"Wilko" wrote in message
...
Bob P wrote:

In desperate circumstances, you're better off taking off the PFD and
diving down to follow the bottom current out of the backwash. Few people
who get in (low-head-dam) trouble have the knowledge or composure to make
that radical move, however.

I've given that some thought. Over the years, this option seems to have
surfaced on RBP a couple of times. My main concern would be what happens
after you get out of the hydrolic, and what would happen if taking off
your PFD wouldn't get you out. I'm fairly ambiguous about whether or not
that would be a smart thing to do. It's the main reason why I have a PFD
with a front zipper though... so that I can quickly take it off if needed.

This boondoggle arises all the time.

As far as my experience goes, the old "take off your PFD and flush out the
bottom of the hole" strategy is an urban legend. Everyone knows the rule,
but afaik, no one knows anyone who has actually had to do it. Its in the
same legendary category as putting maggots in an open wound to stymie
gangrene from forming, or as using soldier ants as stitches to close a
wound, or to use a swiss army knife to cut an oar in half to extricate it
from your leg. Sounds good in theory, but in practice you are just never in
that exact type of situation, or else there are other complicating factors
that prevent it from really being a good strategy.

I think if you were actually trapped in a hole with sharp enough edges to
keep you in, you would be underwater and tossed around so much that you
would have no idea which way 'down' was, let alone how to crawl along the
bottom. Also, once you shed your pfd, the force of the water would almost
certainly prevent you from using the rocks along the bottom anyway, as you'd
be plastered down there at best, or slammed among them at worst. As Wilko
points out, even if it DID work, you'd then be downstream without a PFD,
pretty beat up and completely out of breath. Also, in the aerated water
behind the pourover, you would have less floatation than normal and would
have NO chance to catch a breath, so you'd be more likely to drown without a
pfd than with it on.

I think it'd be very interesting to hear some statistics about people who
have gone over low-head dams with and without PFDs, and get some statistics
of who actually has washed out vs who has drowned. I'd bet dollars to
doughnuts that the majority of people without PFDs drown, and the majority
of people with them flush out.

No, unless I hear some pretty definitive stories from folks who have had to
actually do this, and who can verify that their PFD remained in the hole
indefinately afterwards (in other words, it was a true keeper hole), I
choose to believe that this is a poorly thought out legendary old wives tale
that impressess newbies.

--riverman