Al Faussett

As a financial strategy, there’s a certain logic to taking bets that you are about to die. If you survive, you’ve just made a bundle of money. And if you die, losing the bet is the least of your worries.

Welcome inside the enterprising mind of Al Faussett, the lumberjack-turned-daredevil who was first to run 104-foot Sunset Falls, Oregon, back in 1926.

Faussett survived the plunge in a thirty-two-foot spruce log he’d hollowed out and reinforced with steel cladding. The finishing touch was an array of stout vine maple branches protruding at angles from the canoe so that it would glance off of rocks. A good plan, given that most of the Skykomish River pummels straight into a massive boulder about two-thirds of the way down Sunset Falls, which is not a proper waterfall at all, but what whitewater boaters call a slide. It drops 104 feet over the course of 275 feet and is mined with all manner of deadly hazards. The entire