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Rivers Wild
Running rapids reveals nature of 'the Sky'
By GREG JOHNSTON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The Skykomish is a river of deceptive beauty, alluring as it thunders through narrow chasms of hard rock, surrounded by peaks of white, littered with slate-gray boulders as big as buses.
It is so pretty, yet so powerful. Inviting and at the same time violent.
Only one who has seen it from the inside looking out can fully appreciate this perspective.
Such reflections, however, were about the furthest thing from my mind when I found my wet-suited behind tumbling backwards into the most renowned rapids in Washington, the daunting "Boulder Drop."
In the millisecond between upright and upended, all I could think of were the pre-trip words of our rafting guide, Jerry Michalec: "Our most important assignment is to stay in the boat."
As I surfaced and turned to face whatever the river had in store, however, the rest of his words provided reassurance: "If you go in, it's not the end of the world. It's really the start of an adventure. Assume the rafter's position."
In this case, it was a quick adventure.
No sooner had I assumed the rafter's position -- on your back, feet pointing downstream -- and checked to make sure a rafter who tumbled in next to me was all right, than a throw rope sailed in front of me, tossed by a guide in a raft onshore below the rapids.
I grabbed the rope with my left hand, grabbed the other rafter's life jacket with my right, and we both swung safely into an eddy.
My wet companion grabbed another raft that continued downstream. I swam to shore, climbed out and hopped the boulders downstream to find the raft of Shane Turnbull, one of the top guides on "the Sky" and owner of Chinook Expeditions. The rafter who went in next to me was sitting in his boat.
"We've got rescue down to a science on this river," he said with a grin, his helmet slightly cocked to the side. "That's what PROW (the Professional River Outfitters of Washington) is all about, sharing information."
The throw rope, he said, had reached us within 7 seconds after our raft slid into the thundering 4-foot drop of "Ledge Wave," tipped sideways at least 45 degrees and in an instant dumped five of the seven aboard into the churning drink.
It was an impressive and appropriate demonstration, since it came during an annual safety clinic put on by PROW to emphasize the proper way to run white water and, of course, to publicize the services provided by the group's members.
"You guys are now members of the Boulder Drop Swim Club," a smiling Michalec said at the end of the trip. "You actually did an excellent job on Boulder Drop. We just hit Ledge Wave at the end there a little hard. We should have been over a bit. It was a slight navigational error."
Fortunately, the spill occurred on the last of the three major plunges of Boulder Drop, which is rated in difficulty as Class IV-plus to V, depending on flow. That's on a scale of I to VI, with VI considered virtually unrunnable.
The incident underlined the nature of river rafting -- it's a sport that involves risk -- and the wisdom of doing it as safely as possible. Most rafts operated by reputable commercial rafting companies make it down the river without people going in.
But it happens, and it usually is not a big deal.
Wave Trek, a company owned by Chris Jonason of Index, took about 1,200 people rafting down the Sky last year, and "we had about 20 swimmers."
None of the five who went in during the safety clinic considered it a negative experience, all making it to shore or to a raft safely, including two being towed in by white-water kayaks paddled by PROW members.
"By and large, people find it to be a positive experience and something they love to talk about," Michalec said.
The possibility makes it important that prospective rafters select a river suitable to their threshold for thrills.
"It's important for the public to realize (rafting) the Skykomish is a different type of trip," Michalec said. "If you go down Boulder Drop, you need to realize ther is a possibility of taking a swim. On the Methow or Wenatchee, your guide should be able to get you down river without that happening."
The river-guiding industry in Washington has an excellent safety record considering that more than 35,000 people pay to go white-water rafting each year, according to estimates by PROW.
There have been no fatalities among commercially guided rafters on the Skykomish since 1980, when the industry was in its infancy and a person drowned in Boulder Drop.
Last year, two men drowned on the Nooksack River -- statistically Washington's most dangerous -- during a trip arranged by a group associated with the Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. In 1994, two people drowned on the Wenatchee during a commercially guided trip when a raft hit a bridge abutment.
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