This one was a canoeing rescue rather than kayak. This happened during my second year of WW paddling shortly after I had taken a WW rescue class. A bright morning in mid June found me paddling solo on a familiar section of the Wolf River in northern Wisconsin. (disclaimer/warning - don't paddle WW solo!) This section was a Class II-III river, and the water was high and could be pushy in places. I was paddling Dagger Encore easily, stopping frequently to play in holes and generally having a good time; then as I rounded a gentle bend I saw two guys standing on shore waving their arms and shouting and I began a ferry across the river to see what the problem was. I then noticed two other people hanging onto a large rock about 8 or nine feet across and could just see what appeared to be a canoe wrapped around the rack and almost completely submerged. The rock was about 50 feet from shore and the water between it and the near shore was deep and fast. Passing the rock and the two people I could see that they were wet and wearing shorts and PFD's; I yelled to them to stay there and landed in an eddy a little downstream from them and their buddies on shore. Grabbing my throw rope and first aid kit I pulled the canoe up on shore and scrambled through the brush and rocks until I met the two on shore - they were dry and unhurt except for a small cut on one fellow's hand. They told me that their partners had gotten stuck against the rock by the current and then the canoe had tipped and swamped, getting trapped by the water against the rock. The two paddlers had managed to hang on to the canoe and climbed onto the rock where they were trying to dislodge the canoe. A tough job with a 17 foot canoe filled with water and the full force of the current pinning it against the rock! The two on shore said that they had been there for about twenty minutes but couldn't help from shore because they had no ropes. They knew they couldn't help by launching their canoe from upstream and paddling down to their friends - thank goodness for that! I figured that the most important thing was to get the guys out of the water and back on shore where we could start to get them warmed up and explained the plan to the two on shore to use the throw rope to 'pendulum' their buddies to shore. Yelling to the rock-bound pair I threw the throw-bag to the rock and one of them grabbed it but then just held it. I yelled again that we would swing him into shore (I had the other two holding the straps of my PFD as I belayed the swimmer) and he finally agreed - the only thing that I hadn't accounted for was _where_ he'd end up - an undercut section of bank with no eddy. It got a little rough running through the brush doing a dynamic belay but I managed to finally swing him into the same eddy that I had pulled my canoe into. He was cold from the water even though the day was in the 70's and one of his pals gave him a dry cotton sweatshirt to wear. (no polypro in this group...) Back up-stream for guy #2 - now standing in the water up to his chest trying to lift/shift one end of the boat! Apparently it was his canoe and he wasn't going to lose it to the river gods! He wasn't going to leave without it - so I explained to the gang of three how we were going to try a vector pull to try to shift the canoe enough to get it off the rock - this time we all knew where and how it would have to be landed. I threw the rope to the rock and had the last guy tie the rope off to a thwart of the canoe, then pulled it as taut as the four of us could - to no effect. OK, time for the vector pull, tying the rope off to a solid tree and applying force to the taut line at a different angle to try to effect a different angle of force on the canoe - still no motion. Here's where I pulled a stunt that could have cost me my life - I decided to handline out to the swamped canoe to rig the line in a way that would allow us to roll the boat, using the current to help. BAD IDEA! The line wasn't tight enough to keep me out of the water and it was angled against the current. Without all the gory details - as I struggled against the current fighting to make headway I realized to it would have been far, far better to have dragged my canoe back upstream and paddled out to the rock. It was probably one of the most dangerous and stupid things I've ever done and it nearly did me in. But my dues to the river gods were paid up that day I guess. Or I was just plain lucky. After taking a few minutes to recover I finally managed to rig a biner and a loop so that it would exert a rolling force on the canoe. There was no way I was going to do the rope stunt again or let the other guy (I never did learn any names) do it. He had found a place where he could stand and lift at one end, although I was hesitant about him being in water that deep and fast - one slip would wash him downstream and possibly into a real emergency. He lifted, I pulled, the three shoreside guys pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and finally it broke loose. The fellow in the water lost his footing when the canoe broke loose, but managed to hang onto the boat as his friends swung it ashore. I swam back to shore ( I was wearing a wetsuit) and after checking that everyone was OK we turned to the canoe - those ABS Old Towns are tough! It was dented pretty badly and a thwart had broken along with some damage to the gunwales, but it didn't break. I told them to support one end on a log and jump on the dent to knock it out as I repacked my boat and prepared to leave. One guy offered me some money for "saving" them - I shook my head, tried to stifle my burgeoning ego and told myself that I had been darn lucky. The best thing that might have happened that day was that 4 totally unprepared and ill-equipped fellows had an easy lesson in what the water could do and what a difference some training and the right gear can make. I hope that day made at least one WW paddler out of that group. I got a good lesson in how different and difficult some rescue situations can be - it's a whole different ball game than the staged "incidents" you deal with in training scenarios. Dave Seng older & wiser in Juneau, Alaska *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:13 PDT