Life And Death On The River
When I think about rivers, and they're on my mind a lot, its usually in a positive light. Rivers represent life and connection, their analog to the human animal are the arteries that that carry blood all around our body. They pulse with energy and a raw power that can make one feel both insignificant and godlike at the same time. The geologic corridors they carve create pathways for our roads and railways, and are themselves conduits for fish and bugs and sediment and happy people in carbon-neutral motion
From
a recreational perspective, rivers are playgrounds upon which we fish,
swim, row and ice skate. Since I've spent so much time filling my soul
beside moving waters, it can be hard to remember that cold flowing
rivers can also have another side, a darker one. Rivers may exude a
potent life force, but they are not sentient.
We
humans think and care a lot more about rivers than they think or care
about us, which is to say not at all. At its most basic level, a river
is nothing more than water molecules being pulled by gravity downhill
almost against their will. Whether a human being has a good or bad
experience on a river, makes absolutely no difference to the river.
This spring, rivers in Colorado have been running high due to the thick
blanket of snow we got this winter. Partly because of that, there have
been several people who had the last swim of their lives in the past
month. This is unfortunate, as in some cases these tragic outcomes could
have been avoided. But whenever one ventures out onto a river, there's
always a chance that something unexpected may happen. Sometimes that's
good, like when its a big brown trout on the of a line. But if is bad,
it could be a drowning person rushing towards the end of theirs.
There have already been a few people who've drowned on the Upper C
already this spring. Two weeks ago below State Bridge, a boat with a
man rafting with his eight year old son suddenly came to an abrupt stop
in the swift moving water. The anchor hanging off the boat's stern had
suddenly dropped into the river. This forced the stern down into the
water, and the resulting force began to separate the raft from the
frame. Somehow the child ended up trapped under the raft and drowned.
This sounds like a very unusual circumstance, but early in my boating
days a similar thing happened to me. Not the drowning part, but my
anchor slipping into the river and halting my boat's progress. When it
dropped, it got caught on the knot I'd put into the end of the rope to
keep from losing my anchor. The current was so powerful that I had to
cut the rope and write off the anchor. But I'll never forget how
quickly my boat came to a stop. But my boat is a cataraft, and the
water flows right through. That man and his son probably felt the same
sudden sensation. To think that one minute you're floating upon the
Colorado River, having a wonderful day, instilling the love of rivers
and being outside to your child, and in the next instant you find
yourself in a life or death situation.
Makes the river feel almost cruel.
Then last week, a woman was rafting below Pumphouse and fell out of her
raft at Eye Of The Needle, a notorious boat-eater especially at high
water. Her two children were outfitted with what were described as
"Wal-Mart quality" PFDs, while the mother wore none. Today, they don't
have a mother anymore. How can people be so ill prepared? It shows a
lack of respect for the river and its power.
In
the past, I've seen people floating below Pumphouse in anything that
floats, including cheap air mattresses. But thats been in low water,
not the full beautiful flushing flows we've had this spring. A river at
5,000 cfs is usually a very different animal than the same river at 700
cfs. There are a lot of new boaters who've bought in to the whole
wonderful rafting lifestyle since 2020. They've only seen the river at
rock bottom flows, so they think that they know a river well. But I
hope that everyone who comes out this summer to row the Upper Colorado
River can successfully adapt to the higher, faster conditions.
Last
Friday, we were doing our last shuttle of the day running a truck and
trailer from Catamount down to Dotsero. Along the way, we just passed
Rancho Starvo and I noticed my neighbor Walt and another man on the
shoulder of the road, looking upstream at the huge eddy above Walt's
house. As I drew closer, I noticed the stranger wearing a PFD and
farmer john wetsuit. I thought I might know what they were looking
for. Earlier that morning, my in-laws spotted an empty blue kayak
floating past their house. This man was probably looking for it. So I
stopped and asked them if they were looking for a kayak, and he
responded No, that had nothing to do with them, they were looking for a
swimmer in the river.
I got out of the car looked upriver towards Walt's Eddy. The old road
bridge at Red Dirt used to be very dangerous, but several years ago it
had been replaced with a more boat friendly design. The old bridge used
to ensnare boats frequently, and whenever it did whatever flotsam that
fell in would get trapped in Walt's Eddy. Out in the middle of the river
there was something floating, but I couldn't tell what it was.
The man in the wetsuit was making his way down to the river through the
thick willows. I asked him, "Is that him?" and he replied that he
wasn't sure if it was the swimmer, or just his PFD. Walt and I watched
as the object floated around, hoping that the current might carry him
further down to where we could catch him. Normally this is what this
eddy would do, but the wind was blowing hard that day and keeping the
floating mass stuck up in the top of the eddy. "Yeah that's him!" the
man shouted.
Just then, Walt's wife Jan appeared from the back of their house.
"I've called 911!" she shouted. Walt and I looked at each other. "By
the time help gets here, it'll be too late, if it isn't already". Walt
nodded. "I've got a raft in my backyard, but its not on a trailer". Then
I thought about Walt's pristine 30 year old Ford pickup. "Walt, can we
use your truck to go get my raft?", and he quickly said yes. "We'd
better move fast, we're his only chance". I hollered down to the man on
the bank, who was watching his friend spinning out around in the eddy,
and yelled, "We're going to go get a boat!" With that, we sprinted away,
me to my shuttle car and Walt to his truck.
My house is a half mile below Walt's, and when I got there I whipped
opened the gate and looked for my PFD. I couldn't find it, so I grabbed
a small one that barely snapped around my waist. Walt was already
backing in, and we quickly grabbed the raft and lifted it into the back
of his truck. Then I noticed that across the river, there was another
man in a wetsuit next to what looked like a large ducky pulled up onto
the bank. I assumed he was part of the group. "We're going to go get
your friend, we'll be right back!" I shouted to him, and he nodded and
slowly waved back.
Walt
and I tore up the road in his truck, planning on putting the boat in at
the small ramp at Rancho Starvo, just above the swimmer. But as we
came upon the eddy, I saw the man in the wetsuit at the edge of the
river, with the swimmer not far off the bank. "Stop the truck Walt,
he's right next the bank, we won't need the boat. Let me out!" Walt
stopped and I jumped out of the truck, hopped the fence, and sprinted
across the pasture. When I pushed through the willows, I stopped at the
water's edge and was a bit confused by what I saw. Only ten feet off the
bank was the floating yellow PFD, with the back of a gray-haired head
in the middle of it face down in the water. The man in the wetsuit was
tossing a throw rope at his friend, trying to snare him to draw him even
closer. But he was only ten feet away!
"Why don't you just go grab him?" I asked, and he looked at me with a
confused expression. He was in full river regalia, with a wetsuit and
and PFD and knife and whistle, and I was in my street clothes, wearing a
too-small PFD. He stood looking at me, and without waiting for a
response I waded in after the swimmer, pushing some floating wood out of
the way. The water came up to my ribs before I was able to reach the
shoulder strap of the unconscious man, and I pulled him towards the
bank. Once there, the other man grabbed his other shoulder strap and
we pulled him onto the shore.
We rolled him onto his bank, and pulled off his PFD. He was bearded
man who looked to be around seventy years old, and his face had a
slightly blue pallor to it. I was hoping that this was due to the 55
degree water he'd been floating in. "We've got to do CPR on him" I
said, and when the other man just looked at me, I started in. Being a
licensed outfitter, I'm required to do regular First Aid and CPR
courses. For many years, my wife was an instructor for the Red Cross,
and I could have just renewed my certification without having to sit
through the whole course again. But I've always done it anyway, wanting
to reinforce that latent knowledge so if I ever needed it in an
emergency, it'd be in some part of my brain that I could access. Taking
First Aid and CPR courses is about learning skills you hope to never
use. Over the years, the recommended ratio of chest compressions to
rescue breaths has changed, but I knew that at one point it was either
30 to 1 or 15 to 1, so I went with the former. Doing the chest
compressions was easy, but the first time I had to do the rescue breath I
gagged a little and almost vomited. But the adrenaline was surging, so I
bent over the blue man's face and blew into his mouth until I felt his
chest rise a little.
As I did CPR, the man in the wetsuit introduced himself as Mike (names
changed) and told me what happened. They had been running past the Red
Dirt Bridge, a tricky spot upriver where a railroad bridge is
immediately followed by the road bridge pylons. At this flow, the right
pylon can be run on either side. The right line has a big, smooth wave
that puts you right into a frothy wave train. If you hit it straight on,
its wonderful, almost the river equivalent of powder skiing. But run
it sideways and the wave is big enough to roll a boat over, and that's
what happened to the man I was currently trying to revive. At higher
water levels the middle line is also doable, but there are a few big
rocks in the channel to avoid.
Mike said he went through first and didn't like it, and motioned to his
companions not follow him, but take the middle line instead. But by
then, it was too late and they both took the right line as well. Mike
said that after he got through, he looked back and noticed that his
friend (who I'll call Bob) had fallen out of his boat and was struggling
to get to shore. One of the many questions I never asked Mike (along
with whether they had scouted the bridge before running it) was why he
hadn't eddied out to wait for his companions. There is spot on river
right, just above the alluvial fan of Red Dirt Creek, that's almost in
sight of the bridge. But instead, Mike not only passed that, but then
went almost a mile below before stopping his boat just below
Walt's house. In the process he passed the big eddy that his friend his
friend eventually got sucked into, an eddy so tenacious you have to
actively row hard to avoid getting caught by it.
As I did CPR, I told him about the man I saw across the river from my
house, and Mike told me that he was the unconscious man's brother, Pete.
I told him that he might be able to row across the river to my yard
from where he was, but it was difficult to do in this high flow. Mike
said that the brother wasn't a strong rower, and wouldn't be able to do
it.
I was getting a little winded from doing the chest compressions, and
Mike noticed this and offered to take over. I leaned back to took a
deep breath, but when I watched his technique I had to jump back in. He
was pressing on Bob's stomach, not his sternum, and his timing was too
fast. So I went back to doing the compressions on Tim's chest until I
started feeling tired again, and began to wonder if all this effort was
in vain. Mike said there was still no pulse, though with his face now
warmed by the sun Bob was looking less blue, though still pale. We were
both shouting "Bob! Bob! Stay with us!" Mike slapped Bob's face a
couple of times, a technique I don't remember reading about in the Red
Cross manual. Just about the time I was ready to give up, we heard
distant sirens. This gave me another shot of adrenaline. I thought
that I could keep doing this for as long as it took for more qualified
get help to arrive. Walt was still up on the road waiting for the first
responders, and Mike left to go help direct them to the right spot.
Alone with Bob, I kept rhythmically doing the compressions though the
situation seemed pointless. I hoped that the combination keeping blood
flowing to his organs and the cold water would somehow keep him alive
until the EMTs could get to him. An ambulance and a fire truck came
speeding around the corner, and I heard the opening and closing of doors
from the other side of the wall of willows. I stood for a moment to
see them, and yelled, "Bring an AED!" which of course they would have
anyway. Knowing that help was almost here, I kept shouting to Bob, "
Hold On! Stay With Me! Your Brother Is Waiting For You!", and kept it up
until the firefighters came crashing through the brush.
There were three firefighters and a female EMT who directed all of them
as to what they needed to do. We pulled Bob further away from the water
and the readied the AED. The thanked me for my efforts, and at that
point my role was done. I was going to wait to see if they were able to
bring him back, but I already knew that it was probably too late. I
didn't want to be there when they pronounced him dead, so I left and
went back to the road where Walt was waiting. "How is it looking?" he
asked, and all I could do was shake my head.
We got into his truck and drove back to my house. After he backed in,
we unloaded my boat and looked across the river at the dead man's
brother. Knowing how strong the current was, I shouted to him to hold
on, I'd row over to get him. My smallest boat is a ten foot raft with
an oar frame that I go out in almost every night. At lower flows I can
row it pretty far upstream from my house, but at 5,500cfs I can barely
get across the river and back even when rowing very hard. Of course when
its just me and the dogs, the workout is sort of the point. So I rowed
upstream as far as I could, then pulled very quickly to get over the
far side. When I got close, the man extended his paddle and I pulled
myself to the bank.
Pete didn't say anything. I thought that he might be in shock, though
he wouldn't know what had happened to his brother yet so that didn't
seem right. I didn't want to be the to tell him that his brother was
probably dead, but since I left before that pronouncement had been
officially made I still held out a bit of hope that the AED had worked a
miracle.
"We got your brother out of water, and he's being worked on right now",
I said. No response. "He was in the water for awhile, and he's got
the best medical help doing what they can". Still no response, the man
just looked off into the distance.
"He's not my brother" was all Pete could whisper.
I offered to row him back across the river and bring him up to where
his brother and friend were, but he said that he would rather wait here
for a raft to come pick him up. I told him that might not happen for
awhile, if ever, so he finally agreed to come with me. Since the water
was rising, I suggested that we pull his boat further out of the river,
and it gave me an opportunity to look at the raft they using. I had
never seen a boat quite like this, what I thought was a very large
inflatable kayak (also known as a "ducky" or "IK") was actually called a
Soar inflatable canoe, and it did have the proportions of a canoe. It
was sixteen feet long and had a quality build made from Hypalon, though
it was very heavy and not very rigid. Instead of sitting down inside of
it like an inflatable kayak, the rower sat up high on a platformed
seat, and looked like it would have a high center of gravity. I learned
to read water and have run rivers all over the west in a cheap two
person ducky, but this thing looked like it would be a handful.
Pete got into my boat, and I backrowed as far upriver as I could. Once
the current took hold, I rowed as hard as I could to get to the other
side. Pete weighed more than my Labrador, and with the extra load I
almost didn't make it to back to my yard. We pulled up to the bank and
Walt helped secure us, and Pete got out without a word. He left with
Walt left to go upriver, and I went into my house to change into dry
clothes and do some deep breathing.
Once I had dried off and changed, I still had to go to town to get to
my next gig, driving a propane truck. Before I did that, I had to go
back upriver to see if the efforts to revive Bob had been successful.
When I got to Walt's house, there were a couple of emergency vehicles in
his driveway so I stopped there. I approached one of the firefighters,
and asked him the question I didn't really want to hear the answer to.
He shook his head and said that no, Bob was gone. He'd been in the
water too long. Then I offered my condolences to Mike, and told him
that I thought that Pete might be in shock, but he said that was just
Pete.
Mike
and a couple of the firefighters went down the bank to drag Mikes
inflatable canoe out of the river, so I went too. I was surprised at
how heavy and spongy it was. Even in the hot sun it was very soft, I
could only imagine how flexible it must have been in the cold water. It
didn't seem to be a boat for running technical water in unless one was
very strong and experienced. Later that night I checked them out online,
and they did seem like a pretty perfect boat for some applications,
such as when you need a boat packed or flown into somewhere. They also
offered an oar frame for them, and that would give a single rower much
more power and control than a simple paddle.
Mike left with one of the firefighters to go up to State Bridge to get
Tim's truck and trailer. They left Pete alone in the sun, bare-headed
and still in his PFD. He ended up spending the next couple of hours at
Walt and Jan's, who made him a sandwich and gave him a cold beverage,
saying next to nothing the whole time.
The following morning, I spoke with Walt and then Mike on the phone.
Walt told me that Pete said very little that afternoon while waiting for
Mike's return. I then called Mike to offer some assistance in
retrieving the other boat from across the river that Pete had left
behind. I asked him about Pete's demeanor, and he explained that Pete was schizophrenic and on a lot of medications. I told him that Pete said Bob was not
his brother, and Mike said that Pete was kind of in and out of it,
sometimes not remeing who Bob was. He said that Pete lived alone, and
that Bob had been his one solid contact to the world, checking in on him
every day. I assumed that Pete had been in Bob's boat, but I learned
that Bob's boat was actually still downriver. A local rancher had found
it when it turned up in an eddy at his place, and he'd let the sheriff
know. The boat still across the river from my house was the one Pete had
been rowing, he hadn't been in a boat with his brother. That took me by
surprise. Pete wasn't a strong enough rower to cross the river to my
house, but it was OK for him run Rodeo, Pinball, and the Red
Dirt Bridge? I also learned one other tidbit. On Bob's boat, washed up a
couple of miles downriver, was a portable AED.
*************************************************************************************
Despite the events of the previous day, I was anxious to get out onto the river myself, but in a boat,
not wading up to my chest. I wanted to do the Pinball run down to my
ramp, the river was up to 5,700cfs and it'd been years since it had been
that high. My neighbor Ben and his wife Marie were game to go, and
their nephew Tim who was visiting was also going to come along. Ben has
his own raft, but doesn't do the Pinball run since a mishap several
years earlier. He was in the middle of Pinball when the blade on his
downstream oar broke off, leaving him with just one oar. Worse, he had
no spare. Our neighbor Randy was with him, and though I wasn't there
Marie was up on the road running their shuttle and taking pictures.
With no way to change his position in the river, Ben ran into the cement
bridge pylon and his boat flipped. Luckily, there are worse places to
swim (like the swift water below the Red Dirt Bridge), and Ben and Randy
got out soaked but unhurt.
I've
been trying to get Ben out on the stretch ever since, and he finally
relented. I've run Pinball well over 500 times, and have never had an
issue with it. The reason its called Pinball is that the left
two-thirds of the river channel are pretty shallow at normal flows, and
trying to get through there boats tend to "pinball' from one rock to
another. The thing that makes Pinball dicey is that there is a big
bridge pylon over on the right side, which is why you usually try to run
it left. There are also some rocks blocking the right channel, so
staying right isn't a safe option. The trick to running Pinball is to
start far right, and then once past a big rock a hundred feet upstream
from the bridge, you backrow very hard away from the right bank,
passing the bridge pylon off the right side. Its kind of a
counterintuitive way to do it, but following that path keeps you in the
deepest channel when the water is low, (which seems to be our new
normal).
Pinball Rapid But
when the river rises above 3,000cfs, the rocks on the right become
covered in water, and that side is not only easier but much more fun.
The flow gets squeezed between the bridge and bank, and an enormous wave
train is formed. No hard pulling across the river is required. My big
cataraft has sixteen foot long pontoons, and was set up for two people
in front and one in back. I suggested to Ben that he sit behind me, and
see where I how I oriented and positioned the boat to run it. He
agreed. We put in at the dirt Pinball ramp, and after visiting the rock
with the tetrapod tracks we were soon poised at the top of Pinball
Rapid. I was describing to Ben almost stroke for stroke what I was
doing and why, the very epitome of confidence and experience. The boat
was about twenty feet of the bank, and I called back to Ben over the
crashing whitewater that this position should get us through the right
side of the bridge pylon with very little rowing. Even though I've run
Pinball well north of 500 times, I've only run the right side twenty
times or so, since the river is rarely high enough. Being able to do
this line was one of the reasons I like to get out here in the first
place.
Just as I got the boat where I wanted it, I made one more stroke with
my left oar to fine-tune it, and heard a weird snapping noise. The oar
suddenly felt very heavy in my hand. Looking down, I saw that the oar
lock had broken clean off. Oh. Shit. I'd never broken and oar lock
before, it didn't even his anything with it to cause it to break. Guess
it was just metal fatigue after 20 years and many thousands of oar
strokes.
Ben saw what happened, and launched to unstrap my spare oar. "Don't
bother Ben, that won't help, the oar lock broke!" Since my left oar was
now pointless, I handed it back to Ben to hold onto. Its got a
counterbalance weight on it, and if it fell into the water it would
immediately sink to the bottom. Up front, Tim and Marie wheeled around
and saw our predicament, while I took a second to consider our
situation. We were about a hundred feet from the bridge and closing
fast. Ben asked Tim to hang onto the loose oar he was holding, hoping
maybe he could use to brace against whatever we ran into, and passed it
up to him. The bank was now even closer and I quickly realized two
things. One, were far enough right that that we wouldn't hit the
dreaded bridge. That's good, since the bridge pylon at Pinball has
flipped or wrapped more boats than I can count over the twenty years
that I'd been living here. The second thing I saw was that were too
far right to avoid hitting the far bank. I didn't know what running
into that bank would do, since usually the river isn't high enough to be
that far right, and I'd never seen anyone run into it before. However,
one basic rule of river running is to not run into things sideways,
whether it be big waves or other obstacles. With just the one oar
trailing behind us on the right side, I couldn't affect where we would run into the bank, but could control
what angle the boat struck the bank at. All I could do was push or
pull. Pushing would drive us into bank sooner, while pulling would be
the stronger stroke and buy us a few extra seconds. The only problem
with that would mean we would hit the rocky bank backwards, but that was
still better than sideways. There was a big flat rock shaped like a
taco shelI I hoped to hit, but not being able to see where I was going
it would take some luck.
"We're going to hit that bank!" I shouted "Everyone hang on and tighten
your vests!" I grabbed hold of my good oar with both hands and started
pulling as hard as I could. "Ben hang on tight! I'm going to try and
hit it back end first!" The big cataraft spun hard clockwise. I
couldn't see where we going, but I knew the impact was coming any
second. We just completed the 180 degree turn, and the boat struck the
rock wall hard but not with enough force to launch anyone from their
seat. The boat completed another 180 spin, and we were pointed right
into the juicy wave train I wanted to be in before the oarlock broke
We all yelled in celebration, though we weren't completely out of the
woods yet. With Tim up front using the oar like a gigantic paddle, we
managed to get the boat off into the willows river right. Once into the
soft current there, I dropped anchor and we all took a deep breath.
Everyone
was OK and only mildly freaked out, but there was still the matter of
completing our trip, which we were less than a mile into. I knew that I
had a spare oarlock in my dory, which was back at my shop. My first
thought was that I'd get up to the road, jog back to my truck, drive to
the shop and go get it. Then another thought popped into my brain, and
opening the hatch below my seat, I rummaged around a bit and found...a
spare oarlock! I had forgotten that it was even there! When I bought my
dory a few years earlier, it came with two spare oarlocks. I had never
broken an oarlock, or known anyone who had, but at the time I figured
that I might as well put one of the spares in my cataraft. And there it
had been ever since, just waiting for something like this to happen. I
held the oarlock up high for everyone to see, and we all let out a
joyful whoop.
Five hundred trips through Pinball without a problem, and just when you
think its routine the river shows you that it can have a few tricks up
its sleeve. Even though I have confidence running this very familiar
stretch, I try to not let it turn into hubris. I love and respect this
river, but harbor no illusions that it feels the same way about me. It
doesn't matter to a river if a person is in it, on it, or under it. The
Colorado has been flowing down this canyon for millions of years , long
before we got here, and will keep on flowing for millions of years
after we're all gone. As much fun as we like to have spending some of
the best hours of our lives along rivers, they're not here for our
entertainment. Rivers may keep our planet healthy and alive, but they're
not an amusement park ride.
So be smart and be safe out there, and don't become a sad statistic or
cautionary tale. I've personally experienced eight whitewater swims,
and if I close my eyes I can remember each one of them in painful
detail. One of them even happened in the same stretch of water where Bob
drowned a week ago, when my wife and I fell out of a ducky just below
Red Dirt at 7,000 cfs back in 2011. The same thing could have easily
happened to us, but we were lucky. Counting on luck to see you through
is a bad strategy, since good luck tends to run out at some point. So
take a First Aid and CPR course if you've never had one, maybe it will
come in handy someday. Hopefully you'll never need it.
This
summer has the potential to be the best the Colorado River has seen in
many years. Let's make it a year to remember for only the best of
reasons.
Jack Bombardier
More river-related drivel can be found at https://jackbombardier.blogspot.com/
If you don't want these emails from me clogging your Inbox, let me know
