"Bob P" wrote in message
. com...
riverman wrote:
"Bob P"
It's the only path where the water takes you to safety rather than
holding you against the top flow. I've never use it, and I certainly
don't intend to experiment, but the logic is reasonable.

Sure, if you assume that all the natural variations don't exist. All
logic is reasonable is you start with 'lets ignore any diversity to the
model'. Its like that old joke about the mathematician, the physicist and
the engineer betting on a horserace, and the mathematician says 'assume a
spherical horse'. :-)

--riverman
So you wouldn't try the maneuver even if you knew you were going to drown
if you did nothing?

Here's a little story. It happened to me about 20 years ago.

We were paddling the Thurmond-to-Fayette section of the New River (WV) at
fairly low water.

About 2/3 of the way down there's an huge rock on river right (unknown to
me as The Undercut Rock). I had run the rapid a couple of times before at
high water and pillowed off the rock quite nicely. This time, however, I
came right up to the rock, broached and flipped upstream. The boat was
sucked down, down, down and finally lodged quite nicely upside down with
me in it. I popped my skirt, undid my thigh straps, and tried to push
myself out of the boat, but the water pressure kept me pinned. Tried
again, and again.

Hey! I'm going to die here! Time for a Desperation Move!

I reached above my head (actually down) and, (Holy Crap!) there was the
cockpit rim of another pinned boat below me. Somehow, I was then able to
pull myself out using the cockpit rim. I guess that the extra reach was
enough to get me all the way out of the boat.

I pushed off and was able to get into the current enough to get around the
rock. Come on Charlie Walbridge (pfd)!!! I reached the surface just
before I was about to take a nasty breath of water.

My boat came out 2 days later, when the water dropped even more.

So sometimes you do things, even if they have a low probability of
success.

I know exactly which rock your talking about. I think it was back around
1990 when I ran that stretch of river. A lady from a rubber raft got
bounced out and stuck under that rock. The current was so strong they could
not recover her body for like 2 months. You got locky under that rock.
When I used to run the new river, something like 2-3 people a year have been
killed in that section.