[pct-l] rope for stream crossings

[Marion Davison]

RE:  unbuckling your pack
It does not take a lot of water to create a problem.  We were crossing 
Whitney Creek in Kern Canyon in early July.  It was swift enough that I 
wasn't willing to rock hop, so I decided to wade.  I sat down to change 
shoes.  Meanwhile, Ray decided to rockhop.  He was about halfway across 
when a rock rolled under his foot and he fell straight into the water, 
face down.  His face contacted another rock, hard, which temporarily 
knocked him out.  So there he was, laying unconscious, face down in the 
water, and there I was on the far bank in my socks.  I yelled to the 
boys on the other side to "get him out of the water!"  Four of them 
waded in, picked him and his pack up, and pulled him up the bank.  He 
came to quickly, and had a big bruise on a knee and a big contusion on 
his face, but it beat drowning in six inches of water!
This happened so long ago that he wasn't using trekking poles.  We 
adopted them the following year, and the incident likely would not have 
happened if he had been using poles.