A commercially operated river raft with four customers and a guide on board overturned on the river.
www.kiro7.com
Damn, I do love an occasional whitewater trip, and that accident is hard to read. two dead, both wearing helmets, wetsuits and lifejackets. Anybody know more?
Nooksack is a narrow river with lots of wood....
On those boats they tell you if you get washed out just lie on your back and lift your feet.... the guide will come get you etc. Why wouldn't you want to lie on your back and move to towards a side as best you could? Appreciate any white water survival tips..
I've been WW kayaking for about 20 years - which is only relevant because it's given me the opportunity to take some long unplanned swims through heavy rapids.
The advice to float on your back with your feet and wait for rescue makes a ton of sense for commercial operators since it's easy to remember, one-size-fits-all, and will do more good than harm most of the time. Having said that, it's not what I or anyone else I know that's spent a long time in the WW game does when they find themselves swimming through a rapid. It's part of it, but a long ways from all of it.
If I had a few minutes to talk to someone on the shore that was interested in my take on WW swimming, here's more or less what I'd tell them.
1. Survival swimming is active swimming. Sometimes that means floating, sometimes that means swimming like hell - but it always means actively assessing the river conditions and hazards and making a series deliberate choices concerning your best chance of survival until get you back on the raft or safely out of the water.
2. The float-on-your-back-with-your-feet-up approach makes sense if there's an upright raft close enough to effect a rescue before you encounter the next rapid, float around a blind bend, etc - but even then you should be using your arms and legs to get yourself closer to the raft to hasten your own rescue. The closer you are, the more quickly they can rescue you, which will help them get other swimmers in the raft. Most of the time all this takes is some fairly casual strokes to move yourself closer or at least stay in throw-rope range. Think of yourself as an active participant in your own rescue. Use your eyes to assess the hazards waiting you downstream, use your mind to constantly assess the best strategy to use to effect your rescue (by yourself or others), and if possible use your voice to actively communicate with the people trying to rescue you.
3. Once you find yourself in a position where you are going to be swept into a rapid, it's time to start making choices about how you're going to navigate that rapid with your body. It sounds obvious - but if the rapid contains obvious hazards - the best way to survive them is to avoid them. Sounds easy enough - but I can't tell you the number of times I've seen experienced people get overwhelmed by the cold, etc and passively drift along in a trajectory that's going to get them tractor beamed into the meat of a rapid when looking downstream and taking a series of determined strokes would have allowed them to avoid it. Point your head away from the hazard at a 45 degree angle, take a few hard strokes, look downstream - decide whether it's time to take a few more strokes or assume the defensive floating position - and repeat as necessary.
Once you're in the rapid, it's time to start playing "Red Light, Green Light." If the current is so powerful that any effort to change your trajectory will be futile, that's the "Red Light" signal to float on your back with your feet up, while always looking for a "Green Light" moment that signals that it's time to start taking active measures to change your trajectory in the river. Is there an eddy line that'll keep you from getting sucked downstream into the next hazard? Swim for it! Are you heading for a big rock? Do what's necessary to orient your feet to the rock, get ready to push off with your feet, and start thinking of your next move. Can a hard push put you in a position where a couple of determined strokes will get you into softer water where you'll be able to get a breath or swim a few feet closer to shore? Is rock creating a break in the current that might be able to use to your advantage? etc, etc, etc.
4. Contra the bumper sticker that says "If it swells, ride it," if you see a significant "bulge" rising downstream of you - do what you can to avoid it. Same goes for a horizon line that you can't see the bottom of. There's almost never going to be a pleasant experience waiting for you on the downstream side. If avoiding either is impossible, focus on taking one or two good breaths, curl into a ball, and prepare yourself for a sustained submersion. Don't attempt to breathe until you can see the sky. If you feel the current relent, swim for the surface. When you've surfaced and gotten that breath - try to figure out if you're moving upstream or downstream. Moving upstream is very bad, and means that there's a high likelihood that you are going to be swept back into the hydraulic and recirculated. Focus on breathing - and try to make progress to the side of the hydraulic before you're swept under again. Even if you're doomed to go under again, by moving even a few feet away from the center of the hole you've improved the odds that you'll catch enough downstream current to be swept downstream when you get sucked under again. Repeat until you're out of the hydraulic or you've lost consciousness.
5. If you're being swept into a log-jam or strainer, do your best to avoid imitating a log. Is there any chance that pointing your head 45 degrees away and swimming like hell for a few seconds will get you past it? Is there a spot where the current is less powerful, is there a branch you can grab onto instead of a stretch of slick, peeled log? If all else fails and you're getting tractor-beamed into a log-jam no matter what, I personally think you're best bet is to swim aggressively towards the log and get as much of your torso as possible on top of the log as opposed to under it. Neither is good, but the more of your body you can get out of the current the better. That might give you the extra 20 seconds necessary for someone to get to you and keep you from getting sucked under. Sounds unlikely but someone doing just that gave me the time I needed to get hands on them in precisely those circumstances. Whatever position you are in when you encounter the log - the game isn't over. Is there anything within arm's reach you can grab onto to give yourself a better grip? To move laterally a couple of feet - maybe into less powerful current. Is there anything you can brace or push off of with your feet?
Even if you get swept under, it's not over until it's over. Can you see any light? Is there anything you can grab onto that'd get you even a few inches closer to safety? I realize that this is all starting to sound preposterous, but a former kayaking partner of mine and father of four managed to stay conscious and deliberately inchworm his way through an underwater sieve and bob back to the surface in a notoriously deadly rapid because he'd mentally prepared for such a moment and was determined to go down swinging if it ever came to that.
There are enough stories like his to make it worth taking heed of their example. One of my closest friends - and now former kayaking partner - fought with the same determination in a powerful recirculating hole until he lost consciousness. He resurfaced face-down, back-up, nearly 50 feet downstream from the hole, where we were able to intercept him in our kayaks, roll him over, and move him to shore a few feet before he would've been swept into the next series of rapids. Did refusing to give up until the bitter end save him? Hard to know - but at least the flood of sorrow and regret he felt for those he was going to leave behind was slightly leavened by the certainty that he'd never given up and kept fighting until the end.
6. If you either make it close to shore before the rapid, or run the full gauntlet and make it close to shore after, the standard advice you get is "never stand up in moving water." Again - that makes sense as bog-standard advice for a bus full of commercial rafting clients, but if someone has experience wading in rivers, my advice is "only try to stand up once you're in water you'd feel comfortable wading in." It's also worth stating that if the only "shore" that fate avails to you is a rock that you can clamber on top of to keep yourself from being swept into a much greater hazard, get yourself onto this "shore" and count your blessings. If nothing else - at least it will give you some time to catch your breath and consider your options in the unlikely event that there's zero chance anyone will be able to rescue you before cold and exposure overwhelm you.
7. If you're sufficiently motivated - invest a little bit of time preparing your mind for the unlikely event that you'll find yourself in a river-survival scenario. Watch a few YouTube videos, read a few first-person accounts, buy a used "whitewater rescue book" and leave it in the bathroom to thumb-through from time to time, or better yet, get a copy of "Kayak: The Animated Manual of Intermediate and Advanced Whitewater Technique" and thumb through the cartoons that illustrate river dynamics, what to do and what not to do, etc.
This probably also sounds a bit ridiculous, but the middle-aged guy I bought my first WW kayak from back in '02 gave me a book about kayaking and put a little note in the front that was part prophecy that if I took up kayaking I'd eventually find myself in a situation where I couldn't be sure if I'd survive, and part admonition that when that happened, I should "Never give up. Never. Stop. Fighting." That moment came around 12 months later (the learning curve is steep when you're being taught by bros in their 20's), and the only conscious thought I had during the series of sustained submersions and beatings was "Never. Stop. Fighting. Never Stop Fighting," which lead to a series of semi-instinctive actions that allowed me to survive.
Probably more input than anyone wanted, but hopefully it's worth the price you paid for it.
