Extreme sports, stereotypes and the Amazon River

Darcy Gaechter Transcript

Sabrina Merage Naim
From Evoke Media I'm Sabrina Merage Naim, with me is Kassia Binkowski, and this is Breaking Glass - a series of conversations with women around the world who are shattering glass ceilings and challenging social norms. They are audacious, gutsy, and their stories are echoed across borders and generations in a rallying cry that is changing the narrative for women everywhere. Today we're joined by Darcy Gaechter, the first woman to kayak the Amazon River from source to sea. Darcy has been whitewater kayaking for 21 years and for the past 15 she's been considered one of the world's best female kayakers and one of the most accomplished expedition kayakers. She's won whitewater kayaking races throughout the world, has participated and led kayaking expeditions in 18 different countries.

Kassia Binkowski
Sabrina this conversation with Darcy is a great example of women who don't necessarily set out to be activists or role models, but end up having a tremendous impact on the gender dynamics within their given industry. We're talking today about Darcy's experience as a woman in extreme sports, the gender stereotypes she's been subjected to, and the glass ceilings that she's shattered along the way.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Right. And something we heard from Darcy that is becoming a theme across multiple guests is her sheer stubbornness. She was told she couldn't do it because she's a woman because she's short and petite and shy, and she's proven everyone wrong. Anytime someone told her it couldn't be done, she persevered. And that's exactly what we need more girls and women to do in order to change the gender dynamics in numerous industries, including outdoor sports. Take a listen. Darcy, thank you so much for joining us from Basalt, Colorado today. We're really excited to talk to you about extreme sports, athleticism, some of your adventures and how gender plays a part in all of that. So thank you for being with us.

Darcy Gaecther
Yeah, thank you so much for having me on this show.

Sabrina Merage Naim
We're constantly speaking with women who are shattering glass ceilings in different ways in their respective industries, from music and entertainment to health care and conservation. And your story is no different. You are doing that in your industry, which is slightly more niche, which is professional outdoor sports. In 2013, at the age of 35, you were the first woman to complete a descent of the Amazon River from source to sea, a 4300 mile journey, which is crazy! And I'm so excited to dig into that and and learn more. But before we dive in to that feat, take us back a little bit. You grew up in Aspen, Colorado and we want to understand where was the interest in kayaking? Where did it first take place for you? Who exposed you to it?

Darcy Gaecther
So yeah, my kayaking career started when I was 19 years old. I didn't start as a young child. I ended up getting a job at a rafting company during my summer break between high school and college. And I actually wasn't that interested in kayaking, but all the other people that worked at the company, they were you know, 22 to 25 years old and they all went kayaking after work. So I just thought if I want to hang out with them, I've got to start kayaking. And I actually really hated the sport when I first started because I was really bad at it. And it was the first time in my life that I remembered being bad at something. And so I found it incredibly frustrating. But I guess some part of me also wanted to face that challenge.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah I think it's ironic that you say that you you started out hating it, given what you've accomplished since then. But I also want to note that I think that it speaks to your character that instead of giving up and shying away from it, you were faced with a challenge and then took it on head on and now are one of the more celebrated kayakers in the world.

Darcy Gaecther
Yeah, I think my mom would say that it's just pure stubbornness. Basically any time in my life when people told me that I couldn't do something, I just got absolutely determined to do it. And kayaking felt kind of the same way. You know, it was so difficult, and so frustrating, but I thought, "No, I can't let this be my ending with kayaking, I've got to keep at it." And it took me quite a few years to actually get to the point where I felt like I was progressing. And I was good at it. But it was really an amazing, great feeling when that turning point happened.

Kassia Binkowski
When did it evolve from something you were doing after work with your colleagues in the summer to something you were passionate about and going to potentially seek a career in?

Darcy Gaecther
I was going to Montana State University at the time and I met a guy who said "Let's skip fall semester and go kayaking in Nepal."

Kassia Binkowski
Ha, which your parents loved!

Darcy Gaecther
They were surprisingly okay with it. I thought there's no way they're ever gonna say okay to this, but my mom, you know, she had always been like a strict authority figure in my life. And I was really scared to ask her. And she was like, "Oh, that sounds like a really cool opportunity." And I was like, What? I was like, Who are you?

Sabrina Merage Naim
Moms everywhere, listen up, please. That was incredible!

Darcy Gaecther
Yeah, so they gave me their blessing to go. So I'd only been kayaking a year, I still wasn't very good at it. And the trip was extremely difficult. I swam out of my kayak a lot, because I wasn't good enough to do a combat role, which is when you right your kayak backup if you've accidentally tipped over, and I got sick a lot from drinking dirty water, and just eating bad food. But it was the first time I had ever left North America. And it was my first real exposure to other countries, other cultures. And I just found the whole experience, completely life changing. And, you know, we got to see people and villages and ways of life that even most tourists didn't get to see, because we're in these remote rivers. You know, when we hiked for a week to get into the river and then kayak out for a week. And it was just such a different way of seeing the world and exploring that I that's when it clicked for me that I want to do this as much as possible.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Wow, that sounds incredible.

Kassia Binkowski
Yeah, I mean, transformative for you and your life and your career. There has long been a gender gap, a glass ceiling for women in the outdoor industry. And there are many studies that traces back all the way to preschool and the exposure little girls get you grew up in Aspen and clearly a very outdoor oriented community. What has been your experience of that? Did this ever feel like kayaking was something that guys were doing? It was something you know, men were going to pursue as a professional opportunity? Did you ever have that sort of gendered experience?

Darcy Gaecther
I definitely did. I mean, even in the rafting company, I was one of three women out of maybe 35 guides, I think when I first started there. And same in the kayaking industry, I'd like both, I guess in the whole whitewater industry, it's getting better and more women are participating. But for the first 15 years, my kayaking career, it would be really weird if there was another woman on the water with me. It's normally me and a whole bunch of guys. And I had some really good experiences, and some guys were very encouraging and wanted to help me achieve my goals. But other guys - and this still happens to me all the time, you know - you'll get to a put in at a river and some guys will start talking and say, "Are you sure you have enough experience for this?" And, you know, now I have the competence to say like, "Whatever, I've been running the hardest rivers around the world for 20 years." But even still, today, it still gets to me, I shouldn't pretend like I'm totally over it. But it really does something to your mind. And especially when you're about to put on a Class V river, which is the hardest runnable classification of whitewater. You don't want doubts in your head. You need to be just as mentally strong as you are physically strong, because a mistake could have dire consequences even potentially be fatal. So you don't want to be starting some hard river wondering, "Am I good enough for this? These guys don't think I'm good enough? How is this gonna affect my performance?" And so overcoming my own mental state, when other people put doubt in my head has been probably my biggest challenge.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's something that is worth highlighting again, which is what you're saying is that even though you are one of the most accomplished kayakers in the world, and you have experienced some of the most treacherous rivers around the world, and you have accomplished things that people can only dream of that even you know, with the best of intentions of some of these men who are asking, "Are you sure? Are you sure you got it? Are you sure?" - they're trying to maybe protect you or make sure that you are going to be okay, but really what it's doing is undercutting your confidence. And also undercutting frankly, the experience that you have spent 20 some odd years developing, which in many cases is much more than that I'm sure some of the guys that you're kayaking alongside have. So being able to clear your mind of any of those doubts, whether they come from external sources or internal sources, you're doing something that is very physically risky. Having those doubts is just not an option.

Darcy Gaecther
Yeah, absolutely. And it's a like I said, it's been the hardest thing to overcome is how do I you know, fall back on my experience basically, is what I try to do. Remind myself, "You've kayaked 1000s of rivers of this difficulty before, you have all this training, you have all this experience. It's all you've always done, okay?" In the past I try to remind myself of those things, but It still can be hard to ignore all that external noise if you will.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, and and something that I think is a commonality among professional athletes of any sport, which is that the mental hurdles you have to overcome are oftentimes much more difficult than the physical hurdles.

Kassia Binkowski
So, Darcy, I'm in Boulder, CO right now, which is, as you probably know, a mecca of outdoor athleticism. The vast majority of our listeners, though, aren't tripping over professional athletes on a daily basis. Let's paint a picture of that industry. It's my understanding that about a third of whitewater kayakers are women, far fewer who are professional. What barriers did you face ater that Nepal trip, after you were so inspired to kind of pursue this professionally? What barriers did you face making a name for yourself competing for sponsorship, competing for places on expeditions competing for credibility? What did that look like as a woman?

Darcy Gaecther
One thing that I find kind of funny is there's sort of a perception among guys in the industry, that any good woman kayaker gets special treatment, because there's so few of us. They're like, "Oh, it'll be so easy for you to get a sponsorship or get a job or get this and that," but that definitely wasn't my experience. And I guess I can't blame it all on gender, because I'm really shy. And I'm not great at selling myself. And so no doubt these other things kind of held me back from certain aspects of it. But you know, there's just all kinds of things where men get so much more space in the press, and in magazines, and in videos. And same thing with competitions. You know, sometimes there's not even a women's class at all. And if there is, you know, maybe there's like three women and there's no prize money like there is for the men. And there's a definitely a idea or misconception when you're looking for jobs, or you want to get on an expedition that, oh, we can't have a woman along you'll be too weak. What if you cry? What if you can't keep up? And so there's all all these sorts of things are, but you kind of what I butted my head up against. And then another big thing for me, you know, there's been a lot of talk lately, with Kamala Harris, "If you can see it, then you can be it." And when I was growing up, so to speak, as a kayaker, there really weren't very many, sort of hard charging women role models. There was one woman named Nikki Kelly, who was running all the hardest rivers, and she was definitely my role model. But, you know, I never got to paddle with her. And like I said, most the time on the river was just me and the guys. So there was always this feeling of, maybe I am like an aberration. Maybe women don't have a place in this sport. Maybe I shouldn't be fighting for this. Because you there's just so few women out there. It's like what is going on? But it took me a while to realize like, no, this is not a problem with me. This is a problem with the industry. Let's make it much more inclusive, so that women feel better about joining this sport.

Sabrina Merage Naim
When did you get to a place where you realized that it's not just you, you're not just an aberration, and it was something that needed to be changed industry wide?

Darcy Gaecther
You know, maybe when social media came around, I mean, I really hate a lot of things about social media. But it was fun to see a women's kayaking group on Facebook, for example. And just seeing that more people are struggling with this, more people are talking about like, why don't they make gear specific for women, because we don't fit properly in men's gear and men's kayaks. And so that really made me realize I'm not alone in this idustry, in this sport. And so that was a big turning point for me. And just, at first, I was way too afraid to engage in these groups, again, being super shy. But once I started to build some great friendships with people and got to talk about it more and try to - I mean, obviously, there's still a lot of problems to be solved - but try to work toward some solutions for some of these things.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So let's talk about the relationship between masculinity and professional athleticism for a minute. What you're saying around, they don't have make gear for women, they don't you know, there are certain things that you have to kind of squeeze yourself into in a male dominated industry and a men's world is something that we have seen across a number of conversations that we've had, including in the medical profession with Dr. Agnes Binagwaho. She talked about how in medical trials they are doing they for medication for women, the trials are done on men, because they don't menstruate, they don't get pregnant, you know, all of those kinds of things, but it's medication for women. We also had a recent conversation with Robert Egnell, an expert on gender and the military who explained that the US Marines, for example, has a training course that is pretty much impossible if you are shorter than a certain height or your limbs are not as long, which means it's less accessible for many women. In many cultures and countries, there's still an association between physical strength and masculinity. How does that affect women's reception in professional and extreme sports? Not just in kayaking and outdoor sports, but across the board? How have you experienced that? How have your colleagues and peers experienced that? And is anything happening to start to shift that tide?

Darcy Gaecther
So that's a good question. I think I felt that disparity most starkly as a guide. And so often, fellow guides and clients, say things like, "Oh, I don't want to get stuck with that little girl as my guide, she's not going to be strong enough to do it." And all women raft guides, I know, are really good at reading the river and at using technique to maneuver the raft. And a lot of guys, if they come into the job strong, they don't ever learn those other skills. And so in the long run, they're really not as good riverguides. And I think if you start at a point where you know, me and some 180 pound guy, we're starting at the same point, I just have to be smarter to make up for whatever strength advantage he has over me. And I think that's something that gets overlooked all the time. It also gets overlooked, that women can be really strong if they train. And, you know, I'm not a physiologist. So I don't know the exact comparisons of our muscle mass and our strength. But I know some women who are incredibly strong, and I know for myself, when I'm training, when I'm working out, when I'm carrying my 75 pound kayak all over the world, I get really strong too. And I never have had the feeling on a river like "Oh, geez, I wish I was just a little bit stronger." And so I think that it's just, it's part of our culture, to think that way, to assume that men are going to be stronger to assume that men are going to get it done better. But we all overlook the cunning and the intelligence that goes behind women trying to do the exact same things as men who might not be as strong. We also totally overlook the fact that there are some insanely strong women out there. And those are the ones that put in the time training and getting themselves strong.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Such an important point.

Kassia Binkowski
What about the culture of the outdoor community? I mean, I think that that these ideas of masculinity often result from this kind of "bro culture" in the outdoor space. You know, my husband and I are both recreational rafters, we're raising our kids on the Colorado River. We see that. We know that cutlure. What has been your experience of kind of this masculine culture, of the the adrenaline, the competition and the risk taking that have long been associated with testosterone? I don't know if that's where the bro culture comes from. But what has been your experience of it? How have you carved out space for kind of balancing strength and femininity? And what does that look like for you/

Darcy Gaecther
You know, I honestly haven't done a great job in terms of changing the culture. My way of dealing with it has been ignore it as much as I can, and lead by example, for other women as much as I can. But I haven't been at the forefront of some movement to change that. But the bro culture is really bad in young kayakers. Now I'm 42. And so it's a totally different age group than most of the kayakers who are still kayaking class five, and, you know, not everybody is into it, for sure. There's definitely some people who speak normally, who are calm and can help other people, but sort of the majority of guys that are out kayaking are definitely what you would call a "bro culture." And there's this tradition. If you swim out of your kayak, you're supposed to drink a beer out of your booty or river shoe when you get to the takeout. And, you know, if you don't, you're just gonna be subjected to horrible mockery by everybody else in the group. And to me, it's just like, totally awful. And I just do whatever I can to avoid it. You know, I seek out caring partners who don't act that way, who are supportive, who you know, if you get to some big, hard rapid and I decide not to run it, that my kayaking partners aren't gonna call me a wimp or tell me I suck, you know, they're gonna be like, "Oh, good choice. Go set safety for me because I want to run it." And it's, for me, it's looked like picking my partners wisely. And yeah, I'm kind of sad to say I haven't done much to change that culture in kayaking, except to reward those that don't act that way.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I think you underestimate yourself. I think you've probably done much more than you give yourself credit for, and frankly, the stubbornness that you alluded to before, which is what has helped you to push past the stereotypes, the difficulties, you know, it's something. Accomplishing what you have accomplished is going to allow little girls who see you to say that they can do it too. And that is something that will change a lot of the industry, I think.

Darcy Gaecther
That's one thing I've been really happy about with my book. It's been very popular amongst teenage age girls. And yeah, that makes me really happy that they're getting into the journey that they see not only a woman do it, but I'm short and skinny. And I definitely don't look like a big strong expedition kayaker. So just to see someone that looks like me be able to do something like that - I really hope will make an impact on their lives.

Kassia Binkowski
Well, I think what you're talking about leading by example, is something that we're seeing across every industry. The women that we're speaking to, some of them, a few of them are professional activists and have dedicated their career to making a huge cultural shift. But most of them have shattered glass ceilings in their industry and are absolutely just modeling what they want it to be and creating space for women to come up alongside them in in perhaps a more passive way, but in an incredibly meaningful and effective way.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Okay, let's get into the crux of it, because I think people are gonna want to understand a little more what it really entailed, to kayak the Amazon River from source to sea. So over a 20 year career, you now have paddled some of the most difficult sections of river in 18 countries. But in 2013, as we said, you were the first woman to complete a descent of the Amazon River from source to sea. 4300 miles. Can you take us along that journey? Take us from you know, how long did it take you? How long did you think it was going to take you? What were some of the biggest challenges you faced? And what were the lessons you learned to paint a picture for us?

Darcy Gaecther
So the whole journey took us 148 days. So that's about five months, we thought it was going to take about four months. But we had some delays and some rougher river conditions than we expected. So we ended up having to keep changing our plane tickets, pushing them further and further back. Yeah, and the whole, you know, it's so hard to sort of sum up what it was like. It was an amazing experience. We basically traversed South America at almost its widest point. And we started at 15,000 feet in the Peruvian Andes, in the whitewater section lasted for 25 days. And we were on the Montero river and it was one of the most amazing and impressive river canyons I've ever done. And one of the hardest rivers I paddled as well. But that was sort of my wheelhouse, or what I understood and knew the best. And then after those 25 days, we hit the flat water that the Amazon is so famous for, and we switched into sea kayaks. And I was very much expecting the flat water to be extremely boring and monotonous. And at times it was, but for the first 30 days of the flatwater, we were in an area that Peru calls the red zone, which is a notoriously dangerous area. Basically no tourists ever go there. In 2012 that became the world's number one cocaine producing region in the world. There's a ton of illegal logging there, like some environmental watch groups estimate that 80% of the trees that are coming out of there are cut down illegally. And then there's a local indigenous population called the Asháninka people and they're basically just trying to protect themselves from all these people coming into their area doing illicit activities. And they don't get much help or basically any help from the local police or the military. So they have very much taken their safety into their own hands. So it's just kind of a volatile area. And in the two years before our expedition, six tourists that we knew it had gone through there and two of them had been murdered and one more was shot but he survived. And so for me, this was the crux of the expedition -making it through this area alive. Having the human danger be the thing that we feared was very different from me. Facing river danger is something that I understood very well and I was very accustomed to but the humans being the dangerous thing was a different experience for me, but we ended up having great experience. Everyone was very kind to us. And we made it through. And then after that we did have some monotony, but towards the end of the river, even though it's total flatwater, because of wind and huge storms and tides that come up the Amazon River more than 600 miles, we get big waves in the river. And the wind was so strong that if we stopped kayaking for like two seconds to take a sip of water, we'd get blown back up the river. So it was definitely a lot of challenges that we didn't really expect in the lower part of the river.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Hearing what it took to accomplish, what you accomplished is mind boggling. And you have said before that you don't always get the reaction that you would have expected from people when you tell them that this is what you've done. And frankly, I think it's just because most people don't understand what it took, right? Just the sheer magnitude of a journey like that. And the natural component, the human component that you were talking about the risk, the dangers that you took on being on a river for five months. I mean, I can't comprehend that. So that is quite an accomplishment.

Darcy Gaecther
Thank you. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. When we first got back from the expedition people would be like "Oh, where did you guys come from?" "Well, we just kayaked the whole Amazon." And they're like, "Oh, that was nice. Did that take like a week or two?" So yeah, I think there's definitely a lack of understanding of what it entails. And you know, when we started the expedition, we didn't know all that it would entail either, like the insane amount of logistics for expedition that long and, you know, going through different countries and importing the kayaks and arranging food drops. We did a lot of pre planning, but we also did a lot of figure it out on the fly, too.

Kassia Binkowski
So let's talk about those logistics for a second. Did the logistics of planning for a trip of this magnitude look any different for you as a woman than they did for your male peers? I'm thinking of things like safety precautions going through the the cultures and the communities that you were going through, clothing choices, hygiene - what did that look like? How did it look different for you?

Darcy Gaecther
The biggest way that it looked different for me, I think, was when we were getting ready to go into the red zone. You know, we're all worried about getting murdered or robbed. But then I also was worried about getting raped or sexually assaulted in some way. And that was definitely something that the guys, at least they didn't openly worry about that and the more that I was reading about the red zone the less confident I grew that I actually wanted to go through that part of the expedition. And so as we were kayaking down the whitewater, I'm basically debating like, "Am I gonna do this? Or am I just gonna do the whitewater and go home?" And I'm trying to convince myself to go, and part of that looked like stopping at this little village in the whitewater, and I went to beauty salon and was trying to convince the woman to cut all my hair off and just making me look like a boy. And she thinks I'm totally crazy. You know, she's like, "Why do you want to do this?" And I'm trying to explain to her, we're going through this red zone. And she's like, "Yeah, that is a super dangerous part of my country. Why the hell are you going there?" And you know, this conversation with her was just like, "You're such an idiot, just don't go there." And I'm like, "No, just cut off all my hair, I have to go there." And so that was one difference for me, I pretty much always just dressed like a boy. And so I didn't have to change my dress much more. But I did, especially in the redzone. I just wanted to make sure that we looked like a group of three guys, because I guess I felt we would be less of a target looking that way. And that was, I think the biggest difference for me. One other way that well, in sort of an ironic twist in the redzone is I think we probably did look like three guys when we were kayaking down the river. But whenever we stopped at a village, everyone got a lot more at ease once I started talking. And they realized that we did have a woman in the group and whenever there was sort of a even mildly tense situation, as soon as they realized that I was a woman, they just felt so much better, which was a really interesting dynamic to witness.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Why is that?

Darcy Gaecther
You know, I don't know. My guess is that they thought if we were going to be a threat to them and we were someone that they should fear, that all of a sudden having a woman in the group they think "Oh, they are not going to do anything to us. They have a woman in the group."

Kassia Binkowski
And if you look at who their threats historically have been, if you look at the logging companies, if you look at the government, if you look at the police force, like all of these entities that have been threats to these indigenous communities in the Amazon, that makes sense. Most of them are male run, most of the presence that they're seeing are men intruders. Men are the threat. That makes sense in my mind coming from where they're coming from.

Darcy Gaecther
Yeah, I agree with you. And, and you know, this is probably me playing into gender stereotypes too. But Don and I do a lot of kayaking together just the two of us. And when we do it, we'll often hitchhike shuttle at the end. And Don 99% of time does the hitchhiking because we both agree that it's just safer.

Kassia Binkowski
Always. We do the same thing. Absolutely.

Darcy Gaecther
But even when he's hitchhiking, if a guy picks him up, I'm still always a little bit nervous. But if a couple or a woman picks him up, oh my gosh, I feel so much better. And I mean, a woman could murder him just as easily as a guy could. But it's definitely how I look at the world. You're safer around women.

Kassia Binkowski
Absolutely. I don't ever do the hitchhike shuttle ever. It's not you know, I'm not gonna go stand there by myself. And I don't think that's totally unjustified. I think certainly there are gender stereotypes that we're all playing into in that, but it's an interesting observation for sure. What about health and hygiene? Let's talk for a second about women's health. What did it look like to get your period on the river? How did you prepare for that? You know, I have an aunt who's an alpinist, who has a story about being stuck in a tent on the side of a mountain for three weeks longer than expected because of a blizzard and ended up using dirty socks as menstruation pads. Do you have any harrowing stories about that? What did that look like for you?

Darcy Gaecther
I feel extremely fortunate. I have insanely light periods. So much so that like I never use tampons in normal life. It's just like wearing underwear is enough. And so that definitely makes my expedition life a lot easier. But also one nice thing about being on the river as compared to a mountain is we can take a bath every single night. Don and I are oddly clean freaks for being expedition kayakers. And so, you know, we always bring a little soap with us. And every night we get to camp, take a bath. And so a lot of the hygiene stuff was pretty easily mitigated. Just being having such nice access to water. And it wasn't always super clean water, but it was you know, enough to make us feel cleaner.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I guess it's kind of interesting just to note that not only from a women's health and hygiene perspective, there are things that women have to consider that men do not have to consider on expeditions like this. But you're also talking about your your safety and well being physically in a way that your male counterparts did not even have to think about for two seconds.

Kassia Binkowski
Looking back on the the more than 20 years you've spent in the industry now what has changed? Who are the champions for women in the outdoor sports industry, in extreme sports, such as whitewater kayaking, looking back what's evolved and who do you look to as the champions now?

Darcy Gaecther
So in the whitewater industry in particular, you know, there's still a bad disparity between the numbers of men and women kayakers. Like you pointed out, it's like a third are women. And so it's not great, but it it is getting better. And what I have noticed in particular, is there's a lot more women running hard whitewater now. Don and I just did a trip on the East Coast, this fall, kayaking, and almost every group that we saw had at least one other woman. And we saw some groups of all women running class four and class five. And that's been a really cool change in my mind. Now I'm not the only woman out there. And a couple champions like the first one that comes to mind is Laura Farrell, and she lives on the east coast. And they're sort of a famous river called the Green River where they have the Green River Race every year. And she started organizing, maybe 10 years ago, an event called the Green River takeover, where it's all women. And there's an easier section - still class three - and then the hard class five section and so whatever level women are comfortable with everybody just goes out and paddles together. And that's been a huge thing. And then Anna Levesque is another one and she teaches kayaking, and specifically teaches to women and I think that one one big barrier for a lot of women is like I don't want to join a kayaking class where it's going to be me and a bunch of guys and what if they're better than me and all this kind of stuff. So Anna's classes are all women. And there's also I think, a barrier for whitewater kayaking for all genders is you see videos online and people running 100 foot waterfalls and it's like, "That's really unappealing to me. I don't want to do this stupid sport." And Anna has done a great job of making kayaking fun, you know whether you want to be a class one kayak or a class five kayaker. It's all good. It's all fun. And she's introduced a ton of women to the sport, which I think has helped immensely.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Now looking back at your accomplishments, you've had 20 years, 18 countries of kayaking. You've kayaked the Amazon from source to sea. You have written a book, you are speaking. We are arguing that you really are a role model for young girls and women who want to be extreme sports enthusiasts and expedition kayakers. What are the glass ceilings you never thought you'd shatter?

Darcy Gaecther
So that's interesting question. One of my kayaking students is a woman namedMaggy Hurchalla, who is Janet Reno's sister, and not very many people know but Janet Reno - the first woman Attorney General of the United States - was a kayaker as well. And her sister Maggy likes to say about her "Janney didn't break barriers. She just didn't realize they were there." And I think that was true for me when I was a young kid. I didn't think it was weird that I wanted to be a skateboarder, or be a skier, or climb trees and carve sticks. That was just what I wanted to do. But I think, you know, as we all grow up and talk to other people, we realize, you know the neighbor boy told me "Girls can't skateboard." So that got put into my mind. My volleyball coach told me "You're too short, you can't play volleyball." And as we grow up, we learn of learn of all these limits on our selves and our abilities that don't really exist. They don't even really exist in our mind until other people put them there. And so my breaking glass ceilings has been an interesting journey, because at first I was just doing what I did. And then I learned, all these things that I'm doing are weird. And then once I learned that and people told me not to do them, I got this attitude of like, "Screw all these people. I'm going to do this as much as I possibly can." And I guess for me, it's been being a good whitewater kayaker, which a lot of people don't think women can do that. Owning a business and a whitewater kayaking business in Ecuador, which is weird for a lot of reasons. And the expedition thing - our team was the first team to kayak the entire Amazon. People had done source to sea before, but they walked around or rafted the whitewater. So it's cool to be the first woman to do it. But it's also cool that I was part of the first team of kayakers to do it. And so, yeah, my biggest glass ceiling is like how do we how do we keep people in that mindset when we're young and we don't realize that there are these manufactured limits on our capabilities and abilities.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Breaking Glass is a production of Evoke Media. Evoke is a nonprofit organization that exists in order to elevate the people and stories that are working to make the world a more unified and equitable place. Learn more at weareevokemedia.com.