Kayaker beatdown: why'd he throw away TWO good blades??

[John Coraor]

If I'm not mistaken, there is still one boater left circulating in the hole when the video ends.

First boater runs drop, gets trashed, but is still in boat.
Second boater runs drop, gets trashed, fills up, but washes out.
First boater bails out, but is getting recirc-ed.
Rescuer paddles into hole, gets trashed, bails, gets recirc-ed.
One of two recirculating paddlers surfaces downstream, is towed.
Camera zooms on paddler being towed, but one paddler still in hole

John

[fleckbass]

That's good!

[coloradopaddler]

I'm pretty sure the green boat "rescuer" pops out on the near side about 1:37.

[philcanoe]

You might of seen the guy at 2:15-2:20, who looks roped up and sliding in to help from the top.... my first time through it appeared someone else was left too and it was him. He's the same one that made a good rope toss a few second before... and was actually doing what he could. The first rope tossed, looked like it came from a photographer (?).

[yarnellboat]

The rescuer who boats in and bails flushes out downstream pretty quickly.

The original swimmer is alone until he gets flushed out at the end (longest 2 minutes of his life I'm sure!).

Just as he was flushed out, a swimmer on a tether comes in from up top, seemingly only roped to the top of the falls, which doesn't seem very useful, so maybe he's still there now!

Easy to critisize in hindsight, because somebody had a a nasty re-recirc that was filmed. However, personally, I see lots video of people running falls like this (including by many of you), and I often wonder how strong the re-circ is, how often people swim and why there's no saftey set.

So, are these guys really that stupid, or do they do same thing as loads of other people (maybe some of you), but these guys just happened to be the 1-in-1000 that got caught?

Maybe it's because we don't have any falls on the class III-IV rivers around here and I'm not used to judging the safety of those hydraulics, but, for those of you who are calling these guys out, but run falls yourselves...

What did you see about this drop that would make you decide to do things differently? I assume it gets run all the time.

And what is that you would do differently - walk it? set safety differently? or do the rescue differently?

As people who run similar drops, thanks for any insight on what you see and what you'd do.

Was it their decision to run that fall/hydraulic at all that made them idiots, or the way they managed the running of the falls?

Thanks, Pat.

p.s. I had seen this video before, and on one occasion this summer it strongly influenced my decision to walk something. I thought I had decided to run it, but wondered about the re-circ potential, remembered this vid, and hauled my boat around.

[Louie]

Yarnell the original question was why did he throw his paddle away? For the record anything under 20' is just a ledge. In the old days you were taught to take off your life jacket and swim deep to where the surfare hydrolic wasn't a factor. Now of day all the cool jackets are pull over you heads that you can't get off in the parkin lot let alone while you are fightin for your life, but remember that life jackets are just for buttboater and we all know they never swim.

[philcanoe]

Two things caught my attention - immediately. The straight smooth entry of the drop... just like the smooth face of a dam. The last 10 feet are so perfectly smooth, this is what created the problem. There are normally irregularities on most drops, that prevent such a river wide hydraulic, with no breaks or outflow. Like in opening drop (first 15 seconds). This is a video of what's happening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPaCXSwj ... re=related And secondly was the boil line... which was what I first noticed. Both are smooth right angles to the current, which generally means approach with caution. Of course those with paddles did get out.

And I only surmise, that possibly he was testing out the paddle throw technique, as it didn't look near high enough to worry about breaking or him eating a kayak paddle.

[BigMike]

Pat, to my mind several things made them idiots. yes it's easy to be an armchair critic, but there were fundamental errors all round.

1) throw your paddle away when shooting a fall of that type - fairly vertical rock face, decent tow back (but not desperate). And WTF do kayakers throw their blades on falls anyway? Do they think it makes them look cool? who the F knows.

2) no signalling to the next guy to run, not even by the safety man. He just bowls on over the fall and could have killed the re-circ guy.

3) the rope man just stood there for a while, then thought he should throw a rope without really knowing why he was throwing it, or how it was going to work

4) the kayaker/rescuer guy had no idea what he was doing either

5) the live bait guy looks to be tethered ABOVE the fall? wtf? exactly how is he going to get out safely? is the rope tethered to someone or something? its just a total cluster f***

the fall itself isnt too bad if you run it with some speed, blade in on entry and a good pull. I'd run that after looking at it, and having a guy at the bottom who knows what he s doing with a rope.

[Louie]

Oh but answer you question about what we (GDI) would do. After we made sure the camera was still goin and all in the group got to point and laught at the swimmer. We would check and see if we could find a rope and make sure the swimmer didn't mind bein embaressed by havin a rope throw to him. the next step would be make eye contact with the swimmer and then hit him with the rope, vs the normal butt boater method of just throw the rope in the hole and hope the geek gets wrapped up in it.
Now make sure Doopey ain't the one with the rope on four different occucation I have seen people yell for a rope and he threw and hit them in the hand or head every time. however because the swimmer didn't instruct Doopey to hold one end he throws the whole thing.

[philcanoe]

couple more things...

one when the first rope toss failed.. I'd of clipped my life jacket or boat, on the end and tossed or shoved it in.

secondly the nature of the drop, with that sloping entry makes it real hard to keep your bow elevated... you have to do a late boof stroke, actually paddling off the face of the drop after your bow has just started to fall... which takes practice and timing, but pays off big dividends sometimes - by lifting the bow. Also he exacerbated the problem by leaning back (at the worst time), which causes his lower body (thighs) to force the bow down (a part of boofing 101) ... he penciled down and into the drop, and thus stopped forward progress.... and yes, this would of been a real test to raise your bow on.

I've even seen a rescuer who had someone roped in from above (like this) jump into the water once the victim had hold. So that downstream current on him was able to effect an extraction from a very bad hole, that's what you call a good friend. Of course that didn't look like much of an option here.

and from the blurb/title http://dictionary.reverso.net/french-english/connerie

[yarnellboat]

Thanks, obviously the paddle-tossing was regrettable, but I'd assumed the many "morons" & "idiots" comments were about more than ditching the blade.

Good comments. Just wanted to be clear that it was their safety that people are critical of, not their decision to run.

Pat.