Boatmen and Bedlam - a Rafter's Story

From the time I saw the beast I estimate I had three seconds to react. It was an old log - solid, heavy girth, maybe 3 feet in diameter on the left side, 12 to 15 inches on the right, no bark - just solid looking, shiny brown wood, sharp broken branch stubs all along the length. It was about half in and out of the water and stretched perfectly perpendicular to the river with each end resting firmly on shore. Waves surged against it and there was NOWHERE to go! What happened next happened very quickly...

I pulled hard on the oars in a left ferry attempt. But I was just too close and going too fast. I remember dropping the oars and pushing up from my seat to jump forward over my cooler and dry box. I would try to jump over the log and take the swim. In my 20 years of boating this was my first encounter with a strainer and I knew that, given a choice, always go over the top! I probably made it one step when I hit the log. I never had a chance.

I believe the boat impacted the log pretty much head on, maybe cocked a bit to the right due to my ferry attempt. My left tube went high and on top of the log. My right tube dove under the log. The boat instantly twisted to the right and the stern was immediately submerged. I was thrown into the river head first. I can recall very clearly what happened next. I entered the water head downstream and on my back. I was instantly swept under the log, passing under it the broken branches flew past inches above my face. The brown log was clearly in view less than 2 feet above me. Very quickly I saw the sky above me through the water and knew that I had made it under the log clean. Within seconds I started to hit boulders with my shoulders and back. I rolled over and assumed the classic swim position with my feet at the water line facing down stream (nod to my Swiftwater instructor Jeff Kronser).

I was in a real pickle. Below the log the river widened out, the whitewater grew shallower and seemed to pick up speed. I was taking a pretty good drubbing from the rocks. Looking downstream it didn't get any better as the river made a hard right and disappeared with no visible let up in speed. I needed to get to shore. A logjam quickly loomed in front of me. It looked like I would miss it to the right so I made for the brushy bar behind the logs. Clawing and scraping I scrambled to shore and crawled out into a pile of logs in the middle of the river.

I looked back upstream and I just knew that there had to be people seriously injured, or worse. There HAD to be! Suddenly Steve's red Achilles screamed by upside down.... where was Steve? What is happening? Where is everyone?

Looking around I saw a guy climbing up through some brush on river right. There was a guy, no... two guys.. on a stump in the middle of the river upstream of me. There were some guys at the log on river left.

Do a head count...One, two, three...

BAM! My boat slammed into the logjam right in front of me! MY BOAT!

Count heads.... One, two, three, four, five...my boat was coming loose from the logs. I jumped forward, grabbed one of my throw bags and quickly tied it off. Oh crap... it only has one tube. The entire left tube was missing. The left oar was snapped off clean. The frame, a stoutly built Sotar Predator, was snapped along the entire left side. It looked like all of my gear was still there! Yahoo for taking the time to rig it right! There's my other tube... under the log! YOW! The tube, clearly visible in the water under the log, was getting seriously worked. The broken branches had snagged the rescue rope along the tube!

One, two, three,....eight, nine - Only one man missing. Holy crap! Then I spotted trip leader Mike hoofing quickly up the right bank with a rescue rope in hand. Ten people (thank God!)

Looking around we started to exchange hand signals. It was good to see a whole lotta' helmet tapping going on! I came to realize that one fellow on the right bank had a badly injured foot. There were three men midstream, four on the right bank and three on the left.

Looking at my own situation I realized I was in pretty good shape. I had two good throw bags and a complete set of rescue gear. I was warm and dry (thanks again Riley!) and had all of my personal gear, food and water.

The carnage over, my first train of thought was... "I'm camping here and waiting for help!" That was quickly squelched when I spotted Steve on the left bank climbing through the brush working his way down river obviously intent on doing some rescue work.

Steve stopped abreast the two men trapped on the midstream stump. They were directly upstream of my location about 20 to 25 feet away. While watching Steve set up a rope between the stump and shore I started unloading my gear. The boat, with only one tube, was underwater for the most part but I was able to get my drybags and some smaller things off safely.

The rope established, one at a time the men on the stump carefully walked to shore through swift water. One lost his footing but managed to hang on to the rope and hand over hand himself to shore. With the guys safely ashore Steve turned his attention toward me.

The roar of the river eliminated any hope of verbal communication. Steve came down through the brush immediately to the left of my location and raised his hands in a questioning way. "What do you want to do?" Is how I read it. I readied a throw bag and tossed it to him. He caught the toss and I motioned him to move down river. He quickly understood my plan and we soon had a zip line established.

Working with Steve I soon had as much of my gear as possible on the beach. Still on the boat was my cooler, dry box and Big Top outfitter tarp. Since these items were under swift moving water, and rather than lose them to the current, I opted to leave them and my 3 remaining oars on the boat and hope to recover them later if the opportunity arose.

During this exercise kayaker Rick Hill suddenly appeared on my island! "Hey! Nice zip line!" he said, followed by the obvious "What do you have in mind for getting off of here?" That was a good question! After sending several dry bags to shore and watching the beating they took I wasn't in any mood to use the same method to get myself ashore.

Rick had an idea. He would kayak to shore, hike back upstream and kayak back to the stump where the rope to the left bank was still attached. There, he would throw me a rope and I would walk upstream to him, staying in the "eddy" created by the stump while he belayed me. The immediate danger in this plan was that if I lost my footing I would be directly upstream of a log sieve. Once at the stump I could cross to the left bank using the same rope as the original guys had. Weighing the options (and not seeing any helicopters hovering), it sounded good to me.

Shortly after Rick left in his boat I heard a whistle. Mike Holstrom was on the right bank with a rope. Using hand signals he indicated that he wanted me to tie the rope off to the remains of my boat. His plan was to swing the boat to shore using the rescue rope attached to a tree. It was worth a try but I wasn't too sure how it would go in the shallow water with just the one tube, and the frame dragging.

I tied the boat off to the line from shore and untied my throw rope which was holding the boat to the logs. The guys on the beach started to work on getting the boat moving and I started securing my zip line gear in preparation for my departure.

I heard another whistle and Mike was signaling that they wanted me to move the rope to a downstream position on the frame. I climbed out onto the frame, untied the line and barely had time to jump off as the wrecked boat sailed off down river with no line attached! Oh well...it was worth a try!

About this time Rick appeared on the stump above me, tossed me a line and we made our move. It seems like just a couple of minutes passed and I walked ashore through the brush where Steve was waiting. As I climbed through the brush I realized I was suffering from a serious case of post-traumatic, post-mega-adrenaline rush fatigue and was feeling pretty wiped out. We all were. When I looked back at the stump, Rick had repacked the ropes was getting back in his kayak. Rick is a keeper!

While Rick, Steve and I were dealing with getting me and my gear off the island, some of the guys had unloaded Mike Howell's 17-foot Aire cat which had been pinned against the log on the left bank, his left tube in the rocks and his right under the log. These were the first tubes I had seen as I rounded the corner a lifetime ago. After unloading the boat the men had pulled it out of harms way, humped it over the log and reloaded it! Not only that, they had also recovered my tube from under the log! There it was, neatly deflated and folded on the boat! Mike's boat now sat bouncing in the current just downstream of the log, hard on the left bank.

The guys brought me up to date on the situation: