See No Evel: Will Anyone Jump Snake River?

Share on Facebook posted 07-13-09 by John Kelly

September 8, 2009, will mark the 35th anniversary of Evel Knievel’s legendary failed attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho. The most famous daredevil stunt in action history, the jump went awry when the parachute of Evel’s X-2 Skycycle opened on ignition and the chute’s drag disrupted the rocket’s trajectory. While the Skycycle successfully traveled more than one mile to the other side of the canyon, the malfunction pulled the airborne vehicle back enough to cause it to crash on the canyon’s bottom, where it barely missed the river. If Evel had landed in the water, he would surely have drowned, as the rocket’s harness had failed to release, trapping him in the craft.

To this day, a successful clearance of the canyon remains the gold standard for stuntmen and stunt fans alike.

Snake River

Some parents dream that their son may someday become a doctor, or a lawyer, or a senator. Not Evel Knievel. Some 15 years ago, at an appearance in New York City, Evel told me that he “would be the proudest man in the United States if my son, Robbie Knievel, jumped over the Snake River Canyon.” Robbie has become a noted daredevil in his own right, with more than 250 successful car/truck jumps, and for the past several years he has been telling anyone who will listen that he does indeed plan to jump the canyon. His latest target date is the summer of 2010.

Michael “Mad Dog” Hughes

Meet Michael “Mad Dog” Hughes, the self-proclaimed “World’s Most Famous Limo Driver/Jumper!” Few would dispute this claim to fame, one suspects, given the fairly, uh, limited, field of competitors. In 2002 Hughes set a Guinness world record for the longest limo jump, when he soared 103 feet.

Impressive. But, sadly for Mad Dog, six years later a gentleman named Mr. Dizzy came along and broke his record by flying over several Winnebagos at a racetrack, traveling a distance of 106.7 feet.

Undaunted, Mad Dog hopes to make a successful jump of the Snake River Canyon this September, on the anniversary of Evel’s famous flop. To do so, he is basically making a replica of the X-2 Skycycle. He is convinced he’ll pull off the stunt that so famously thwarted Evel.

So all this Snake River talk got us wondering: Besides Evel himself, who the hell thought the stunt would work in the first place back in the ‘70s?

Who Thought Snake River Jump Would Work, Anyway?

Well, after several failed prototypes were designed and tested back then — including one that was essentially a regular cycle with a pair of tin wings attached — Evel finally hooked up with former Navy and NASA engineer Robert C. Truax, one of history’s most legendary, if eccentric, rocketeers. After a lot of tinkering, Truax created the X-2 Skycycle at a cost of more than $150,000, which was a lot of money back then. While several test runs with Skycycles ended with the vehicles crashing on the canyon floor, Evel was determined to make the jump regardless, because, as he put it, he wanted fans to remember he “kept his word” that he would attempt it. He did, and though the cycle plunged some 600 feet, he emerged unscathed except for a cut on his nose, which he got when he jammed his helmet’s visor up.

Despite the stunt’s failure, the team soon found itself bombarded with proposals for follow-up schemes, thanks to the enormous amount of cash the Snake River attempt generated (it was one of the very first pay-per-view TV events). A group of Japanese businessmen, for example, were eager to have Evel rocket over Mt. Fuji. Truax, for one, was confident that the Fuji stunt could be accomplished, but without a sufficient return on investment. Additionally, Truax had other lofty plans for his high-flying associate. He was determined to create a mechanism that would make Evel the world’s first private astronaut. All he needed was for Evel put up a million dollars to fund development, which the stuntman eagerly agreed to do, as he had long dreamed of traveling through space.

However, it was not to be. Evel was a terrible manager of his finances, and by the time the venture was ready to take wing, he no longer had the money to fund it. Undeterred, Truax blazed forward toward his dream, a kind of Buck-Rogers-Meets-the-Wright-Brothers model of private space travel, completely free of NASA or military involvement. His plan was to make millions from such a private space voyage, which he hoped to finance by finding a venture capitalist willing, as Truax’s Wall Street Journal ad put it, to invest “risky capital for a risky project.” He was very successful in attracting a small legion of volunteer flight captains, all of whom were extreme characters in their own right. But financial backing? Not so much. In the end, Truax wound up, among other sacrifices, mortgaging his home and spending $500,000 of his own money to push the project forward.

Well, it didn’t work, and while he continued working into the early ‘90s to try to bring his plan to fruition, it never did.

Still, even if neither Truax nor Evel ever made it to space, or even all the way across the Snake River Canyon, their high-profile attempt of the latter stunt has yet to loosen its hold on the public imagination. As the 35th anniversary of Evel’s triumphant failure approaches, action fans are fervently hoping that Robbie Knievel or Mad Dog Hughes will indeed hop on a rocket-powered cycle and make good on their promises to jump Snake River. As this amusingly grandiose introduction Knievel’s Snake River press conference suggests, America has always been fertile soil for those who dream of greatness — so perhaps a new hero will indeed rise to join the ranks of the Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, and Neil Armstrong by flying across a mighty crack in the ground in Idaho. And while it’s unclear how such an incredibly dangerous feat could be allowable by law in an era when it’s illegal to smoke in a bar or drive without a seat belt, we wait in great anticipation to see if it does happen.

On a related note, Knievel’s actual Skycycle was up for bid on eBay a couple of years ago with an asking price of $5 million.

No one bought it.