[pct-l] stream crossings / Rays close call

[Edward Anderson]

Marion,  Your post about Ray's close call while crossing Whitney Creek brings to 
mind a recollection of a tragedy that happened nearly 25 years ago on the Albion 
River near Mendocino. It happened at a place where the river parallels the 
Comptche-Ukiah road. It happened to a teenager who was a classmate of my kids at 
Mendocino High School. I think he was fishing. When he didn't come home when 
expected a search went out and found him dead, face down in shallow water. It 
was supposed that he had slipped on a rock and landed on his head on another 
rock, knocked unconscious.  He was alone - no one to save him. Ray was lucky.
MendoRider.

________________________________
From: Marion Davison <mardav at charter.net>
To: Pacific Crest Trail List <pct-l at backcountry.net>
Sent: Fri, April 1, 2011 6:25:07 PM
Subject: Re: [pct-l] rope for stream crossings

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.
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