riverman wrote:

That's why one possibility is to remove your pfd and crawl on the
bottom past the boil,

Think about that carefully for a second. Crawl on the bottom? With all that
current and turbulence? This is the problem when hypotheticals become
anecdotal. Does anyone know of anyone who has 'crawled along the bottom of
the river' at the base of a waterfall or in fast current? I certainly don't,
although I know of lots of folks who have been recirced and flushed.

One time (in a natural hole) I was recirced three times. On the third
approach to the pour-over, I got my legs out and kicked as hard as I could
into the rock creating the pour-over, like a turn in competitive swimming.
The momentum created was enough to push me out of the boil area.

Don't know if anybody read the URL I posted, but it seems to me that Rocky
had much difficulty in, and without PFD barely survived, the class IV swim
below Royal Flush.

A friend of mine once saved his own life by crawling along the bottom,
but it was in a body-entrapment tunnel, not a low-head dam recirculation.

On another note, it is possible to build low-risk low-head dams. The AWA
could form an engineering advirosy group to make recommendations for 'em.