Incident on Upper Big Creek

A few months ago, I was involved in the most full-on rescue I have ever been a part of. Here's the full story:

Don and I left from Columbia on January 16^th 2009 with the intention of paddling the Upper section of Big Creek, a river in Great Smokey Mountain National Park. We stopped a couple of times on the way up there, once at a friend’s house in Greenville SC, and once in Saluda NC to check the level of Big Hungry Creek. Eventually we arrived at Big Creek around 1:00am and found the level to be just over 4ft. 4ft is extremely high and not many people run the river that high. This would be our first time on this river, and we would be running it without anyone to guide us, so we shrugged it off and decided to check the level again in the morning.

We slept in the car in the Big Creek parking lot, and when we woke up, we drove back down to the bridge to check the level again. The creek had dropped to just below 4ft, I would guess around 3.8ft, which was still way too high for our unguided first run.

We decided to drive over the mountain pass and paddle a nearby river called the Ramsey Prong, which we found to be at a perfect level. The plan was to run the Ramsey Prong, and then return to Big Creek to run the Upper section in the afternoon, under the assumption that the level would drop about a foot by the time we made it back over there.

The run on the Ramsey Prong was great. We scouted the entire run and paddled the whole river unguided. This was a cool experience for both of us, only because we get so used to people showing us down every river we run. This mini-expeditionary feeling was a really good experience and it seemed like an awesome warm up for Upper Big Creek.

After a problem free run down the Ramsey Prong, we drove back over to Big Creek and we found the level to be just over 3ft, perfect. We pulled into the parking lot around 4:00pm and I told Don that I think we should just run the lower section (which is much easier) because we were losing daylight and we had a big challenge ahead of us.

For anyone that doesn’t know the setup at Big Creek, here it is: You park your car in a parking lot that is right next to where you will finish paddling, and then you hike your boat about 3 miles upstream to get to the put in. Once at the put in, you have a three mile class IV-V paddle back down to your car. Now since this creek lies in the bounds of Great Smokey Mountain National Park, it is extremely continuous, with a reasonable amount of eddies, but not any flat water. This means that if you come out of your boat on this run, it could take a while to swim to shore and recover all your gear.

Anyway, I told Don that we should just run the lower section because we were losing daylight and we didn’t want to hike off the river in the dark. When we got to the parking lot at the take out, we met two other guys from Asheville, Thomas and Jeff. Jeff had run the Upper section earlier that morning and offered to show us the lines. I asked him if he thought there was enough daylight left, and he told me that we are only going to run the last mile, starting below a section of the river called Action Alley.

This offer sounded pretty good to me, we had this guy offering to show us down the last part of this run, and I was thinking to myself that we could hike up again in the morning and run the whole thing the following day.

We started the hike, which can be uncomfortable with a 50lb kayak on your back, but it was so nice just to be walking through the Smokies on a beautiful winter day. Eventually we made it to where we were to start paddling back down, just below Action Alley. As we were getting in our boats, another group was coming through Action Alley and continued paddling past us. This was a fairly large group of paddlers, probably around 6-8 people. Anyway, we put our spray skirts on and pushed into the water.

The rapids were pretty reasonable class IV drops with sufficient eddies after each drop. The river did not seem incredibly difficult, but it was a major advantage to have that guy that had just run the river earlier that morning with us, because he knew the deal on strainers and other hazards, as well as giving us an accurate description of each drop before we ran them so that we did not have to get out and scout every 30 seconds.

After we had paddled about ¼ mile, I looked downstream and noticed several boaters on a big boulder in the middle of the river. I immediately signaled to the rest of my group to eddy-out and we grabbed our throw ropes and started casually walking downstream. To me, it looked like someone had taken a swim and they were currently trying to recover the swimmers boat off a log or rock or something in the middle of the river.

I waved to them and gave them a sign asking if they were ok (a pat on the head) and they started shaking their heads back and forth and waving at us to come down quickly.

At this point everything started happening really fast. We all immediately started running downstream to see what was going on and when we arrived, we were told that there was a guy trapped underwater, under a log, in the middle of the drop, and he couldn’t get out.

Let me describe what the scenario looked like. The river was probably about 30 feet wide. There was a drop in the middle of the river that was about five feet in height, comparable to the size of Soc-em-dog on the Chattooga. There was a large tree draped down through the middle of the drop, parallel with the river. This log had a couple branches sticking off of it and the victim was trapped under several different branches, completely underwater. This log looked incredibly heavy; it must have weighed over 1000lbs. There was a large boulder in the middle of the river, to the right of the log and it was situated just a few feet upstream of where the victim was pinned. I crawled out on the boulder and looked down in the water and I couldn’t even see the guy because he was shoved so far under the tree.

Now, keep in mind that it was January, it had snowed earlier that day, and I would guess that it was around 30 degrees outside, and the water was probably about 35 degrees. This guy is going to have hypothermia soon, so we need to get him out as quick as possible. Keep in mind that he was underwater, so air was also a major concern as well.

In taking Swiftwater Rescue courses, I have been taught that if a victim is stuck underwater, there is a chance that the water will hit him in the back of the head and then splash over him, creating a pocket of air right in front of his face. This meant that even though our boy had spent a little bit of time underwater, there was a chance that he could still be breathing. Even if he did have an air pocket, we still needed to move quickly because that pocket could disappear at any second.

I looked at the log and noticed that there was a saw mark where someone had begun cutting the log. I’m not sure why the sawing had stopped before I arrived, but that didn’t matter. The first thing that we tried once I arrived was having everyone stand on the boulder next to the log and we tried to lift it. This idea didn’t work, so it was time for plan B.

Several boaters ferried across the river and sent us the end of a rope that they were holding onto, from the river left shore. We attached the rope to the upstream side of the log and they started to pull on it. There was an attempt to attach another line to the downstream side of the log, but the rope was not caught, and then the idea was put on the back-burner. At this point, the upstream line on the log was being tugged on, but the log still wasn’t moving, this is when I decided to try to go in for him.

I clipped into another person standing on the rock and was lowered into the drop by the leash on my Rescue PFD, which was about 5 feet long. When I got as low as the leash would allow me, I tried to reach under the log and grab the guy, but I couldn’t reach him. I then tried to stick my foot down there for him to grab, but he couldn’t get hold of me. At one point, he stuck his hand out and started waving around, so we knew he was still breathing.

I was pulled back up on the rock and we decided to give ‘er one more go with trying to lift the log. There were about 7 people on shore pulling on the line and about 5 of us on the rock in the middle of the river trying to vertically lift the log. Miraculously, the log shifted for a brief second and all of the sudden, the body floated free.

My friend Don jumped into the creek and swam the victim to shore, about 100 yards downstream. Luckily, the guy had stayed conscious the entire time and was only suffering from hypothermia. We all immediately started rubbing his body to get his blood circulating again and we sent a runner ahead to call 911 and heat up his truck. He had spent over 10 minutes underwater.

We started the evacuation and the victim (I think his name was Scott) was able to walk and talk. At one point, it was only the two of us on the trail together and we walked and talked about what had happened and I basically just drilled him with questions about where he was from, how his love life was going, how long he had been paddling, etc just to keep the guy moving and conscious. Eventually, some of his other friends (who were already at the take out) got word of the situation and came running up the trail to make sure he was alright and to help him walk out.

We reached the parking lot and changed him out of his wet clothes and had him sit in the warm truck for a while until the redneck fire department showed up and later the paramedics. They checked his vitals and looked him over, and he seemed to be fine, so I guess Scott just went home after that.

I haven’t talked to the guy since then, but I have run into some of the other people that were involved around town and on other rivers. These guys all seemed to be pretty “on-it” and knew what they were doing, but it just goes to show that shit happens, and it takes a good crew, quick thinking, and the knowledge of what to do when shit hits the fan to make sure everything turns out alright.

I have to give huge props to everyone involved with this rescue for their level-headedness and quick thinking, because I can assure anyone that this guy would have died if the rest of the crew had a panic attack.

Other than that, I still think about this incident everyday. Every time I push my boat into the water I think of what could go wrong and what is necessary to do to get out of these sketchy situations.

After reading this story, I would like you to think of a few things:

• Are you Swiftwater Rescue certified? If not, I suggest you get your certification before the next time your boat touches the water.

• Is your crew certified? If not, don’t paddle with them until they are.

• What kind of gear do you carry? You should carry at least 4 carabineers, a string of webbing, 2 prussic cords, and a rope on your body at all times while you are on the river, as well as additional gear in your boat if you are taking things to the next level (like a beefier rope and a saw, which was useful this day)

• What kind of whitewater are you paddling? Don’t paddle stuff above your ability, because shit will happen, and you won’t be ready for it.