Arkansas Canoe Club Forums

Vernon
Dude, your flag is upside down.

Gink wrote:Well to say something nice -- I applaud your honesty and being upfront rather than just disparaging me behind my back -- a tactic that is resorted to ever so frequently.

Gink,

In an attempt to avoid disparaging you behind your back, or maintaining the negative vibe that's taken over this thread, I'll tell you to relax a bit. There's no reason to leave, run away, write everyone off etc etc. I'll also say this here in a public forum so that others might calm down themselves, obviously this thread has gotten nice and spicey :twisted: I sure miss good flame wars like these...

As for your comments, on this thread, you lost most of your credibility with me when you pointed the finger at everyone for arm-chair quarter-backing a situation they were not present for, then subsequently spewed a bunch of bologna all over the place about a situation you were not present for, and in my humble opinion, know little or nothing about. Again, that's an assumption based on your comments. I have no doubt that you know a good deal about rescue and emergency situations, but how many of those situations involved trained commercial guides in their stomping grounds? Maybe you are an experienced boater, maybe you are not, but the assumption that "the number one rule of a rescue is to not go into the water" is just plain incorrect when you're referring to an experienced white-water professional on his home turf. As someone who has been guiding for a commercial company and/or working for State-Parks as a River Ranger, and generally paddling on road-side commercial sections of river for the last 12 years I have seen enough scenes exactly like the one described on Clear Creek to see that this entire arrest/media episode could have been avoided by more communication from both sides of the issue.

No, I don't think you should inherently ignore a public servant who is asking you to do/not do something simply b/c they are "the man" and we all like to "stick it to the man." BUT, I also don't think that wearing a little piece of tin or a government issued outfit automatically qualifies you to know what is best in each individual situation. I think this is especially true when it comes to white-water rescue scenarios where a uniformed official who most likely has very minimal, if any, river experience is dealing with a van (most likely marked AVA in big giant letters) full of well outfitted river-professionals. Said employees are required by the state of CO to have a minimum skill qualification in swift-water rescue to even run a guided trip, let alone the individuals being arrested who have over 10 years of experience on the water commercially or otherwise. Would it have been such a display of animosity towards authority if the government rescue squad had ordered a guide from that company INTO the water in a dangerous place and had been refused? The notion that someone who is not suspected for a crime of any sort should "obey" every command given them by a person of authority blindly is, in my opinion, very very scary.

The main break-down I have seen in reading all of the different accounts of the Clear Creek situation is that neither side properly identified themselves to the other, or tried to use the best resources available to cooperate with each other. Had the guides and commercial staff simply stopped for two seconds, explained who they were, what they were doing, and how they were going to set safety in the process (as Ryan described in his personal account) then the officials very well may have stepped back and let AVA handle their own mess. Instead, a bunch of guides upset some amped up, over-controlling (justifiably to a point) rescue personel, and said personel decided to make a statement by putting someone in handcuffs.

No matter how far the situation escalated, barring physical altercations that have been alleged in other msg boards, I don't feel that officials who are paid to be level headed SERVANTS of the community should have put someone in jail for swimming across a river they know very well and getting close enough to assess a 13 year old girl who had been through a terrifying experience, period. Were the guides in the wrong in their attitudes/approach with the government rescue squad? My guess is yes. Were the government boys irrational in arresting Ryan Snodgrass instead of simply giving him and his co-workers a strong talking to and ironing out their differences on a personal/private level instead of making it a major media debacle? H-E-DOUBLE-HOCKEY-STICKS YES.

Gink, it's obvious that you have been a member of rescue and/or law enforcement communities and you relate to their side of things. I respect that. I commend each of the level headed individuals who carry out those responsibilities with calm, reason, and respect for the public they serve. I think you were WAY off base when you listed every fatality you could Google, when you probablly have no idea what happened in those specific situations, but that's for a different rant.

Although watching you guys flame each other back and forth has provided me with a mild amount of amusement while I sit here dreaming about my CO vacation coming up in 3 days, don't forget that the real goal of this discussion should really be to assess what happened, why, and most importantly how to improve upon it in the future, not bashing other individuals who weren't on scene and don't know "the rest of the story."

Paul Harvey signing out....

--Z

Thank you very much for an objective viewpoint.
Enjoy your CO vacation!
Jan

looks like we ran Gink off the message board i did not want that and i also did not mean that death is alluring what i meant is there is a certain element of danger in a lot of things we do and any time you put on a river death is right there just under the surface of the water class 2 or class 5 i have paddled and performed rescues in idaho california colorado arkansas wyoming kentucky tennesse georgia alabama north carolina and been the rescuee many times

and im not saying every rescue person is a baffon not saying that at all i do belive if you cant run a mile and do 10 or so pull ups you should not be a police officer or a responder and i have to say that 50 percent of the responders i have met probably cant do that du to the large guts they have

OH yeah i think ginks leaving the message board tells us a lot about his character

-- Now if that ain't bait I can't resist biting....

I guess with a little "objectivity" and a night's rest -- you "folks" be ok. All is forgiven and appreciated. Thanks.

Welcome back, Gink.

I, for one, am glad you stayed. I can see both sides of this coin and I realize that sometimes the discussion becomes a little heated. As boater types, we take events of this nature very seriously, as we do the tragic event at Albert Pike. It strikes a chord because we all know it could have been anyone of us there at any given time. A lot of us, myself included, have lost close friends and loved ones on the water. And not just paddlesports, either. Swimming, gas-loving power boats, PWC, all of it. We get emotional about this as does any other segment of "folks" when something strikes them close to home. But regardless, it has also been provacative and stimulating to name but a couple of descriptives.

It appears to me that everyone is out for the same goal, and as with human nature, there are a lot of roads to get there. But as for myself, reading your posts keeps me honest and I can appreciate that regardless of my personal views. It is the same no matter which side of the issue I find myself on.

I suspect that if you would hang with some boaters for a spell, you would find the vast majority of them productive, loving, responsible, tolerant, fun-loving people who's Heart is in the right place. And that is the kind of people I want to hang with regardless of whether they are boaters, law enforcement, SAR, or plumbers. It may not change your opinion much on other matters, nor should it necessarily. But it also might lend some insight, which is something we should all strive for.

For all of us? There can be no day without the night.

Just put my two cents in Ryan is a friend of mine and someone I worked with for many years on the Ocoee and certainly an extremely competent guide/kayaker (and sorry) but way more competent than the overweight jokers on jet skis working for the "swift water rescue team" LOL, just kidding I don't know the people on the swift water rescue team but if i was in trouble I certainly wouldn't mind depending on him to save my life and judging from the video I saw of the swiftwater guys they problably needed his help.

I'm outta here

Yay!

Soz, got carried away and verbally inane about something I know absolutely nothing about...................

Y'all musta not been payin' attention to who started this thread!! (I'll bet none of you are even wearin' yer aluminum foil lined hats.) And I'll bet Vernon is having a good laugh at the commotion he started.

Thanks, Vernon, after all the bad news last week, we needed a distraction.