Larry’s Tips: Know IT When You See It
Know When You See It
A Carolina Paddler Article
By Larry Ausley
•CCC Easter Meeting/Trip- April, 2007. Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We awoke Friday morning in camp in Gatlinburg to an inch of snow covering kayaks in the parking lot. Nancy and I wanted to coordinate a novice trip for CCC paddlers during the Easter meeting and decided that the lower Pigeon might provide an acceptable challenge. Two new paddlers, a father-son duo, joined us on this cold April day in the Tennessee mountains. It was on the shuttle we talked about the paddling experience the two had and it became obvious the father was there to support his teen son’s newfound passion for the sport. The son was itching to get on the water; the father timidly prepared skills-wise, but fully supportive of the opportunity to share the day with the teen, whatever it took.
We put on the class II(III) section of the river at Hartford around noon and started working our way down. The single Class III rapid was near the end and consisted of a single move that seemed straightforward if not easily avoidable. The son was really working the river hard to get the most out of the class I-II features we were encountering. Almost immediately, the father’s existing skills were noticed and called-to-question by the river gods in a swim. Father and son were both in farmer-john neoprene wetsuits so, though fairly protected for the moment, the father, still having fun and smiling, really had his eyes opened for the long day ahead. After Nancy assisted him with boat recovery, draining and re-entry, we continued…until…the next eddy line was crossed and the next swim.
Recover boat, drain boat, get back in, start paddling. Then the next swim. Then the next. He was bound and determined that he was going to have a good time. He smiled, sucked it up and got back in every time. Every time, we asked if he wanted to continue and every time he said “yes”. The tenacity, despite the obvious shivering, at face value, was admirable. Three-quarters the way down the 4.8 mile run and now 6 swims in, things started getting strange. The next swim, the father started peeling out of his PFD and started to unzip his wetsuit top. We encouraged him to get it all back together and on him, get back in his boat, and let us start expediting a beeline to the takeout. No more play with/for the son. Let’s pick every easy line and head straight out.
The next swim, the same thing happened. This time, we started getting worried. The gear doffing happened again, and we asked “Why?” Why was he removing gear? He didn’t know. Umbles (mumbles, stumbles, fumbles, grumbles). We’re now close enough to the takeout that trying to paddle out seemed like a less time-consuming option than taking off and thumbing/walking a shuttle to the cars, so we did, with both Nancy and me providing essentially a physical wall, left and right to prevent any more capsizes.
We made it to the takeout after nine swims along the whole route and proceeded to hustle the father into a heated car before we worked on getting the boats and gear loaded. After a half hour in the car, the mood lightened a little and everyone started talking about what a great story we had (I say that wryly).
Fast forward several years to Nancy and me sitting in a Wilderness First Aid refresher course and the instructor’s coverage of hypothermia. We thought we’d heard it all before in the variety of First Aid and WFA courses we had taken. The instructor then used the term “paradoxical undressing”, describing onset of irrational behavior of people deep into the stages of hypothermia and now dangerously close to the body shutting down for good…a stage only climaxed by the phenomenon of “terminal burrowing”. Paradoxical undressing is the seemingly crazy act of victims inexplicably removing clothing in cold conditions, an act that not-uncommonly, has occurred in (or itself causing) fatal cases of hypothermia.
Nancy and I, almost in unison, turned and looked at each other aghast that we simultaneously had realized we had not only experienced this phenomenon, but had been unknowingly living through a situation where someone was so deeply into the stages of hypothermia that a fatal outcome would not have been out of the question.
I’ve never taken hypothermia lightly since. We had a young couple and their even younger son link up with us on the Nantahala one day with the promise that they and their son were “capable” Nantahala paddlers. We hadn’t even made it through Patton’s Run before I found myself having to perform a Hand-of-God rescue on the son who made no effort to roll up and was manically trying to dog-paddle out of his skirt/boat as his parents just floated along, paralyzed into inaction. By the time I brought us to shore, holding him in one arm and my paddle in the other, the thin sub-teen was blue with cold, shivering uncontrollably and verbally unresponsive. I laid him onshore like that. His mother said, “Give him a minute and we’ll keep going”. I said “No. You will go no farther with us on this river with him. Put him in a car and warm him right now. I’m not playing around with this.”
I realize that having been a paddlesports instructor, instructor trainer and instructor trainer educator has at each of those levels, given me an ever-increasing sensitivity to risks I take and taken by those around me. I harp a lot about the need to get educated about risks and to make smart decisions about risk in our sports, which, if done right, can be mitigated by varying degrees by actions we can take. Know these problems when making decisions for yourself. Know these problems when the time may come that you NEED to step up, step out and make a decision for the group you’re a part of.
I’ve written some opinions about safety and comfort for cold-water paddling and I encourage everyone to learn more about the advanced stages of hypothermia in general and the effects of cold water immersion on the body. We’re in winter now with spring and more tempting conditions to get on the water and get wet are not far off. Know the problems and be able to recognize them when you see them, if not avoid them altogether. Be safe. Have fun.