I had a discussion recently with a fellow riverboarder who saw this video of Denis Morin dropping Azul Falls in Costa Rica (Denis is a world-class riverboarder who rides a hydrospeed and hails from Canada) and wondered if it actually took skill or if it was simply a guts-n-ego thing. He wondered, "what's the difference between that and being in a barrel?"

I honestly had to think about it for a second, but there's definitely a difference, and there's definitely skill involved.

1. Scouting - knowing if its possible is your first order of business. Checking the lead-in, examining the landing, calculating the depth of the water where you're going to land, etc. When you start dealing with waterfalls more than a few feet / meters high, all those things can become life or death, especially the higher you go.

2. You have be in the right place (aka "hit your line"). Many times the lead-in rapid to a waterfall is turbulent and has irregular waves, which not only block your view of the horizon line, but threaten to knock you off your intended line as well. Navigating that in order to line up correctly takes a great deal of skill...especially when your heart's pounding and you know you're about to take a plunge which will require concentration as well.

3.  Landing a waterfall on a riverboard is no easy task. (Well, and to be technically accurate, Riverboards aren't great for waterfalls because you're not very secure on the board, and landing typically strips it away from you; Sledges are better in that respect, but being hard plastic you do run the risk of banging your body or face up; perhaps those reasons are why most of the big waterfalls that have been dropped around the world by riverboarders - with the exception of the popular Tutea Falls in NZ - have been dropped by riders on hydrospeeds.)

There is definitely an art form to body position, much like high-divers drop slowly and gracefully from a horizontal falling position to entering the water vertically. If you drop too flat, you're liable to get horrible spinal compression from your torso stopping on impact and bending you backwards toward your still-falling legs. Drop too steep and you may find yourself upside down, "belly-flopping" on the back of your head and neck. The goal is to enter the water at between a 45 - 60 degree angle. 

That's not easy to do after navigating a turbulent lead-in rapid, securing your drop-off spot, and falling through the air 3 stories in the matter of a second or two. Definitely takes skill. 

 I don't have a pic of Mike Horn's World Record 72ft (22m) waterfall on the upper reaches of the Pacquare in Costa Rica, but that would be the apropos picture to post here (that's a pic of Azul Falls that Denis sent me, seen in the video). If anyone knows where I could snag a copy of it let me know. Charl has done some huge stuff in South Africa too, and I would expect there will be more big drops done with regularity in coming years...

UPDATE: I asked Denis about his experience dropping that waterfall. Here's his response: