Shaver Cut ‑Wedged in a Waterfall

“I’ll just slow­ly slide into the water flow. I’ve been inside water­falls with much more flow than this.” I thought and then instant­ly regret­ted it. The water pound­ed down onto my hel­met with great force, push­ing my head down as my feet got stuck in the rocks below. It was a “V” crack and the low­er you got the tighter things were. The stream above was just a mean­der­ing creek until it all got fun­neled into a slit no more than a few feet wide at the top taper­ing down to less than 10 inch­es at the bot­tom. I could feel the pan­ic creep­ing in as the water pushed me down into the rocks entrap­ping my feet. Keep­ing my head down to breathe I did all I could to remain calm and slow­ly un-wedge my feet. The water­fall seemed to not want to let me out of it’s grip as it crashed down all around me, pound­ing on my back­pack pulling me fur­ther in. On some lev­el of rea­son­ing I knew I couldn’t move fast lest I get fur­ther stuck in the rocks at my feet and nev­er escape the falls, or get pushed onto my back at which point I’d be com­plete­ly unable to free myself. “Damn it I should’ve tak­en off my pack” I thought as the water con­tin­ued to ham­mer it yank­ing me back­ward. Dave was at the re-direct anchor above me but I knew that I alone was my best bet at get­ting out. Not much he could do from up there. One foot free, anoth­er step, foot got wedged in the rocks again, slow­ly pulling it back, out of the rocks, mov­ing my foot for­ward, keep calm, keep my head down, breath, next foot for­ward, slowly….then I emerged in the sun­light and sweet air. I looked back up at Dave my heart rac­ing. One seri­ous­ly close call.

Shaver Cut ‑Wedged in a Water­fall from 360 Nomad on Vimeo.

Dave came down next as grace­ful as ever, avoid­ing the falls completely.

“I was at the re-direct bolt because our bag toss was­n’t ide­al, i fixed the rope man­age­ment sit­u­a­tion and then stayed at the re-direct while Alden rap­pelled past me to the bot­tom. As this was a known and beta’d haz­ard i was watch­ing Alden close­ly. When he dis­ap­peared behind the cur­tain of water I was going to give him 3 sec­onds before I rapped down and attempt­ed a res­cue, he reap­peared as i was unlock­ing my rap­pel device.”

Two weeks lat­er a fel­low canyoneer descend­ed this route get­ting wedged in the same falls. He didn’t make it.

Some pic­tures from the trip. Pho­tos of me by Dave Red.