An Accidental Shift: The Upside of Flipping Over.
by Patricia “Patso” Stow
Thirty years ago I was one of five guides on a river trip that could be categorized as either a total sh%# show or a memorable adventure. Collective reminiscing with good-natured ribbing is a product of an extraordinary experience. When I recently connected to these friends to discuss details, our recollections varied with a selective fuzziness. This is my version.
Rafting came to me at the perfect time. I had no intention of becoming a river guide, but after my first trip, I was hooked. Floating rivers incorporated my love of natural history, physicality, excitement, and fun.
I had the good fortune to row the Tuolumne River, more commonly referred to as “the T” by us river guides, in the spring of 1982. To me, the Tuolumne was and still is the ne plus ultra of California rivers. Spring in the river canyon revealed my kind of perfection: verdant hills cradled a bounty of wildflowers, brisk mornings that warmed into sultry afternoons, and abundant whitewater.
Guiding was bliss with the exception of one caveat; it was a boy’s club, at least at ECHO, the river company I worked for. I was by no means the first woman to row the T, a coveted and hard-earned assignment for any river guide. However, that spring I was once again the lone female guide on the river. I wasn’t there with a female empowerment agenda or striving to be one of the boys. I connected with my fellow crewman because my intentions for being there were the same as theirs. It was a beautiful, technical, kick-ass river and I loved the challenge of rowing it.
At this junction rafting had been around the foothill rivers of California for a decade, but it was still the early days of the sport. We rowed sixteen-foot Avon bucket boats with slant-seat frames that were loaded with heavy knuckle-busting military boxes. To compound the difficulty we had not yet discovered the benefits of paddle-assist from clients. Personal gear went into a trash bag that was then tied shut, before being shoved into a “waterproof” coated canvas outer bag with straps for tying it on a rear deck. We loaded four generally enthusiastic but deadweight passengers into the bow; their responsibilities were to bail, hold the bow line when we came into camp, and to help push the boat off the shore when launching.
The forest service regulated river traffic. When flows reached 4,000 cubic feet per second/cfs,they would close Lumsden Road, the access to put in. But a handful of boatmen had been privately pushing the envelope, running the river at higher and higher flows. Then for whatever reason the forest service decided it was time to pass liability into the river companies’ hands. Lumsden Road would stay open regardless of river level; henceforth, each outfitter would decide when to put a trip on the water.
That season we started running trips in early May. As the weather warmed, higher and higher water levels brought more excitement and anxiety. By the first week of June, we were looking at 6,600 cfs at put in. We knew there would be accretion, additional water pouring in from all the side creeks, charging up the river’s dynamics even more. Basically, this was an unfamiliar river and we were going to have to read it and run. Read and run brought out a depth of focus enhanced by pulse pounding reactions that made for some intense excitement. Every sense of ours being tingled while reactions took over, we were pumped.
The trip had been originally booked as a paddle trip, but a prudent decision by World Headquarters–the ECHO office–shifted it to all oar boats, much to the disappointment of our clients. They were a mishmash of male thirty somethings, a group of firemen and their significant others, plus Kay Zar the River Star–a pampered ECHO regular.
The plan was that Tim would lead and Danny would row safety/sweep; they had the most experience. The rest of the crew: Buford, Mark-who was on his last training trip, his swamper Brenda–fresh out of whitewater school, and myself would stay sandwiched between them. Our strategy was for each of us to always remain in sight of the boat in front and behind. If any one of us lost that visual, he or she would pull over and wait.
Four strapping firemen boarded my boat. They were absolutely supercharged for this undertaking. We left Meral’s Pool, and from the get go, the river felt foreign and wildly fast. Landmarks that had guided me downstream in the past had vanished underwater. Willow and alder strainers bobbed in mid-river rather than along the shore. A lack of eddies–pockets of backwater that provide a bit of calm to regroup the rafts, lighten them by bailing, and rev up for the next drop–presented the biggest problem.
The speed of the current made it difficult for us to keep the rafts together. The water’s roar left us communicating with gestures: head tapping, thumbs up or down, pointing positive. To slow ourselves between rapids, we rowed close to the bushes and trees, hoping that whatever could be grabbed was anchored to something that would hold. We plowed through Rock Garden, Nemesis, and Sunderland’s in minutes trying to keep some control over our pace.
When I got through Hack-a-Mack, Buford, who had been just ahead of me, was nowhere to be seen. I pulled over to wait for Mark before Ram’s Head, one of the most difficult rapids on the river. I looked upstream.
“Oh crap, here comes an upside down boat.”
I pulled out into the current and the firemen sprung into action; two of them extended themselves over the tubes to grab the capsized boat while the other two held their legs. One of them started making siren noises and twirling a hand over his head, adding some comic relief. They tied the boats together bow to bow, and we began to haul in our catch. I was having a hell of a time getting my own boat to shore, let alone the flipped one that was now pulling us downstream. I was beginning to panic when one of the guys jumped to the back of my boat, grabbed the stern line and lassoed a bush with it. The other three scrambled into waist- deep water and pushed the flipped boat onto an island of shallow willows that kept us from being flushed down river. I was relieved to get a solid purchase on shore. All this happened as the siren continued with smiles, high fives, and hooting. These men loved being part of the rescue and I was grateful that they were in my boat. They were now MY firemen! Upstream we could see Mark’s boat with Danny and his crew in the bow. Everyone was wet and a bit bedraggled but safe. Danny felt bummed, but shit happens! We headed down stream to catch up with Timmy and Buford who were no doubt wondering where we were.
Rescue tales buzzed around lunch.The flip had bonded the entire group. Everyone was happy and into the adventure, and no one seemed disappointed about not being in a paddle boat. We guides were stoked that it had turned into a great trip.
The intensity of the first six miles had kept us so focused that the inevitable dread deep in the pit of our stomachs didn’t surface until we pulled over to scout Clavey Falls. Our prayers that the high water had somehow flattened the class V rapid into something manageable had not been answered. On river right the Clavey River was also running exceptionally high, dumping in another 1000??? cfs that made the normal right side run down the Falls unthinkable. A tongue on the river-left led through a matrix of breaking waves and fed directly into the massive, violently pulsing hydraulic of the Clavey hole. We all agreed that once you dropped into the rapid, to pull like hell to the right of the hole if possible. We headed back to the boats, each of us in our own zen, peering back for one last look at whatever feature we would be using to mark our entrance. But Clavey wanted us to all have an extra dose of adrenalin. Suddenly, the bank we were scouting on collapsed under Tim. He grabbed a boulder on the way down and tumbled into the river with it; the rock pinning him on his back. We watched horrified as Tim wrestled to free himself from the stone. Grappling with some roots, he muscled up the bank and waved us off to leave him alone. We returned to the boats with heads bowed, knowing how close to certain doom it would have been for Tim to descend sans lifejacket into that maelstrom.
Back at the rafts we were silent, distraught, and avoided eye-contact. No one wanted to share the apprehension that each of us felt inside. As we secured our bowlines, Tim’s instructions were to stay close and get to the right shore asap to regroup. Boat order; Tim, Buford, me, Mark, Danny. I took some deep breaths to center myself and pushed off into the inevitable crap-shoot.
Once I passed the wave that keyed my entry to the rapid, I started pulling right, right, right. My legs started a sewing machine quiver. Buford ten yards ahead of me dropped over the horizon and into the meat. He hit the hole slightly cock-eyed and dump trucked everyone including himself into the water. My heart sank. An unexpected power boost from behind surfed my raft across the river, like a typewriter, to the right of the hole. I even made it to the right of the next obstacle, Dinosaur Rock. My firemen were ecstatic! I pondered the possibility of divine intervention and thanked the river goddess. As I pulled into shore,Tim dove off of his tied up raft and swam after Buford’s empty boat. Downstream, one of Buford’s clients was getting squirreled around and sucked under by the river’s powerful boils and current. I turned my boat around and start rowing after her. All the while, my firemen bailed our flooded raft and kept the siren wailing. She was trying desperately to swim to shore. I cringed as she flushed through a bunch of midstream strainers. On her back with feet downstream, she grabbed a willow branch. Her arms bowed over her head with water streaming over them created an air pocket.
“HELP!”
“That’s my wife,” said one of the firemen.
Christ! I am finally downstream of her, but she is gripped and doesn’t understand she needs to let go and drift down to us to get picked up. Thank God for Mark who was also in pursuit. He swooped in and clinched the rescue. There was an eddy on river left and we went there for respite. On shore Diane was puking river water as her husband attended to her. She shivered with hypothermia. Her husband stripped her down to warm her.
Having a handle on our drama we could only wait and wonder how things were unfolding upstream. Every so often some flotsam appeared and we rowed out to retrieve it; a bailer, someone’s hat, uh-oh an upside down boat. It’s poor Danny…again! Man-sirens. My guys know the drill. They get the boat to shore and have it righted without direction. Tim then showed up in Buford’s boat and Danny and Buford in Tim’s. We take a headcount. We are missing the guys from Danny’s boat and a woman from Buford’s. Mark and I are then left to minister the cold and shell shocked while Tim, Danny, and Buford grabbed the first aid and headed upstream on river left. From the top of a bluff they can see Danny’s crew walking on the other side of the river. Whew! Further upstream they find the singular female out of the water on a ledge. She’s afraid of heights and refuses to climb up to them. They decide someone will have to climb down and swim her across. Danny is excused to return with the first aid and retrieve his guys from the other side of the river. Buford has had enough swimming and for the day and although he’d rather not, knows he’s responsible for this predicament. Tim convinces the other two that it’s just swift current to the other side, a veritable piece of cake. To prove his point he agrees to join them. Tim who swam collegiate water polo goes first. The current is faster than it looked and breaking the eddy fence to get to shore is way harder than he expected. The other two don’t even get close to making the eddy and have another long swim. Unhappy with the additional angst as Buford passed by he yelled, “I hate you Timmy Madden.”
Drained and spent by the day we got to Indian to camp. Once the boats were unloaded, the clients settled in. Danny plopped the beer cooler down, and all of us glassy-eyed guides popped one and gravitated into a huddle. What a day. What a fucking day! We needed to debrief, but all we could do was sit in the quiet relief of being on solid ground. We were beyond whooped. Eventually, the firemen came over and told us what a great job we had done responding, keeping our cool and not overreacting. Then Diane and her husband thanked us for rescuing her, then she added, this was the most exciting day in her life. One of Danny’s guys went on and on about how you can’t pay enough for an experience like what we had. All evening people came up to us with a pat on the back or some kind of positive acknowledgement that it was the experience of a lifetime and they were grateful to have us as their crew. Jeezus.
I don’t remember much about day two of the trip. My firemen stayed with me, Danny’s guys with him. No one wanted to change boats. With so much adrenaline still in our systems, we could have levitated downstream. The only thing that I remember is Danny’s crew cheering him on everytime he made it through a rapid. Deservedly so. All of us needed a good day, Danny especially.
That was my last T trip that spring. Before leaving for Idaho, I had one final meeting with Dick Linford at World Headquarters. He wanted to know my thoughts about high water on the T and that trip in particular. I had thought a lot about the experience, my place in the boys’ club, and fate’s fickle finger. Until that day, I had always denied the importance of self-promotion as a woman, but my attitude or perspective shifted after that trip. Shouldn’t what happens to a person whether it be positive or negative serve as a lesson for everyone else? Here’s the dialogue that transpired.
“Dick…. When Danny goes on a trip and flips twice, you say, “Danny’s had a bad day.” If I had flipped twice on the trip you would say, “No more women on the Tuolumne.Think about it.”
He didn’t think long before nodding, “Patso you’re right.”
Perhaps it was kismet that brought about the pivotal mindset that ANYBODY can have a bad day. Never again have I guided that river as the lone female. For that we have Danny to thank.
Friends of the River came into my life in 1978 during the Save the Stanislaus campaign. Although that fight was lost, I discovered the significant impact of citizen action. It was a life lesson that I incorporated in my 30 years as a teacher and as a parent of next generation river guides.