If this river was flowing I would be instantly swept away to a stupid death and my lunch would be all wet. Fortunately for the moment there is only a slight upriver current since I'm crossing at high tide where it runs into the sea. I've also just observed several natives cross ahead of me. While they assured me it was safe, I wasn't entirely convinced. The tide could have reversed at any moment, and what is the meaning of "safe" to a villager surrounded by daily tragedy in a developing country?
Never underestimate the power of water. Unfortunately, unless you've been in a current it's a good bet you will severely underestimate the effect of flowing water on the surface area of a body, and overestimate your strength as a swimmer. Never cross a river or stream with your pack buckled on.
My brother and I used to canoe the Guadeloupe river in Texas. On one of our last runs the river was higher than we were accustomed, but since we knew our skills topped-out at intermediate jackass, we made several intelligent decisions--after debate--to portage a few of the rapids and falls that looked beyond our skills.
It's hard to portage. The canoe and gear weigh seventy pounds or more, it's awkward, hard work, and it takes a lot of time. The easy, jackass thing to do is to barrel on through and hope for the best. (We've all done some of that.) While we scouted we observed others testing their fates. Most would spill, as we predicted we would, but none were sucked into hydraulic currents, as we predicted we might.
One young couple barreled on through a fork we had rejected as much too dangerous for us. They instantly slammed into a tree, the young woman in front was thrown head first into the same tree, bloodying her nose. Canoe, gear, and boyfriend were swept downstream.
My brother and I were eventually able to assist them, but it could have been a disastrous situation. They thought a three or four mile per hour current through a closely spaced series of obstacles was not a big deal. They had no idea whatsoever of the power of flowing water. Not twenty feet away was an abandoned canoe wrapped around a tree.
And it's true, to an inexperienced person it may not have looked like much. But from our perspective they had seated themselves in a go-cart without seatbelts and rammed themselves into a brick wall at full throttle. Everything happened so fast they never even had a chance to attempt to maneuver. Their entire whitewater experience was limited to the hour or so it took to get to this first minor rapid. They were naively thinking, like it is so easy and common to do, that things would just take care of themselves.
About this time a lone woman arrived on the scene. She scouted, chose the safer route, and expertly negotiated it by standing up to somehow better balance her canoe. This was an advanced maneuver my brother and I had never seen or heard of before. Soon she was out of sight, and for the rest of our run we considered her a Goddess with perhaps thousands of hours of whitewater experience. We both wanted to be her close friend.
As we approached the take-out point we observed a commotion at a low-water bridge just beyond. There were several signs warning that everyone must take-out here, and that the bridge ahead was extremely dangerous.
We took-out and went to the bridge, where to our great surprise we learned the Goddess had missed or ignored the take-out point, had spilled, and her canoe had pinned her against the low-water bridge. It was her incredible luck that her head had remained just above the water. It had taken five or six people struggling with all their might, and not without danger to themselves, to free her.
- Scouting
- The common sense act of checking what lies ahead.
- Portage
- The difficult but necessary act of carrying a canoe around a potentially deadly obstacle in the river. If one member of the party is significantly stronger than the other, place heavier gear near his or her end.
- Hydraulic current
- When water flows over an obstacle or fall, it accelerates and creates a partial flow back towards the obstacle or fall. Small ones can be fun to sit in or ride on in a canoe, but powerful ones kill as they spin you around and around forever. Don't try to fight a hydraulic current, but dive down near the river bottom and ride the outward current down there.
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