JT Hartman
Job: Tech EMT
Primary Outdoor Sports: Whitewater Kayaking
Sponsor: Jackson Kayak
Favorite Beverage: Americano
Non-Outdoor Hobby: Guitar
River Snack: Welch’s Fruit Snacks
Favorite Season: Shoulder Season
Fun Fact: Used to be on an Internationally Ranked Unicycle Team
Book Recommendation: Reincarnation Blues
Three Words to Describe Yourself: Persistent, Empathetic, and Adaptable
“I grew up in the town of North Bend, Washington.I grew up a 5 minute walk from the takeout, 25 minutes from the mountain pass, and 15 minutes from mountain biking trails. We had it all. We were very fortunate and so getting introduced to the outdoors was really kind of a matter of time in lots of ways.
I was very fortunate to be able to branch out and pursue whatever outdoor pursuits I fancied. My folks were very encouraging of that. They grew up traveling to Alaska and so are very staunch proponents for outside time, and adventures, and learning through experiences.
Every second I could spend outside, I did. I was romping around in the woods in the backyard at the end of the cul-de-sac. We kind of lived right at the base of Mount Si and we would just go swim across the river and walk up the mountain as far as we could. We’d find what we could find and just make a time of it.”
“I didn’t fall in love with the river until 6th grade. My family friend invited me on a rafting trip on the Rogue, the Wild and Scenic section. From the second we pushed off, I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I need in my life. This is what I want.’
I went back home and Mom was mortified that I had fallen in love with whitewater and was not about to let me hop in a hard shell by any means. So I muddled around with some inflatables for a few years and putzed around on the local Class II rapids.
Finally, right before my Senior year of high school I was like, ‘Mom, I’m turning 18 this year. I’m gonna get a kayak no matter what. Can I go get this one right now?’ And the same family friend that took me on the Rogue shepherded me into the kayaking community.”
“I just remember dreaming so big. I remember I convinced my friend Dane, a high school friend of mine, to come with me way up what we called the North Fork Road. It goes like 40 miles into the Cascade Wilderness and we drove probably 25-30 miles deep and found this creek called Sunday Creek that I was convinced had some sick whitewater on it. We trudged upstream for hours and found absolutely nothing. There’s so much of that in this sport, learning by experience and your own blunders. By fucking up, you learn quick.”
“The Whitewater Community is incredibly tight knit just by the nature of what we do. The bonds that you form with these people, even on an easy chill day on the water, are different. There’s a certain amount of inherent connection and trust that you have to have with somebody to put yourself in these situations and feel ok about the potential outcomes. Struggle really bonds people. We’re all out there feeling these things and confronting these things within ourselves and when you do that with other people, that forms a really strong bond.”
“This last summer, Noah and I embarked on a 4 week road trip. We scored a permit to do the Middle Fork Salmon at high water, about 6.5ft, and we had absolutely no idea what we were getting into. We’d only heard that above 6ft is as full on as it gets on the Middle Fork.
We’d been out of service and got a text on Noah’s inReach from his mom. She just texted us ‘MF, put in on Tuesday?’ and it was Sunday night. We were like, ‘Yes’. So she scored the permit for us and we drove. I think we drove 9 hours from where we were to take-out. We planned to drive an additional 10 hours later the second half of the day and through the night to the put-in, put in early that morning, and paddle for a couple of days.
Granted, we’re reading about how high the water is and how much wood there is and how much it’s changed from past years and how if you're going to be in this water you need to be prepared for seriously long swims in dangerous conditions and floating logs in the river. We’re like, ‘What are we getting ourselves into bro?’ This might now be a good idea.
We’re passing through the last town that we will pass through, Stanley, Idaho. It's 11:30 at night and I have a kind of, not a health emergency, but a health urgency. I have a history of inflammatory problems in my back and eyes and I started to have a flare up of this crazy inflammation. My eye was getting all red and puffy and I was starting to lose my vision.
The treatment is steroids which I didn’t have. So we stopped in Stanley and camped for the night. We were like, ‘There has to be a medical center here.’ in this town of like 500 people. Fortunately, we wake up and we find an urgent care. They prescribe me some steroids and say, ‘I don’t know if this is going to help. I cannot in good conscience send you for three days in the wilderness by yourself self-supported, but maybe it won’t get any worse while you’re out there.’
And that’s what happened. It didn’t get any worse. We just had the most magical time. Our fear level went from absolutely gripped, no idea what were getting into, to ‘This is heaven. It’s just nothing but fun.’
As soon as our boats hit the water, we proceed to have 3 days of huge standing waves and big rapids. Long rapids. Deep canyons. Hot springs. Passing rafting groups that are hollering back at us. Just powering through that much whitewater, moving down river through truly one of the most beautiful canyons I’ve ever been in was about as close to a perfect day as I could imagine.”
“That point of commitment, realizing that all you have left to do, your only option is to continue downstream is in my mind one of the most peaceful moments on the river. Realizing whether you’re afraid or not, you know what needs to happen. You have to put trust in yourself that you’re going to know how to handle the situation and continue downstream. There’s a lot of beauty in that, that comfort with the point of no return.”
“It’s an entirely separate experience from really anything else. You get it in a lot of adventure sports, but I have never even come close to the ferocity of that feeling on the water. Something about the medium or the feeling or the unpredictable, consistently inconsistent nature of moving water just amplifies that to an extreme.”
“It’s humbling, continuously. Even when you think you’re at the top of your game and are super dialed and are feeling good and are stoked to be there, shit can go sideways. Learning to be ok with that is a huge part of this sport and a ton of outdoor sports. That’s not necessarily unique to kayaking, but it is extraordinarily prevalent in kayaking. You’re not going to win against the river. You never will. Nobody ever will.”
“I think one of the biggest things that I’ve taken from paddling is the ‘ability to deal’. You can not know what’s going to happen exactly and feel confident in your abilities and your insights and your skills to put yourself in a situation that you don’t fully understand or know how it’s going to unfold. That skill of being ok with not knowing and at the same time knowing that you’ll be able to handle or deal with whatever is coming is a really valuable lesson, the art of figuring it out.”
