Well, I'm Still Alive...barely.

[RogerH]

Flyrod guy, that is Upset Rapid on the Colorado River in the canyon. Funny thing about that rapid is at our level that day (Summer 2010), a boat could punch the wavehole. My angle almost cost me big time.

Like I said, waves and holes are funny creatures!

[ness]

Honestly, this all sounds kinda reckless to me. What's your take, Al? Would you do anything different next time?

[Al Agnew]

Only thing I'd do differently would be to run it somewhere to the left of where we tried to run it, assuming the same water level. Had we gone left, we'd have gone over a smaller hydraulic, probably not enough of one to hold us. Or possibly run it just a little to the left, and really try to row forward as hard as possible coming into it so that momentum would carry us over.

And of course, I'd make sure everybody had life jackets ON, and everything zipped up and tied down.

Thing is, I know all the moves you have to make in class 4 whitewater. I don't have the experience that Tom does, but I've been on enough fast water rivers to trust myself to make the right moves almost instinctively. But what I still haven't quite gotten down is exactly how the raft responds to various power strokes. Had I been running that rapid, I would have run it much like Tom did, except I probably wouldn't have hit it even as hard as he did, and would have certainly had the same results. Knowing that now, I'd definitely know to run it at a different spot.

Reckless? Absolutely, but only because we were too complacent to have the life jackets on and the gear tied down. What scares me the most is thinking what if we'd been running it by ourselves, without the other raft in support. Chances are Missouri Tom would have drowned in that case. Had he been wearing a life jacket, he might have gone quite a ways downstream, but he would have survived with no problem.