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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!princeton!astrovax!sjuvax!bhuber
From: bhuber@sjuvax.UUCP (B. Huber)
Newsgroups: net.travel
Subject: Re: Colorado Rafting Trip (Reply to Queries)
Message-ID: <2711@sjuvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 22-Jan-86 08:54:02 EST
Article-I.D.: sjuvax.2711
Posted: Wed Jan 22 08:54:02 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jan-86 21:42:45 EST
References: <900@houxa.UUCP>
Reply-To: bhuber@sjuvax.UUCP (B. Huber)
Organization: St. Joseph's University, Phila. PA.
Lines: 67
Keywords: Rafting, whitewater, Colorado, danger
Summary: It's safer than you think!/More River experiences 

In article <900@houxa.UUCP> dyons@houxa.UUCP writes:
>
>     No, you do not have to know swimming to go on this river trip. The
>Colorado is icy cold (because of Glen Canyon Dam) and the river flows at
>a very high velocity with strong currents, rapids and whirlpools. Should one
>fall in, swimming is no use: one usually passes out due to hypothermia. If not
  one gets bashed into rocks or sucked under the water...


(Sounds like the river guide's $900 profit is spent on life insurance :-)

These impressions of the River are common among people new to whitewater, and
although not usually reinforced by guides, are at least not dispelled: it
makes guides and other river-runners look quite heroic.
As a matter of fact, these statements are gross exaggerations (I mean no
offense: I shared the same opinions once).  "Icy cold" amounts to a summer
temperature range of 46 deg. F to 52 deg. F (the water warms up over its 240
mile course to lake Mead).  An unclothed swimmer can do quite well for fifteen
minutes at least in such temperatures; it takes longer to "pass out".

The "very high velocity" is a rather uniform 4 mph.  Certainly the water is
faster in the big rapids.  It might reach 15 (some reports go as high as 25)
mph.  This is no faster than many rivers I have seen (New, Gauley, Cheat,
Hudson, Ottawa for example).

Now that Glen Canyon Dam is filled, summer water flow is consistently high.
There are virtually no exposed rocks in the center of the river (where rafts
and swimmers pass), and only a few along the banks.  And, since water tends
to flow in the deepest channels, it's actually quite difficult to get "bashed
into rocks".  There are a few places where the recirculating, turbulent water
can pull one under (and keep one there).  They tend to be near the shore, in
the middle of the big rapids.  As rafts never venture near these places (one
of the things boatmen are paid for is to know where not to go!), they present
little hazard.

There are dangers.  The waves in the largest of the rapids (Lava, Crystal and
maybe in a few others) are so large, and the rapids so long, that a panicky
swimmer can have real trouble breathing.  People have drowned, although I
hasten to add that their number is incredibly small, especially compared with
the eleven to sixteen thousand who pass along the river corridor in boats 
every year.  (It's worth pointing out that all people, non-swimmers and strong
swimmers alike, are the same when it comes to swimming rapids like these. 
Your life jacket keeps you alive; your own forces are absolutely nothing 
to the force of the water.  It moves you where it will.)

I kayaked down the Colorado this August with a party that included a rather
inexperienced kayaker, who wore no wetsuit.  At one point after a flip in
a rapid, he had to swim for almost ten minutes before we could tow him to a
safe beach (It's easy simply to pick up a swimmer and haul him into a raft.
No beach necessary.  But our raft support was ahead of us).  Along the way, he
swam a minor rapid, encountered about ten "whirlpools", and traveled about a
mile.  At the end he was cold and a little tired, but unharmed.

During the same trip, while resting in an eddy near the upper portion of Lava
(yes, there are eddies there), I watched two people get thrown from a thirty-
foot pontoon raft as it tried to leave the eddy.  They were in some of the
worst turbulence for a while, thirty seconds perhaps, before their raft turned
around and picked them up again.  I'm sure those two will be talking for years
about their death-defying (:-) exploit.

I am spending some space writing this to keep all you prospective river-runners
out there from being turned off by the apparent dangers of whitewater.  The
dangers are there, but in a well-guided trip,they are minimal; one is probably 
safer than in Philly rush-hour traffic (no (:-) for this one).  This is the
trip of a lifetime: there are few such magnificent places in the world as the
Grand Canyon.  Floating the Colorado gives a perspective that cannot be had by
any other means.  Let the Riviera wait.