The Chronicles Of Suntwe - Chapter Four: Descent into the Devil’s Cataract

By Paul Teasdale — The Chronicles of Suntwe

It had rained for days.

That thick, sticky African kind of rain that doesn’t fall so much as it pours itself out of the sky with violent conviction. Thunder, humidity, rivers swollen and frothing. Tom and I watched the forecasts like battlefield commanders poring over satellite intel. Hunting for that narrow window where chaos could be turned into art. We needed a break in the weather, just one clean day to pull off the mission we had been scheming since the moment we bolted the Crack.

Early November 2015. That window came. Barely. We looked at the charts, then looked at each other. Fuck it. This was our shot.

I packed the night before like a soldier prepping for deployment. 150 metres of 10mm tactical static rope. Carabiners. Descenders. Ascenders. Slings. Harnesses. Radios. And a watertight capsule no bigger than a thumb that held a teaspoon of my father’s ashes. Every piece of kit had been checked, tested, and laid out with military precision. This was not just adventure. This was sacred.

We met at dawn on Zambezi Drive, the air already heavy with the heat of a sun not yet risen. That sticky, tropical pressure that makes your skin feel like it is already sweating before you have even moved. I was buzzing. Nervous. Focused. I have never liked heights. Never trusted them. But some things are bigger than fear.

We crossed the river like pirates on a secret mission. Tom and I piloting tour kayaks through familiar danger. That stretch of water is hostile terrain. Hippos, rocks, shallow rapids, and currents with moods. But we had done it before. And Cataract Island welcomed us back like forgotten friends.

She stood exactly as we had left her, wild, untamed, waiting.

Once we offloaded the gear and reached the top of the Crack, the nerves kicked in hard. I rigged the system, three pairs of bolts, each set equalised into a single master point. I triple-checked every anchor. My brain ran every calculation like a computer on overdrive. Every contingency. Every failure point. It wasn’t fear but it was respect.

Tom and I arrive on Cataract Island

I let Tom descend first so I could reset the rope before my turn, shift it down a few inches, change the contact points. That way the same section was not taking all the abrasion. You stagger the wear to spread the stress. That is how you keep a rope alive. After that it was my turn. You cannot really describe that moment. The lean-back. That first commitment to the rope. It is not just gravity you are testing. It's your gear, your prep, your mind. And on this day, the stakes were high. Below me was a 110-meter vertical descent into the base of the Devil’s Cataract. A gorge carved by centuries of fury. One mistake, and your bones would not be found. I clipped in, leaned back, and disappeared into the gorge.

Waiting for the signal from Tom so I could begin my descent

The crack is narrow. The air thick with mist and algae-slicked stone. Every surface wept with moisture. The humidity was suffocating, the spray relentless. Wind and water hammering your body from all angles. I tried to radio Tom on the way down, silence. When I reached the bottom, I found out why. He dropped the radio straight into the plunge pool. Classic Tom, he can navigate Zambezi chaos blindfolded but give him a radio and the river claims it like a tribute. What a place to lose comms.

Half way down !

We found ourselves standing at the bottom of the Crack in a place that felt prehistoric and untouched. A pool teeming with Purple Labeo and Yellowfish surrounded us, trapped by the drop in water levels. They circled our legs, unbothered, curious. As we swam across the pool and emerged at the foot of the falls, the sheer violence of the place hit us.

The Devil’s Cataract does not whisper. It roars. A wall of water crashes down from eighty metres above with enough force to churn air into sound. The spray does not fall, it launches sideways in bursts, stinging your skin and soaking your bones. The terrain is alien. Giant boulders scattered like a ruined temple. Slippery. Broken. Alive.

We made it !

We grinned like idiots and high-fived like action heroes who forgot they are not invincible. We had made it.

Below the plunge pool, the first rapid looked kayakable. One line dropped cleanly into a retentive hole, tricky, but doable with a solid boof. The other was a series of stepped drops. Straightforward. Tempting. But beyond that? The mist thickened. Visibility zero. No way to scout what lay ahead so ultimately a no-go zone. We swam in an eddy below the first drop, laughing and soaking in the madness. Tom floated. I went quiet. It was time.

I clambered over the black stone to the plunge pool’s base, gripping my little waterproof urn. I took a breath. Looked up at the curtain of water roaring above me. And I let a small scoop of ash drift into the chaos.

No big ceremony. No long speech. Just a silent offering to the river my father loved.

Preparing to Spread the ashes

While I was deep in my ritual, honouring the moment, feeling the weight of it all, Tom was having a ritual of his own… squatting behind a rock, offering something far less symbolic and releasing the weight of it all. I guess sacred moments hit us all differently. Nothing short of poetic.

Eventually, I told him we needed to ascend. He groaned, unconvinced. I knew the climb would take time, especially after the exertion. We had maybe 40 minutes each to get back up. I offered to go first so I could adjust the rope at the top, moving the wear point away from sharp edges. That was the plan. Until it went tits-up.

Taking life very seriously

About 40 metres into my ascent, I paused to rest and collect some trickling water off the rock with my helmet. The heat was brutal. My arms were cooked. But when I tried to climb again, I was locked in place. I could not budge.

That’s when I realised... Tom had started climbing. His weight below had locked my rope system solid. I was stuck mid-air, halfway up a wet cliff face. No comms. No movement. Just the weight of rope, gravity, and bad timing.

Wedging myself between two rock faces, I rerigged my system one-handed, heart pounding. Eventually I got going again. Slow, deliberate, stopping for helmet-water breaks every 10 metres or so. But at around the 80-metre mark, I looked up and my stomach dropped.

The rope was frayed.

Not a nick. Not a scuff. Full-on sheath-gone, core-exposed, red-flag horror show. A sharp rock had been sawing into it the whole climb. I was still several metres from the top and the line was cooked.

I took this pic of the frayed section of the rope once we got home. I still have this piece and keep it as a reminder that things can and will go wrong.

I had no choice. I clipped into a safe spot, rerigged my system above the fray, and climbed the last stretch like my life depended on it. Well actually now mine did not, but Tom’s certainly still did. Once I reached the summit, I gently moved the rope to shift the wear point, praying Tom would not feel it change and panic.

But he did.

He hit that frayed section, rightfully shat himself, and froze. I threw down a secondary safety line and shouted words of encouragement and maybe a few expletives too. He sat hanging at the 80m mark for what felt like an eternity, trying to summon the strength to push through. When he finally crested the edge, he collapsed. Pale. Shaking. Spent.

We didn’t speak for a while. We just lay there, side by side, staring at the sky, high on adrenaline and silent knowing.

That descent changed something in me.

I had faced my fear of heights. I had honoured my father. I had danced with danger and made it home. But more than anything, I had remembered that we do not grow by staying in control. We grow when the rope frays, when the radios fail, when you are forced to think, adapt, and climb anyway.

Because sometimes, that is all you have got.

Here is some of the footage we got from the mission

Reflection

Looking back, it wasn’t the ropes or the rigging or the bolts that made that mission what it was.

It was the silence at the base of the Devil’s Cataract. The raw stillness between the spray and the roar. That feeling of standing somewhere very few people ever will, not just physically, but spiritually. I didn’t go down there to chase a thrill. I went to bury something. Or maybe to uncover it.

My father loved the waterfall. Raised me with that reverence baked into my bones. So, when he passed, it felt only right that a part of him should return to the river. But I think I left more than his ashes in that pool. I left a layer of myself too. The scared boy who needed permission, the part of me still waiting for approval.

I don’t know if the waterfall gave me answers, but it stripped me of the need for them.

The truth is, we plan so hard. We double-check gear, train for months, make every safety call. But life does not care. Ropes fray. Radios die. Your partner climbs too soon. And suddenly the illusion of control burns away like mist in the sun.

What matters is who you are when the plan fails.

That day reminded me that real strength is not found in control. It is found in adaptability. In staying calm when the crack swallows your signal and the gear jams and the stone under your fingers starts to sweat. That is where resilience is forged. Not in theory. In chaos.

And maybe that is the point.

The river does not reward the reckless. It rewards the present. The ones who feel the fear and climb anyway. Who know the rope might snap but trust their rig, their training, their will.

So yeah, we got out. Just. But I came back up different. Not invincible, just clearer. Humbled. More alive than I had felt in years.

And I reckon Dad would have been proud of that.