The Global Paddling Community

INGA: They are the world’s biggest rapids, 1.6 million cubic feet of water per second, thundering down the final pitch of the mighty Congo River. They are twice as steep and 100 times the average volume of those found on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. Explorers have tried to conquer these rapids for generations, but none have succeeded. ”It would be insanity in a successor,” wrote famed explorer Henry Morton Stanley in 1877, after his right-hand man drowned. ”There’s nothing shameful in portaging,” declared Col. John Blashford-Snell during his multinational team’s highly publicized attempt in 1974. And popular French TV Adventurer Philippe De Dieuleveult never had the chance to comment, as the entire team who attempted the rapids with him, mysteriously vanished in 1985. The Inga rapids have remained the “the choking stone of navigation” up or down the Congo River for centuries!