Strainer Near Miss

[justin.payne]

some of the best paddlers i know are women

[A Savage spanke]

We wouldn't be hitting on the person if the joke was a girl that had a guys name, it wouldn't have made sense

[LOREN]

I would feel more comfortable if you wouldn't talk about hitting on me spanky.
Thanks,
Loren

[fryingsquirrel]

In my (limited) paddling experience, I've seen great paddlers and crappy paddlers of both sexes. Gender makes no difference, what matters is experience, skill, common sense, and luck. The only solution to poor paddling is to get out and paddle some more and learn from our mistakes. And I think the only solution to overconfident paddling is to get wet every once in a while!
My .03 cents
Jon Ellwood

[Cowper]

The story which began this thread and some of the good comments made really speak to several of the issues DeBo and I have struggled with for a couple of years now.

Re: solo paddling, we have enjoyed tremendously our swamp paddles, but consistently the most memorable trips have been those where we see wildlife, and the vast majority of the better wildlife encounters have occurred when we paddle alone or in very small groups (often only two) or so spread out that if an accident were to occur, other members of the group might remain unaware and unavailable to assist.

Re: swamp paddling, “it’s not WW, so it’s not dangerous”, I really don’t know how to explain it to people. If you’ve run some III’s, IV’s, or maybe even some V’s, then it is hard to get worked up about stuff that is mostly sub-Class I. In the swamp 99% of the time, you can paddle somewhere with essentially zero danger to even a “first time” paddler (wearing a PFD), except perhaps the danger of getting lost. That can be eliminated by use of a GPS. So in moderate weather, it is a very safe endeavor.

But the problem is, I can’t write a description or a guidebook that tells you when and where that 1% factor is going to come into play. There’s one place in Wattensaw where Debo and I have paddled dozens of times; water conditions have been a non-issue from a safety viewpoint almost every one of them – except twice. Those two times there had been a local rain event, and we arrived to find water rushing through the trees, under strainers, and just generally creating a very dangerous situation even for a Class III paddler. At another location, there is a railroad trestle that 99% of the time, is just an interesting artifact that you paddle past, often with a barely perceptible current. But on one trip, river levels were lower (yes, I said LOWER), and so the water was rushing through the log jam at the trestle, maybe a mild “Class I” rapid. One of our paddlers pinned sideways on the logs, and for just a few seconds I was afraid they were going to lean the wrong way, and be swept UNDER the logs.

On several trips, we have been paddling relatively mild current, but come to river-wide log jams. Again, not much of a hazard to a WW paddler who recognizes that the current is going UNDER the logs, but enough current that someone paddling the swamp because they don’t want anything dangerous could easily be fooled and be sucked UNDER that pile of logs with no way out.

On yet another trip, we were nearing the end of our day, floating the last mile on a flood-stage White River just above Clarendon. It was cool, probably mid to low 40’s. For all practical purposes, the trip was “over” – just drift with the 3 mph current down to the Clarendon boat ramp. Probably the second most experienced WW paddler with us that day got a little too relaxed, and drifted into the limbs of a tree that had fallen into the river near one bank. A near capsize resulted before they regained control and composure; if it had gone the other way they would have been in the water at a location where the clay bank was vertical, with no way to climb out, and there was a potential for being snagged in other tree limbs. And all this at a location where the other paddlers would have difficulty helping, the current was just fast enough that you couldn’t have paddled back to provide any meaningful help, so you would have had to count on the paddler not being snagged in the limbs. It ended up being just a few seconds of adrenaline, but it could have been very ugly.

Way past time for me to close. So for me, there are several major points here:

1) I will not always follow the American WHITEWATER Association recommended group size when paddling in the swamp, on stuff that is not whitewater. I recognize and accept the extra risk, and will take reasonable extra precautions when doing it. But the less experience that you have, then the more strongly you should consider paddling only with others, because you may not recognize the hazards and may not be assessing the risk correctly.

2) I will not let my WW background lull me into a false sense of security that “it can’t happen here” when I paddle in the swamp. The unexpected can happen anywhere, that’s why it is “unexpected”.

3) I will encourage others to do as Roman has done, and share their “near miss” stories, on all types of water (flat, moving, WW, coastal, etc). You don’t have to bleed or break something to call it a “near miss”, and one of the wonderful things about human communication is that we can learn not only from our own experiences, but also from the experiences of others.

[RomanLA]

Re: swamp paddling, “it’s not WW, so it’s not dangerous”, I really don’t know how to explain it to people.

Yep...my first time in a kayak was a night paddle on the Neches River just below flood. We cut through a swamp and the water was rushing through the trees. I was amazed nobody swam that night.

Just so there's no confusion, this happened on a whitewater bayou running at 350cfs. This picture was taken upstream a few minutes before the incident.