Bren Orton, from Warrington, set a British record back in December when he plummeted from Mexico's Big Banana Falls and lived to tell the tale
HE'S gone from standing six feet under to being perched on the edge of a waterfall 128 feet up, and Bren Orton is, understandably, on top of the world.
The 23-year-old kayak champ, from Warrington, set a British record back in December when he plummeted from Mexico's Big Banana Falls and lived to tell the tale.
It was the second highest descent made by any kayaker in history - and the highest by any Brit - but it wasn't the 128-foot fall which really scared him.
The scruffy-haired adventurer told Sun Online: "Big Banana Falls is a little bit unique in the world of waterfalls because you have to abseil into it.
"I'm not very skilled with climbing or ropes - that was new territory for me and I found that absolutely terrifying.
"I was way more scared of rappelling down into it than running the actual waterfall, although the impact at the bottom was humongous."
The descent itself, which only took a couple of seconds, would have ended in tragedy if Bren had been even slightly off his A-game.
Back when he was 18, Bren was lucky to swim away from an terrifying near-miss after he messed up the landing on a 20-foot drop.
Just after the plunge, the river fed into a much bigger, 60-foot waterfall, but Bren's dodgy landing left him stuck inside a cave, and he had to abandon his kayak.
He said: "I was clinging onto a rock on the lip of the waterfall when my teacher managed to save me."
Years of intense training later, and Bren does 60-foot drops for breakfast.
While he has perched on the lip of Big Banana Falls, where he set the British record, he wasn't even thinking about the raging water below him.
Bren said: "The best mind state to drop a waterfall that big is not to be thinking at all.
"The only conscious thought I had came halfway down the waterfall when I was like: 'Bloody hell, I'm still in the air and falling down this thing.'"
Bren first fell in love with kayaking on a school trip to the Lake District when he was just nine years old.
But it took years of hard graft - and a smattering of odd jobs - to get to where he is today.
He joked: "In the lead up to getting paid to go kayaking I think I've worked almost every job possible.
"I worked in a call centre, as a labourer on a building site, in a gym, at the national Watersports Centre and as a gravedigger. I did some medical trials to earn money as well.
"I only did the grave digging for a few months but the medical trials were the big one, even if they were a bit sketchy."
Bren's iron-man constitution would have helped with the trials.
A few years ago, he broke his back while he was flinging himself off a different Mexican waterfall - but he was so determined that he tried to ignore the pain and kayaked for days on a broken back.
He said: "I took a couple of big impacts and picked up a compression fracture. I tried to push through the pain, thinking it was muscular, but a few weeks later I couldn't get out of bed.
"I tried to keep pushing through it but I wasn't aware that I had broken my back - I was just in a lot of pain each day.
"I was back kayaking about four weeks after that, but it was eight weeks before I was running waterfalls again... and that was not on the doctor's recommendation."
Clearly, nothing is going to keep Bren from his kayak - and it's this drive which has helped him conquer some of the world's biggest waterfalls and paddle away from the bottom relatively intact.
He claims the British record he recently picked up was "the icing on the cake", while it was the hard work which went into his Big Banana plunge which made it so worthwhile.
But Bren has set his sights on another record already: equalling the biggest ever drop at the 198-foot Palouse Falls in Washington, America.
He said: "First I want to equal the record and then see whether I want to push higher than that.
"Waterfalls don't always cooperate with the right levels and timing and weather, but I have a good window from March to April when I'll be ready."
In a few months, he could be the holder of a joint world record for hurling himself off very tall places.
And after that, the sky's the limit.
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