Thought I’d share this neat creek with my MWA buddies;      Below are some clips I put together of the Rio Navados, located just outside of Pucon, Chile.

This is a steep creek with many similarities to eastern/ southeastern style boating.     The run was absolutely loaded with various size drops, slides and megaboofs!

The finale’ of the run is the monstrous “DemShitz” drop; A 60 footer with a “seemingly ” easy boof into the entry….

With a great safety crew, we had 2 points of safety at the bottom, and 1 pt. at the entry boof…..

I was second in line to fire it up when all hell broke loose….     One of our buddies missed the must-make boof at the entry, got surfed in the hole (about 9 feet from the lip of the 60 fter).  The brief moments that ensued were indeed the most heinous, disturbing moments I have been apart of  since I started kayaking….

The boater fought and fought to get out of the boxed in, boily hole, but in the end, had to pull the skirt…  we watched helplessly as the boater got pushed deep only to resurface at the lip of the drop…head first….

Mind you, the nature of this 60 foot drop consists of roughly 20 feet vertical, where the water slams into a re-connect and accelerates the final 40ft…

Miraculously, moments later, Terry (on rope at the bottom) and the safety boater, signaled up that he was conscious and semi-responsive

The safety boater was able to get hands on him within seconds of his landing….    From there, it took roughly 25 minutes to get the swimmer out of the pool and safely onto firm ground…(safety boater got him to a ledge where he could be out of the water, but struggled towing the swimmer across the pool)

All in all, it was a grave reminder of how crucial appropriate safety is.  Without a point of safety actually IN THEIR BOAT at the bottom, I do not believe the swimmer would have had the strength to get himself onto the rocky ledge…

Getting the swimmer across the pool at the bottom of the violent falls also proved to be MUCH harder than we anticipated.  In hindsight, a drop like this requires 3 points of safety at the bottom;  2 in their boats and one on rope above the runout (class 5 drop, extremely boxed in….)

Remarkably, the boater came away slightly concussed (as he hit the reconnect on his head…) but no broken bones…

Stay safe out there, and never under estimate the amount of safety needed on the water as shi* can hit the fan reeaaallll quick.

• This topic was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by CJW4D. Reason: Grammar issues