Get Help

On the edge

June 7, 2016
 
Action shot
Dave Fusilli takes kayaking to the edge in this action shot of him doing what he loves best.

Ask Dave Fusilli what he's been doing since graduating in 2004, and he'll tell you he's been floating around the world.

Sounds leisurely, right?

More accurately, Fusilli has been floating from one adrenaline rush to the next.

After graduating from Clarion-Limestone High School, Fusilli wanted nothing more than to move to Colorado and be a snowboard bum. His mom wouldn't hear of it, though, and she pushed her son to further his education.

Fusilli enrolled at Clarion. He had been active in high school sports, but he wasn't playing sports in college. Realizing he needed an outlet, Fusilli went back to kayaking, the sport in which his family had always been active.

The Fusilli family regularly attended the Cheat River Festival along the banks of the Cheat River in Albright, W.Va.
"It's one of the only free-flowing rivers in the east. There's a beautiful canyon; it's a really cool place," Fusilli said. "One morning we jumped in the boat and paddled our kayaks back. I remember flipping and rolling. I did that the whole way down the river. I had a blast."

He was 19 at the time, and he was addicted.

"Basically from that day on, I was just trying to get in water as much as possible," Fusilli said. "I just wanted to kayak, period. I wanted to be on the water every day."

At Clarion, Fusilli finished two bachelor's degrees, in environmental science and geology. Two days after commencement, he moved to Colorado, intending to make a living in his kayak.

"I started raft guiding, and my skills got better and better," he said. In 2007, Pyranha, a manufacturer of specialist whitewater kayaks, sponsored him.

"Pyranha gave me a little cash, a gas card and a vehicle in which to travel around and do competitions," Fusilli said. He now represents Pyranha full time. During the United States' winter months, he pushes the limits, competing in places such as Chile, Ecuador and Austria.

"I was flown to Mexico for a big competition, where there was a one-of-a-kind, big waterfall. It went from a 30-footer (drop) into a 60-footer into a 40-footer. We were judged on fluidity, style and difficulty of line. It's the first time we'd ever done anything like that in kayaking, period."

A little more than a year ago, he moved again, to White Salmon, Wash.

"That's my home. I'm eight miles from the put-in of maybe the best creek in the United States, the Little White Salmon," Fusilli said. "The white water is rated class one to class five – class one is like the Upper Clarion River before it gets dammed. (The Little White Salmon) is real steep and aggressive with waterfalls and big boulders."

Getting his feet wet

Fusilli's first experience in a kayak was as a 7-year-old in the Clarion University pool.

"My dad taught me. He used a homemade boat and homemade skirt. Kayaking gear was just shit then. It's come a long way," Fusilli said. "It's a very young sport. Gear – especially whitewater gear – is evolving."

"My dad is a pioneer of white water kayaking," Fusilli said of David W. "Big Dave" Fusilli ('79). "There are definitely folks ahead of him, but not many."

The elder Fusilli grew up in Pittsburgh and spent time at Ohiopyle, where he saw kayaking for the first time.

"People had to make their own kayaks," he said. "Back when Dad started, no one could roll."

As he grew up, the Fusilli family often could be found navigating local waterways.

"A lot of it was paddling on Mill Creek, a tributary to Clarion River. That's basically where I learned. Dad would take us over the hill, two miles from our house. Going down that first time, with the brown, muddy water, was a little intimidating," he said. "I remember my brother as an infant, in canoes, going down the Clarion River. We've always been on the water."

He recalls one excursion as a youngster when the creek water was especially high. "I was crying. My mom took her sock off and tied the back of her kayak to the front of mine and pulled me down the river."

As Fusilli grew, so did his proficiency and comfort in the water.

"I remember taking a class at Slippery Rock (University) when I was 8 or 9 years old, in which I learned different skills from different people," he said. His early years in a kayak were spent paddling Slippery Rock Creek, the Youghiogheny River and the lower Youghiogheny.

Fusilli's first time on the lower Yough was when he was 10 years old.

"It seemed massive. The waves were like, 'Whoa!' It was pretty intimidating," he said. "My dad wanted nothing more than for me to be a kayaker. The gear sucked – it was pretty cold and not super comfortable."

 
Action shot
For Dave Fusilli, being in a kayak is living the good life.
Taking the plunge

"My first waterfall was probably Wonder Falls in Big Sandy River in West Virginia. It was a 17- or 18-foot drop," Fusilli said. "I didn't even look – I knew it was safe. My dad lined me up at the top. It was pretty calm."

The feeling afterward? "It was awesome, like winning the Super Bowl!"

The drops Fusilli conquers in his kayak are of increasing challenge. His biggest drop so far has been a 90-foot drop down a vertical waterfall.

"It's just been a progression. I've built up from the 18-footer."

Fusilli said he's had a couple of close calls, being stuck in hydraulics (river features in which water is cyclical). "My body recirculated a few times – kind of like being in a washing machine," he said.

"Those times are so few. I've had two pretty bad swims out of thousands and thousands of days on the river. I've been injured a few times," he said.

Still, he finds the sport to have broad appeal in the age demographic.

"Yesterday I paddled a class four-plus run. There were guys out there who were 70 years old. The overall impact on your body isn't much, Fusilli said. "What's cool about white water, as a kid you can do white water and be safe when you learn the basic skills."

Rescue

As with any man vs. nature showdown, there are some dangers.

As an experienced kayaker, Fusilli had been eyeing Hamma Hamma Falls on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. He had visited the waterfall a few years prior to finally making the run, but he had a tweaked rib, so he took it easy on that trip.

"It haunted me – I had three years of thinking about running the fall," he said. He and three friends finally went back.

"We get there, and the water level is perfect. That's important in taller waterfalls. If there isn't enough water, you'll make a bigger impact. Water creates aeration and makes it soft."

"One kid (Brent) had been wanting to run waterfalls. He was all fired up."

Fusilli reviewed the run with him. It was a 20-foot waterfall, then a short pool into a 60-foot waterfall. The 20-footer was the harder of the two because it had a curl of water coming off the right side of it. That curl would want to set the kayaker left. Fusilli explained that Brent would want to fall with the flow, then take a really late left stroke, otherwise he'd end up with the bow putting him in an eddy on the right.

"That's what I'm nervous about," Fusilli cautioned.

Fusilli went first and considered, once he navigated the 20-foot drop, continuing on to the 60-footer.

"I had a second thought of making sure he gets down, so I paused. I see him come straight off and get shoved right in the catcher's mitt. He's getting pushed into a wall. I see all of this happening. He had come out of the boat and reaches this perfect hand hold on the rock.

"I see that, and I'm looking around. I have very little to stand on – just a wet, angled rock. I had a tether tied to my life jacket, so I clipped it to my kayak, scrambled onto the rock, then I get the throw bag out – it's basically a bag full of rope.

"He's still hanging on, and it's getting close to a minute that he'd been there. I yelled, 'Brent! Rope!' and I threw it a little upstream to allow the current to float it down to him. Sure enough, he grabbed it. I pulled as hard as I've ever pulled, right across the lip of a 60-foot waterfall. I was tired as hell, and he was exhausted. It was almost 10 years of experience happening in one minute.

"At that point, his boat runs the 60-footer without him. Brent is stuck in a pocket, sitting on this rock, no way to get out. I was trying to figure out how we'd get out of there, but I still really wanted to run this waterfall – I'd been thinking about it for years. I'm on the lip ... I have to go. I rolled off the lip and had a great line!"

After the run, Fusilli and the other two friends hiked back to the top of the waterfall and threw a rope down to Brent, who had been sitting there, cold, for two hours.

"The three of us just extracted him up 50 feet. It was an insane day."

As for Brent – "We went back a couple of weeks later, and he ran it."

Going pro

"I had a friend, Bob Petty ('01), who was going to college at Clarion. I watched him progress from being an OK paddler to improving a ton," Fusilli said. "That's how I ended up raft guiding. I wanted to be on the water all day, kayaking. After work I'd do another run. I could make money and be on the water every day. That got my skllls way better."

After raft guiding on the eastern side of the United States during summers in college, Fusilli went to Colorado, where a friend convinced him to take part in a freestyle competition.

"I did that competition the next year, and I did another one that summer in Colorado. At the end of the summer, Pyranha Kayaks got ahold of me."

A local kayak shop that gave Fusilli discounts on gear was a Pyranha dealer. When the shop owner heard that Pyranha was looking for good freestyler paddler to help grow the brand, he gave them Fusilli's name.

"I've been to Mexico, Uganda, all over Canada and all over the United States," Fusilli said. "I've paddled the best places on the east coast – in New York, West Virginia and North Carolina. Colorado is pretty good. California, when they have snow, is incredible. Washington and Oregon are ridiculous," Fusilli said. "Anywhere you have big mountains."

The good life

Fusilli lives in Washington with his girlfriend, Gina, and his younger brother, Rob, whom Fusilli says is "damn good" in a kayak.

"He paddles with me, runs the stuff I run," he said.

What others would view as a challenging lifestyle is exactly what Fusilli loves about it.

"I don't have a house or a nice car. I've gone for years without even paying rent, just wandering around," he said. "People like their comforts – having a home base and set routine – if you're that way, this is very difficult for you."

He wouldn't want it any other way.

"When you have a certain goal in life and things you want to do, if you want to do them badly enough, you'll do them whatever way possible. The things I have are all free – the kayak, gear, anything else I have. I don't have unnecessary things. I don't have things that make me look rich.

When he needs to slow down and mellow out, he simplifies even further.

"I just like camping and being outside. My dad has always loved being outside. He shared that with us and our mother strongly," Fusilli said.

"My goal is always to continue to kayak and live the way I want to live. I'm outside almost all the time, I have tons of freedom. I'm not really tied down. I don't have to sit inside at a desk. I don't have a schedule unless I make it.

Demshitz legacy

"What are them shits up to now?" "Where did them shits get off to this time?" -- the words that started it all, by a disgruntled "Big Dave" Fusilli and friend Jay Seiler and yelling out from a camp fire, wondering where their kids had gotten off to, a long day on the river not enough to tire their rambunctious energy. It all started with family – Jay and his two boys, Jared and Graham, and "Big Dave" and his kids Dave, Carly and Rob. Siblings joined, friends joined. The river lifestyle was the lifestyle. As the kids turned into adults, their passion for pushing the limits of their paddling drew attention. More and more people wanted to be a part of that energy. Demshitz was born, and more friends joined their extended family.

Werner, another of Fusilli's sponsors, paid homage to the family and the lifestyle by creating limited edition Demshitz paddles.

 

Last Updated 1/11/21