Accident Database

Close call on the Upper Yough

I almost drowned at Fuck Up Falls Cheat Fest Friday.

Tombstone Rock has become a dangerous trap again.  This is what happened.  Because of low water on the Cheat, Bookem Danno and I agreed to run the Upper instead.  We were in two shredders.  He, with friend Meredith and I with his son Evan.  The day was going great.  There were lots of boaters but not to the point of being crowded.  We stopped at Meat Cleaver for lunch and were joined by a dozen friends and fellow paddlers.  After a bit Evan and I headed downriver ahead of them.  When we got to Fuck Up Falls we were alone.

  I am going to slow time down to explain what happened.  Evan and I had fine lines all the way down the river so I didn’t stop to discuss strategy for the rapid.  I didn’t eddy out above it.  We headed down into it with the left to right approach.  The back left tit of the shredder tagged the “guide” rock just enough to lose some of our angle.  I told Evan to paddle hard.  The rapid looked somewhat different to me.  The shredder shot up onto the divider rock.  Evan highsided and the shredder spun to river left.  I was not too alarmed because this was standard procedure with a blown line.  Boats would ”baach” on the divider.

Tombstone Rock is a clamshell shaped rock about 5 feet high way ove on river left in Fuck Up Falls Rapid.  The clamshell faces upstream.  Like a catcher’s mit.It was the acne of one of the only two fatalities on the Upper Yough.  In 1989 a raft flipped while surfing o0ne of the hydraulics upstream of the rapid sending the crew. Swimming down though F-Up.  One of the customers dropped into the void against the tombstone and drowned before he could be pulled out.  Years later a combined effort of an outfitter and the DNR filled in the rock with smaller rocks thus neutralizing the danger.

Back to the present.  As the shredder went against the tombstone out of the corner of my eye I saw that the fill rocks were gone. I was reaching across the boat for the chicken line when the boat pitched up and I rolled out of the upstream side.  The shredder and Evan slid 0off of the river right side of the tombstone and were gone.  The current shoved me off of the drop and I landed with a vey hard thud in the undercut.  It was a hard hit.  Very hard.  The hardest hit I have ever taken in my life.  I was underwater.  I could not move.  My head was to river left and my feet river right.  There was no room to move my arms.  Seconds went by with no change.  More seconds and more seconds.  I could see that my feet were breaking the surface but my head was totally under water. I tried something I tho9ugh risky; I brought my legs up in the air and did a somersault in slow motion.  Maybe better said a cartwheel.  At this time my head dropped deeper into the undercut and found a head sized ho9le in the river bottom.  It was terrifying.  I followed through tith the cartwheel motion and slowly came free of the clutches of the tombstone.  I washed out and stood up in chest deep water.  I gasped for needed air  My back was in pain from the hit I had taken.  But it didn’t matter; I was alive.  I know I can hold my breath for 30 seconds and I had done just that, at least.  I stood there looking at the tombstone with the water rushing into it.  The “fill” rocks were totally gone from the river left of the rock.  My guess is the recent super high water event had flushed it out of there.  Evan now appeared from behind the tombstone.  I needed about five minutes before I could get back in the boat.  Many thanks to Tom Harmon for ferrying my paddle across the river below Cheeseburger and thanks to whomever tossed it up on the shore..