri-Mississippi without ever learning to J-stroke. I wrote it up like the Huck Finn adventure it was. I didn’t dwell on the risks he took because none of them caught up to him. He was lucky.
I wish I’d had the chance to write that story. Instead I’m sitting here with my forehead on the keyboard and my gut in a knot. I’ve written plenty over the years about death on rivers, but this is the first time I’ve written about a person murdered on a river. It’s harder than I thought it would be. Rivers kill, but never with malice. There is no evil in them.
—Jeff Moag was editor of Canoe & Kayak from 2008 to 2016.
The article was originally published on Canoe & Kayak
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