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Posted May 22, 2009
A close call.....
Cathleen and I drove a hundred miles across the deserts of west Texas to put her little aluminum canoe into the Rio Grande River above the canyons. At a little desert town, seemed more a ghost town, we began our 3 day adventure, not knowing that a cloudburst upriver had swollen the normally lazy, tranquil waters of the Rio. As we entered the canyons we were struck by how fast the river was flowing. And none of it looked familiar. We had seen many photos of the interior of the canyon at the ranger station just that morning.
Neither did we know that the waters in the canyon can rise 50’ in an hour, as the river is squeezed between the rock walls of these towering cliffs. Now, rocks the size of a garage that we would have otherwise paddled around, were submerged, and the river pouring over such a large rock forms an hydraulic on the other side. Think of it as a wet black hole, into which everything in its path gets sucked down into.
What looked like an improbable shadow in the river ahead, was actually this gaping maw, a steep walled hole wider than the length of our canoe, that I actually thought we might jump across we were moving so fast. I remember it vividly, almost in slow motion the canoe tipped sideways as it dove into the blackness, the belly of the beast.
Then it was like being in a washing machine full of brown water, around and around, not knowing up or down, and thus not knowing what to do, where to swim, banging on the bottom of the river. No idea of how to save yourself, you begin to accept this might be the end.
But an hydraulic sooner or later pops back up and out everything that goes down into it, and it popped us back out as well. We survived that adventure, but only barely. The Park Rangers on hearing of the downpour up river, had already set out to intercept us if possible before we got into the river. They followed us by raft, looking for our bodies, they said. But, like a pair of near drowned rats, we were rescued just as darkness fell, and lived to tell the tale.
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Have a great Holiday weekend.
paul