7 ms·

Do your research before getting into rivers. My local river has several gauges and hotlines you can call to get dam releases. They also have a chart of the wate

by wil421 4y ago

Do your research before getting into rivers. My local river has several gauges and hotlines you can call to get dam releases. They also have a chart of the water release amounts and if you could paddle/float/canoe/kayak etc. It even has a turbidity gauge that will show you if any harmful bacteria is present, we have issues with fertilizer runoff and e-coli. It's a rather mundane river in an area not as known as Glacier National Park. >The river was swollen with alpine runoff. Red flags right immediately. If you ever hear 3 horns blasts, get out immediately. A dam might release. I would NOT go down any side forks. Just like the author I have been messed up and thrown off my kayak by downed trees on a fork. Luckily the water was waist deep and I could stand right away.

foobarian 4y ago
Acquaintance did some suburban kayaking and didn't see a 3ft drop (some kind of dam or culvert under a bridge) until too late. The fluid mechanics of that drop are such that there is a vortex at the base that makes it difficult to get out. He was able to stand but just barely - scary to think how close a call that was in a pretty innocuous looking setting.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Yeah those things are notorious for that. Place I grew up in had a lot of small rivers you could pretty much wade across most of the year. But you'd still hear of drownings every once in a while and if it wasn't a small child it was always someone going over a low head dam.
- gonzo41 4y ago
  That's called hydrolic lock. It kills experienced people all the time. Weir style dams are so subtle and dangerous.
- AYBABTME 4y ago
  I almost drowned on a beach without surveillance, jumping into the surf waist high, for fun, until suddenly the receding water pulled me just a few meters further away and now I couldn't touch the floor anymore, and was slowly being pulled further and further away from the beach. My girlfriend of the time was on the beach far enough away that she couldn't hear or grasp that I was struggling. By luck and after perhaps 10 minutes of fighting, I managed to move sideways and forward by persistence until I could touch the ground again and walk out. I was completely exhausted and I'm not sure how much longer I could have persisted like this. Just as I exited a few locals were arriving in haste for me. Apparently they had seen me struggling to come back. I'm guessing they had witnessed tragedies there before, because whereas my girlfriend hadn't picked up that I was in trouble, they had.
  - scanny 4y ago
    Sounds like you encountered a "rip" [0]; usually letting it take you out and then swimming after the current eases is the safest thing to do. At school (Oceania) we get taught this as part of water safety, but I suppose it would be a foreign concept to many people, particularly those not living near the coast. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_current
    - anthomtb 4y ago
      Can confirm. My childhood in Colorado taught me nothing of rip currents. A few weeks on the east coast of Australia was quite the eye-opener.
    - vasco 4y ago
      I was taught to immediately start swimming parallel to the beach. Some rip tides can take you very far away very quickly, enough that nobody would be able to get to you without a boat, and that is if they were looking at you. Best advice is to swim parallel to the beach, while remaining calm and swiming at a pace you can hold. Do not sprint-swim due to fear.
      - danenania 4y ago
        Swimming parallel to the beach will get you out of it, but it could be a struggle depending on the width of the rip and the size of the waves. Getting past the break first is often easier since then you can swim parallel to the beach and away from the rip without having to deal with waves breaking on you.
  - danenania 4y ago
    The key in surf is to never fight against the rip. While it can feel scary to get pulled out, remember that 99% of the time, it will end after you are pulled past the break, at which point you can swim laterally a bit and then go back in with help from the waves. Breaking waves naturally create alternating channels in the sand that either push you towards the shore or pull you back out to the break. The other 1% of the time is when you are close to the mouth of a bay or some other feature that creates a current independent of the dynamics in the surf zone. You'll know that's the case if the current stays strong after you're past the break. If it's too strong for you to swim against it, then you're in trouble and should start waving for help.
- giantg2 4y ago
  Yep, we call those low head dams around here. It's like the roll under a big surf wave, but perpetual.
- bombcar 4y ago
  https://www.weather.gov/lmk/LowHeadDamPublicSafetyAwarenessMonth https://www.weather.gov/lmk/LowHeadDamPublicSafetyAwarenessM... Low head dams are the drowning machine, and they can look very safe and simple.
  - james_pm 4y ago
    Practical Engineering discussed low head dams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVDpqphHhAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVDpqphHhAE
  - hinkley 4y ago
    There's a lot of pressure to get rid of these things. Maybe not as much as there should be.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Nobody really wants them anymore, it's just the cost of removal (and finding who is "responsible").
- cafard 4y ago
  Back in the 1980s, a number of soldiers drowned in the hydraulic below the dam at the Little Falls pumping station on the Potomac. One of Tufte's books (I think Envisioning Information) includes the illustration of the effect that The Washington Post published shortly after that.
- el_nahual 4y ago
  Those are called "weirs", and often known as drowning machines. Practical Engineering on youtube has a great video about them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkR79oDAgOg&vl=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkR79oDAgOg&vl=en
  - DLwdTxdU6smHQA 4y ago
    The same guy has a video called "The Most Dangerous Dams" [length 8:43]. It seems so be less technical and more focused on the dangerous aspects. edit: link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVDpqphHhAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVDpqphHhAE
- jollyllama 4y ago
  Yep. A couple of girls got killed in Pittsburgh a few years back. They were kayaking down the river and didn't realize a dam was ahead. People die all the time in nature for lack of preparedness because they don't know the environment they are getting into and they don't know their limitations. This also endangers rescuers.
  - shagie 4y ago
    Practical Engineering has a video on the dangers of a lowhead dam - https://youtu.be/GVDpqphHhAE https://youtu.be/GVDpqphHhAE
    - psychphysic 4y ago
      What on Earth!? I just submitted Kyle Hills video on this early today to HN. What an eery coincidence. I hope it's not a bad omen that I keep coming across this topic today...
      - antipotoad 4y ago
        Seems about five others of us also linked his video in this thread :) Guess you’re experiencing the Baader-Meinhof effect, AKA the frequency illusion [1]. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
        shagie 4y ago
        It is interesting that Practical Engineering is an often-cited channel on HN. Not surprising, but rather a good indication of its content, quality, and value.
    - whymauri 4y ago
      I crossed a small dam solo hiking the Wichita Mountains. Not the one at Kite Trail on the Bison Trail Loop (Lost Lakes) which is wide and dry, but completely off trail since I had to get off trail to avoid bison. It was mossy with very little traction and I almost slipped. Brushed it off as an annoyance since I didn't get wet. Watched this video a year later and it made me think... how deep was that water, and was it really as calm as it seemed? Yikes.
- codeduck 4y ago
  weirs are drowning machines. Nothing more, nothing less.
- antipotoad 4y ago
  See this video from Practical Engineering, aptly titled ‘The Drowning Machine’: https://practical.engineering/blog/2019/3/16/drowning-machine-the-dangers-of-low-head-dams https://practical.engineering/blog/2019/3/16/drowning-machin...
Godel_unicode 4y ago
I’ve done a decent amount of white water and stories like this make me shiver. If you’re in moving water, standing is surprisingly dangerous. Float or swim (depending on the current) to calm water and get out there. If you stand (and especially walk) in a fast current, you’re asking to get your foot caught and then drowned.
- wil421 4y ago
  My story was short. A tree at chest level knocked us over a couple feet from the end of fork. We floated a couple feet until we were dumped back into the main channel were there is little to no current. My heel caught a treble hook from my fishing pole. I had to dog paddle the kayak a couple feet to the bank and get the hook out of my heel. There aren't even any classed rapids in this area its more of a lazy river thing. An hour or so away there are some cool rapids leftover from prior Olympic Games that has a consistent dam release. We were on sit on top kayaks.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
the_af 4y ago
> Do your research before getting into rivers What's amazing from this article, and from others like it, is that even being reasonably knowledgeable is not a guarantee of anything. I mean, better be knowledgeable, of course -- but even people who should know better die and get caught in freak accidents. Or simply, one day they let their guard down. After plenty of near death experiences, the author of this article was still doing some dumb shit, she hadn't learned the lesson by her own admission. This isn't an argument against research; of course you should know the dangers and treat the environment carefully. But even this isn't a guarantee of survival.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  "Research" means something different than "being reasonably knowledgeable" in this context. You might be familiar with a certain river, but "Is the dam going to release water today" and "how much runoff from the mountains is there today" are question that you should still research before going out.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by wil421 4y ago

foobarian 4y ago

Acquaintance did some suburban kayaking and didn't see a 3ft drop (some kind of dam or culvert under a bridge) until too late. The fluid mechanics of that drop are such that there is a vortex at the base that makes it difficult to get out. He was able to stand but just barely - scary to think how close a call that was in a pretty innocuous looking setting.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
Yeah those things are notorious for that. Place I grew up in had a lot of small rivers you could pretty much wade across most of the year. But you'd still hear of drownings every once in a while and if it wasn't a small child it was always someone going over a low head dam.
gonzo41 4y ago
That's called hydrolic lock. It kills experienced people all the time. Weir style dams are so subtle and dangerous.
AYBABTME 4y ago
I almost drowned on a beach without surveillance, jumping into the surf waist high, for fun, until suddenly the receding water pulled me just a few meters further away and now I couldn't touch the floor anymore, and was slowly being pulled further and further away from the beach. My girlfriend of the time was on the beach far enough away that she couldn't hear or grasp that I was struggling. By luck and after perhaps 10 minutes of fighting, I managed to move sideways and forward by persistence until I could touch the ground again and walk out. I was completely exhausted and I'm not sure how much longer I could have persisted like this. Just as I exited a few locals were arriving in haste for me. Apparently they had seen me struggling to come back. I'm guessing they had witnessed tragedies there before, because whereas my girlfriend hadn't picked up that I was in trouble, they had.
- scanny 4y ago
  Sounds like you encountered a "rip" [0]; usually letting it take you out and then swimming after the current eases is the safest thing to do. At school (Oceania) we get taught this as part of water safety, but I suppose it would be a foreign concept to many people, particularly those not living near the coast. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_current
  - anthomtb 4y ago
    Can confirm. My childhood in Colorado taught me nothing of rip currents. A few weeks on the east coast of Australia was quite the eye-opener.
  - vasco 4y ago
    I was taught to immediately start swimming parallel to the beach. Some rip tides can take you very far away very quickly, enough that nobody would be able to get to you without a boat, and that is if they were looking at you. Best advice is to swim parallel to the beach, while remaining calm and swiming at a pace you can hold. Do not sprint-swim due to fear.
    - danenania 4y ago
      Swimming parallel to the beach will get you out of it, but it could be a struggle depending on the width of the rip and the size of the waves. Getting past the break first is often easier since then you can swim parallel to the beach and away from the rip without having to deal with waves breaking on you.
- danenania 4y ago
  The key in surf is to never fight against the rip. While it can feel scary to get pulled out, remember that 99% of the time, it will end after you are pulled past the break, at which point you can swim laterally a bit and then go back in with help from the waves. Breaking waves naturally create alternating channels in the sand that either push you towards the shore or pull you back out to the break. The other 1% of the time is when you are close to the mouth of a bay or some other feature that creates a current independent of the dynamics in the surf zone. You'll know that's the case if the current stays strong after you're past the break. If it's too strong for you to swim against it, then you're in trouble and should start waving for help.
giantg2 4y ago
Yep, we call those low head dams around here. It's like the roll under a big surf wave, but perpetual.
bombcar 4y ago
https://www.weather.gov/lmk/LowHeadDamPublicSafetyAwarenessMonth https://www.weather.gov/lmk/LowHeadDamPublicSafetyAwarenessM... Low head dams are the drowning machine, and they can look very safe and simple.
- james_pm 4y ago
  Practical Engineering discussed low head dams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVDpqphHhAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVDpqphHhAE
- hinkley 4y ago
  There's a lot of pressure to get rid of these things. Maybe not as much as there should be.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Nobody really wants them anymore, it's just the cost of removal (and finding who is "responsible").
cafard 4y ago
Back in the 1980s, a number of soldiers drowned in the hydraulic below the dam at the Little Falls pumping station on the Potomac. One of Tufte's books (I think Envisioning Information) includes the illustration of the effect that The Washington Post published shortly after that.
el_nahual 4y ago
Those are called "weirs", and often known as drowning machines. Practical Engineering on youtube has a great video about them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkR79oDAgOg&vl=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkR79oDAgOg&vl=en
- DLwdTxdU6smHQA 4y ago
  The same guy has a video called "The Most Dangerous Dams" [length 8:43]. It seems so be less technical and more focused on the dangerous aspects. edit: link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVDpqphHhAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVDpqphHhAE
jollyllama 4y ago
Yep. A couple of girls got killed in Pittsburgh a few years back. They were kayaking down the river and didn't realize a dam was ahead. People die all the time in nature for lack of preparedness because they don't know the environment they are getting into and they don't know their limitations. This also endangers rescuers.
- shagie 4y ago
  Practical Engineering has a video on the dangers of a lowhead dam - https://youtu.be/GVDpqphHhAE https://youtu.be/GVDpqphHhAE
  - psychphysic 4y ago
    What on Earth!? I just submitted Kyle Hills video on this early today to HN. What an eery coincidence. I hope it's not a bad omen that I keep coming across this topic today...
    - antipotoad 4y ago
      Seems about five others of us also linked his video in this thread :) Guess you’re experiencing the Baader-Meinhof effect, AKA the frequency illusion [1]. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
      - shagie 4y ago
        It is interesting that Practical Engineering is an often-cited channel on HN. Not surprising, but rather a good indication of its content, quality, and value.
  - whymauri 4y ago
    I crossed a small dam solo hiking the Wichita Mountains. Not the one at Kite Trail on the Bison Trail Loop (Lost Lakes) which is wide and dry, but completely off trail since I had to get off trail to avoid bison. It was mossy with very little traction and I almost slipped. Brushed it off as an annoyance since I didn't get wet. Watched this video a year later and it made me think... how deep was that water, and was it really as calm as it seemed? Yikes.
codeduck 4y ago
weirs are drowning machines. Nothing more, nothing less.
antipotoad 4y ago
See this video from Practical Engineering, aptly titled ‘The Drowning Machine’: https://practical.engineering/blog/2019/3/16/drowning-machine-the-dangers-of-low-head-dams https://practical.engineering/blog/2019/3/16/drowning-machin...

Godel_unicode 4y ago

I’ve done a decent amount of white water and stories like this make me shiver. If you’re in moving water, standing is surprisingly dangerous. Float or swim (depending on the current) to calm water and get out there. If you stand (and especially walk) in a fast current, you’re asking to get your foot caught and then drowned.

wil421 4y ago
My story was short. A tree at chest level knocked us over a couple feet from the end of fork. We floated a couple feet until we were dumped back into the main channel were there is little to no current. My heel caught a treble hook from my fishing pole. I had to dog paddle the kayak a couple feet to the bank and get the hook out of my heel. There aren't even any classed rapids in this area its more of a lazy river thing. An hour or so away there are some cool rapids leftover from prior Olympic Games that has a consistent dam release. We were on sit on top kayaks.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

the_af 4y ago

> Do your research before getting into rivers What's amazing from this article, and from others like it, is that even being reasonably knowledgeable is not a guarantee of anything. I mean, better be knowledgeable, of course -- but even people who should know better die and get caught in freak accidents. Or simply, one day they let their guard down. After plenty of near death experiences, the author of this article was still doing some dumb shit, she hadn't learned the lesson by her own admission. This isn't an argument against research; of course you should know the dangers and treat the environment carefully. But even this isn't a guarantee of survival.

dahfizz 4y ago
"Research" means something different than "being reasonably knowledgeable" in this context. You might be familiar with a certain river, but "Is the dam going to release water today" and "how much runoff from the mountains is there today" are question that you should still research before going out.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]