This very spring, on about 70,000, I watched Dave and his two sons jump out
of the boat to save the boat, at Big Drop 2 in Cataract. They first jumped
from the crest of the Red Wall clear to the upstream trough. Dave's little
son Ben, who is about 14, actually jumped about 18 feet while saving the
boat. Then, after they climbed on the bottom of the boat, it went into the
appalling pourovers at the left of Satan's Gut. There, they jumped in
AGAIN to save the boat. My earnest impression, from working on the boat
afterward and rescuing one of the swimmers, is that there are better ways
to save a boat.
After this experience we went back on about 10000 and found a gouge in one
of the pourover rocks where one of his oarlocks had made its last stand.
As he himself has noted, it is good that his lifejacket ripped free of that
same oarlock moments before the river sheared that lock off clean as if a
torch had done it. Now if everyone felt like they had the right to gouge
rocks in Cataract with THEIR oarlocks, there might not be any pourovers
left one of these days.
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