On the American River,
near Coloma, Calif.
I blew the turn and the kayak shot up onto the big rock, its nose in the air at a 45-degree angle. Then the river spun the boat in a half-circle and flipped it over. I careened downstream, upside down and backward, until I could roll the kayak upright and resume paddling.
When I'm on a whitewater run, I often feel like a pinball: shooting downstream, bumping off rocks, wildly paddling through waves to keep from being capsized. The potential for disaster seems to be everywhere.
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There's more to it than just a thrill ride.
I've been plenty scared—and had more than a few close calls—climbing. But kayaking really frightens me. And the logic of the sport, like climbing, is that once you master one degree of difficulty, you seek another—constantly pushing your limits. I was reminded of this running the Greys River in Wyoming last summer—on the day before, as it happened, the Annual Deb Martin Memorial Slalom Race. Many whitewater events are in memoriam. Deb Martin, for instance, was an expert kayaker who died on the Fordyce Creek in California.
I was paddling with Curtis Rohrbaugh, a local guide who has been kayaking for 23 years. I asked him if he'd ever been injured on a river. "I've split my head open, split my nose open," he said. "Nothing major."
But as the day unfolded he told me about one hairy river run after another. In one case, he had to escape his boat in a hydraulic—a punishing river feature that keeps a person underwater. Kayakers call this being in a Maytag (as in a washing machine) or getting window-shaded (spun again and again). The whitewater kept beating Mr. Rohrbaugh down, until he crawled along the bottom of the river, out of the turbulence, and could finally swim toward the surface downstream.
"If I have nine lives," he said, "I've probably used four."
The more I paddle, the more horror stories I hear. So I decided it might be a good idea to take a kayak rescue course. Which is why I recently found myself squeezing into a dry suit and hurling myself again and again into the cold water of the South Fork of the American River, near Sacramento, Calif.
"Whitewater is by far the hardest form of rescue," said Gigi McBee, a kayak instructor and guide who taught the course. "The water is always changing. All I can give you is a bag of tricks."
There were about a dozen of us in the class. Some were highly experienced paddlers taking the course as a refresher; others, like myself, novices. A few had been motivated by an accident on the North Fork of the Feather River, where kayaker Susan Marie Kaiser got trapped in whitewater and drowned—despite the best efforts of other boaters to rescue her.
“I squeezed into a dry suit and hurled myself again and again into the cold water.”
There are about 50 whitewater deaths a year in the U.S. (about twice as many as in climbing). "One in three drownings is a rescuer," Ms. McBee told us.
The best way to avoid an accident, other than staying home, is to know your limits. Scout a rapid before running it—and carry your boat around the drop if you don't think you can descend it safely.
If you can't roll the boat and need to swim, float on your back with your feet tucked up to avoid getting trapped by rocks. I practiced this by jumping into the river, my bottom bumping over a gantlet of boulders. Instead of paddling, I felt like I was being paddled.
Then, to make it more challenging, Ms. McBee dragged a PVC tube across the river to simulate a tree trunk—what's called a "strainer," an obstacle that lets water flow past but traps boats or swimmers.
I threw out my arms to swim aggressively over the tube, but got pinned at my chest by the force of the current, waves pummeling my face, until I could finally kick my legs high enough to shoot over the top. Then I jumped into the rushing river while my classmates threw ropes at me and pulled me to shore—which is harder for the victim than you might think, requiring you to spin onto your back and hold the rope over your shoulder, lest you get dragged face-down through the current.
It was more fun pretending to be a rescuer. I got to be "live bait"—tying into a rope held by a classmate, then diving into the current to catch a swimmer.
The second day, we spent the morning on land building anchors and haul systems to pull boats or swimmers out. Then it was back to the river.
The accident scenarios grew more complex, and by the end of the day I was cold and waterlogged. In the last one I volunteered to be "upriver safety," the person who warns other boaters not to run the section where a rescue is under way. I swam to a rock in the middle of the river and climbed up to act as a sentry—just about all I felt good for by this point. I was a bit overwhelmed pondering all the things that can go wrong on a river and what a thin line separates fun from disaster.
I thought back to my boating trip in Wyoming with Mr. Rohrbaugh. That afternoon we had run an exciting jump on the Snake River. I had been rolling my boat without incident all day, but shooting the 3-foot waterfall I went off at the wrong angle, landed sideways and got pinned upside down—the cascade pushing me down every time I tried to roll up.
I panicked, pulled out of the boat and swam—until Mr. Rohrbaugh towed me to shore. Anytime you're forced to abandon your boat, it's a scary, potentially dangerous, situation.
But what really lingered with me from that day in Wyoming was the beauty of the river. I remembered watching eagles and ospreys squawking and fighting overhead. And I thought of a lazy stretch of river after one rapid, where the water turned placid except for air bubbles foaming on the surface in swirling circles. The low afternoon sun glinted off the bubbles, making them shine like burning stars.
It was a magical sight that made me realize that kayaking is as much about seeing nature up close as it is a thrill ride. And that's why I'll keep paddling.
Mr. Ybarra is the Journal's extreme sports correspondent.
A version of this article appeared May 22, 2012, on page D5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: How to Survive a Rushing River.
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