Scenario 2 – Middle Fork Kings - August 14th 2019
The week before, the victim and myself had paddled the
Middle Fork Kings at high water and scouted the entire gorge above Simpson
Meadow and seen the log in one of the rapids. At those high flows, the log was
easy to avoid and there was a huge eddy above the log.
The next week we returned to the Middle Kings with a group
of 4, two of us having done the run the week prior, and the other two paddlers
also having experience on the run. Everyone in the group has years of class V+
experience.
With much lower water than the week before, we were making
quick time down to the gorge. At the top of the gorge, we had a quick
conversation to make sure we all caught the eddy on the right above the log
because we were almost certain we would have to portage at these lower water
levels. I went first and caught the eddy, the other 2 paddlers were right
behind me. In the victim’s words, they got a little lazy, too complacent, and
didn’t paddle hard enough in to the eddy. Once they realized he wasn’t going to
make it, they committed to running the rapid and attempting to go over the log.
The rapid is a sharp right hand turn with the log spanning the entire channel
just after the turn finishes. The last week at high water, all the water was
pushing higher over the log on river left and the outside of the bend. But with
the lower water, it was no longer pushing over the log and it was tilted so
that the higher part of the log was on the outside of the bend.
The victim didn’t have time to generate speed to go over the
log so they hit it sideways and tried to get over it, but was unable to. At
this point their stern sank so that they were pinned with their bow in the air
and their cockpit downstream in to the strainer. The other 3 of us were out of
our boats and trying get out to the victim, but it was too continuous
downstream for us to get in the water and too far for us to get to the other
side of the river. After about 10-15 seconds, the victim was able to work their
head through the log jam to get their head up on the downstream side. The
victim was now pinned bow up in the air, cockpit facing downstream, and the log
across their spray skirt. In a feat of massive strength, they grabbed the log
and wiggled out of their skirt tunnel as they was unable to pull the skirt. They
pulled them self on to the rock on river left next to the log as the boat
stayed put. We got the victim, the skirt, and boat back to river right with no
other issues.
After the incident, the victim told us they didn’t know if they
would have thought to wiggle out of the skirt had they not heard the first
story of another pin on the East Kaweah, or had their webbing around their
waist as they had done for years. Again, I don’t know what we could have done
in this situation as any kind of water based rescue was out of the equation
because of the hazards downstream, and their head was under the log.
