American Whitewater Accident Report - January - July 2025

[gumpus]

4. The current is carrying you into a sweeper. Good luck. Pray. Some advocate switching into a traditional stomach-down, head-forward swimming posture, and then trying to launch-up your belly onto the sweeper trunk. I've never been in this situation and never want to.

I thought the standard "last resort" recommendation is to swim aggressively directly towards the strainer to build momentum to give you a better chance of getting on top of it. Is there a different school of thought?

 

[yknpdlr]

When I was 60 years old, I signed up for a Swift Water Rescue Technician certification course given by NYS Homeland Security. Before being allowed in the program, all had to demonstrate we could flat water swim 400m using various designated strokes without stopping. The facility in central NYS was designed and built by the same organization that builds Olympic whitewater courses. Ours is capable of discharging and recycling 100,000 gal/min. Not only do we swim aggressively, learning rescue techniques, we also learn to control rescue rafts, and even canoes and kayaks. Included is a simulated low head dam, and a city scape with flooded buildings with furniture, and flooded vehicles for rescue training. We were taught to avoid strainers, if possible, but otherwise to swim aggressively toward it, fast enough to launch yourself over the top. Of course, we only used smooth inflatable strainers, lacking any upward pointed branches.

After Swift Water certification, I went on the next winter to train on a frozen lake for cold water ice rescue training.

Following that, I certified in a steep sided white water canyon as a swift water rescue motor boat operator.
I had a tremendous amount of fun in each of these, as well as learning valuable rescue skills for myself and others.

Although I am primarily a flat water canoer, one never knows when a race might have a segment including some class 1 or 2+ swift water, or the weather on a large. wide body might kick up some nasty stuff. There are two short segments on the Yukon River where such knowledge could be useful where it is common for some racers to capsize on almost every race.
Five Finger Rapids, Yiukon River photos taken seconds apart:

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

The current is carrying you into a sweeper. Good luck. Pray. Some advocate switching into a traditional stomach-down, head-forward swimming posture, and then trying to launch-up your belly onto the sweeper trunk.

I thought the standard "last resort" recommendation is to swim aggressively directly towards the strainer to build momentum to give you a better chance of getting on top of it. Is there a different school of thought?

I meant the same thing.

Last ditch: go into a forward crawl swimming posture, swim aggressively at the sweeper for momentum, and then try to launch your torso up onto the sweeper/strainer high enough so that the current doesn't pendulum-drag your legs under it. This theoretically should give you a better chance of surviving the sweeper than hitting it in a defensive posture on your back with feet downstream. However, I've never seen it done—and if it can be done, it surely would take a huge amount of energy and technique from a swimmer with significant upper body strength.

Avoiding sweepers is the best deterrent. That takes river experience, river condition judgment, and scouting whenever possible. On blind corners, paddle on the inside of the turn where the water is shallower, the current is slower and the probability of sweepers much lower, using a back ferry or other highly practiced inside-corner-hugging technique.

 

[yknpdlr]

Last ditch: go into a forward crawl swimming posture, swim aggressively at the sweeper for momentum, and then try to launch your torso up onto the sweeper/strainer high enough so that the current doesn't pendulum-drag your legs under it. This theoretically should give you a better chance of surviving the sweeper than hitting it in a defensive posture on your back with feet downstream. However, I've never seen it done—and if it can be done, it surely would take a huge amount of energy and technique from a swimmer with significant upper body strength.

That is exactly what the rescue training course taught us. I can say that it does work for. a smooth top inflatable "strainer" durijng the training. although many different get legs caught in the current under and got sucked down and under into the unknown.

 

[eckilson]

That is exactly what the rescue training course taught us. I can say that it does work for. a smooth top inflatable "strainer" durijng the training. although many different get legs caught in the current under and got sucked down and under into the unknown.

That's the way I learned it as well - go in head first, pull yourself on top of the obstruction, and hold on for dear life. We practiced using a long section of plastic pipe held a different levels in and above the water. The higher it got, the more difficult to was to pull yourself up on top, and there were no branches or other stuff to obstruct your progress. Practice is good, but not exactly like real life.

I took another swiftwater class where we practiced passive and aggressive swimming. - get in the passive swimming position, assess your surroundings, ferry right or left to get a better line, and flip over and swim aggressively when you have the chance.

We were below Zoar Gap with perfect condition to practice these skills. Real life isn't always that easy.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

go agressieve towards the other bank.

flip over and swim aggressively when you have the chance.

HOW you should swim aggressively to shore after a period of being in the passive, on-your-back position is literally a time for "different strokes for different folks."

I have never been a strong swimmer, especially with the Australian crawl or freestyle stroke. I learned breast stroke as a kid and that was my go-to, albeit slow, stomach stroke. I was fastest as a kid in a tire tube using a backstroke. I'm confident I can more "aggressively" vector to shore in a PFD with a backstroke than any stomach stroke. So, I never flipped over for stomach swimming in my 20 years of hardcore whitewater boating. After a dump, I would backferry with backstrokes when initially defensive, and when an opportunity came to get to shore, I would simply change my angle more toward shore and continue backstroking. I would put my feet on the bottom when it was shallow enough for my backside to be bumping on it.

I didn't dump very often before learning to roll, maybe once a year, but that type of swimming rapids always worked out well for me.

I only had one sweeper incident, but I was in my relatively new Kevlar Millbrook ME, not swimming in the water. I hit the horizontal trunk broadside and tried to lean downstream against it to stay upright. As the force of the Esopus current started to roll me upstream, I instantly thought exactly this: "I'm going to roll under the log, get wedged against the bottom, and drown." I overwhelmingly KNEW I was going to die. And accepted it.

I was VERY surprised when I didn't. I got rolled under the log, but cleared the bottom and popped up on the other side of the sweeper. My wood gunwale was destroyed by the impact, but I duct-taped a stick onto the broken gunwale and finished the river.

When I asked John Berry to repair my canoe, he refused, saying he didn't do repairs. But he took pity on me, and offered to sell me a Royalex Mad River ME at his cost. I took him up on his offer and wrote him a check on a thin piece of minicell foam, which he glued onto the Perception Saddle in one of his rental canoes. I miss John . . . and whitewater . . . and all the old days.

 

[eckilson]

I've witnessed a couple of heart-stopping run-ins with strainers. One was a kayaker who tried to go over a log, but flipped over backwards and ended up going under it upside down and backwards. The other was a swimmer who went into the strainer feet first, but somehow managed to twist himself around to get under it. Fortunately, I've never had a real run-in with a strainer.

I'm confident I can more "aggressively" vector to shore in a PFD with a backstroke than any stomach stroke. So, I never flipped over for stomach swimming in my 20 years of hardcore whitewater boating. After a dump, I would backferry with backstrokes when initially defensive, and when an opportunity came to get to shore, I would simply change my angle more toward shore and continue backstroking. I would put my feet on the bottom when it was shallow enough for my backside to be bumping on it.

No roll for me, so swimming is still a regular event. I usually have 2-3 swims a year. When I started, the recommendation was to stay in the safe swimming position until you can back ferry to shore or reach the pool at the bottom. The problem with that on longer rapids is that people get lazy and ride the current downstream, greatly increasing the risk they will float into something dangerous. These days, people encourage you to roll over and swim as soon as possible, which is what I usually try to do. I zoomed into the picture of me swimming the Dead, and that is what I appear to be doing. Can't see my body, but my face is pointed to shore.



Problem with aggressive swimming is that it takes a lot of energy. On that swim I put my feet down when I was still in waist (if not chest) deep water because I was too tired to swim anymore. Not a good thing to do, but it was either that or get flushed further downstream.

Passive swimming is fine when you are in a smooth shoot of water, but when you are in choppy water (like the Dead) you are constantly getting a face-full of water. Trying to breath in the trough and hold your breath as you go through the wave is also exhausting. Just managing your breathing is tough enough, trying to ferry at the same time is even tougher, so a lot of people end up riding the current downstream.

A friend said that "taking a swim every so often is a way of keeping it real”. Very true. I am also a strong believer in the old adage "if you don't want to swim it, don't run it".

 

[gumpus]

Excellent. I just think it's important to be clear about the best reaction plan if one is forced to deal with a strainer while swimming. I've had plenty of intimate encounters with strainers in moderate current and have always managed to stay in my boat which has been under, against and on top of strainers with me in it and while every situation is different I don't think I've ever had more than one full second to think about what to do once I realized I was in trouble.