Tragedy as Two Canoeist found dead by the Lake side

Why Emma Kelty’s murder has us questioning the worth of unsupported efforts down the Amazon River, the Everest of source-to-sea descents.

Emma Tamsin Kelty spoke often of her ‘can-do’ hat. The expression pops up in the 43-year-old British adventurer’s correspondence with experienced Amazon paddlers who warned her about the dangers of kayaking the world’s greatest river alone and unsupported. That feat has never been accomplished for many reasons, from the difficult whitewater in the headwaters to the mind-numbing distance of more than 4,000 miles. But the biggest danger on the Amazon is not the river itself, or wild animals or disease. It’s people.

After her father died of cancer in 2014, Kelty left her job as a primary school principal, sold her house and began ticking off ‘bucket-list’ adventures. She hiked 2,600 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, and early this year finished a 54-day ski expedition to the South Pole. Nothing seemed impossible, and while still riding the high of her polar adventure she began plotting a solo kayak descent of the Amazon.

 

She contacted fellow Londoner Olie Hunter-Smart, who had paddled the Amazon in 2015 with Tarran Kent-Hume. “We went for lunch and spent seven hours in that restaurant talking about this journey, my experience with it, the equipment we took,” Hunter-Smart recalls. “We talked about the dangers and risks but also the nice side of things as well.”