Wow. Please take a swift water rescue class if you’re going to be running trips like this. Swimmers self rescuing on trees was really hard to watch. Very lucky everyone made it home that day.
yikes! those are some dangerous swims. 'specially the current goin into that meat grinder. cool everybody good. it almost looked like they flipped on purpose. i didn't see the oars moving to charge the hole. is the line left side of the hole or can you hit that hole straight up charging? thanks for the vid! peace.
I love how that guy in the right middle never once listened to the guide. Dig means do nothing and backwards means paddle forward. Exactly why more guides are switching to stern frames.
Many things did not go well during the recorded portion of the swim. 1 - the swimmers themselves swam into strainers ... a big no no! Swims should have been covered in the safety brief ... there was one wasn't there? 2 - the paddlers on the left side did a pretty good job but the paddlers on the right basically didn't follow directions. 3 - the boat captain is asking for directions instead of giving them. 4 - the boat captain is giving verbal directions to a swimmer rather than pointing toward safety. Safety brief anybody??? 5 - there was no clear handover of control of the boat when the boat captain lept onto the retrieved boat, they can R2 it. Probably a better choice would have been to put two paddlers onto the boat and then with the four remaining paddlers go after the swimmers.
Never swim into trees! Unseen branches underwater can be fatal hazards. In stead, stay calm, breathe, and look for a safe self-rescue eddy downstream. I know it's scary when you are in the water, and your first instinct is to grab anything near the shore. But if you get pinned by a branch, you might never get out. Stay calm.
I got chucked off the boat doing this when we hit a rock and I had to do the entire section of rapids in the water all by myself. It scared the heck out of me and sucked the shoes off of my feet and I got pulled under several times.
Just ran satans cesspool may 23d.We flipped right in that hole and swam a while right down the center. It was brutal. It kept pulling you under and then slamming you. Luckily we all made it to the eddy where that boat was in your video. We were at 7,000 cfs that day. Most of us felt like we coulnt get air. Anyway i want to do it again this week and not swim.
I also flipped on the 23rd. Happen so fast. I Swam all the way through son of satans before I could climb on top of raft to flip . Not a great experience but thanks for the video I see exactly what happened to us now. Find any paddles?
Fuck yeah fuck yeah... That's a fantastic attitude, my man... We just ran it tandem in an inflatable canoe. It was a quality self bailer, rugged enough, but still a canoe essentially, and running tandem thru rapids is tricky... And we got our asses BEAT. I mean whipped like DEVO! We was bobbin & weavin like Ali, juking and dodging down in the gorge, and we almost made the run without flipping... But we went over into some gigantic monster that was perpetually eating and then puking itself back up, and then it was all life support mode after that. Lost the canoe with our drybag cinched down in it, with wallets and keys , phone etc. , along with both paddles. We had to swim the rest of the gorge out... Had to be a good mile we swam. Got outta the water at salmon falls at about 9:30pm... El Dorado county sheriff's and EMS, fire dept, were all there at the bottom waiting for us, which was nice. Menlo Park swift water rescue team just happened to be camped out at salmon falls running training drills there. They spotted the boat come outta the gorge and then they found our wallets. Called it in to El Dorado county... Even sent up a drone to look for us and finally spotted us in the water with thermal... but they never came to get us. We swam it out. It sucked. Once we got thru all the rapids and were able get on to a rock for a break, I was completely spent. Not sure how much longer I could've lasted if it hadn't ended when it did. Without the wetsuits we probably wouldn't have made it with vests alone.
So, it started with the other guy making it to the other shore, then walking all the way back up river, then swimming across, then coming all the way back to us, then him, my dad, and our friend piloted the other boat. And then we met up at the bottom
