[pct-l] Bear Creek crossing 2010

[Eric Lee]

Jim wrote:
>
I know its "wild and scenic" but would it hurt for the park service to
stretch a large rope between two trees (if not a bridge) for a hand hold
across some of the larger creeks?   
>

Other people have kind of mentioned it already but I'll spell it out: using
any kind of rope to cross an already-dangerous river could easily make it
even more dangerous. I don't have a lot of personal experience with this but
the vast majority of knowledgeable sources discourage using ropes.

In the case where you're holding on to a rope that's attached upstream, as
in the first diagram from the book Jim linked to, then the problem is that
if you do lose your balance and go down, the only thing the rope is going to
do is hold you in place and make the river rush over you, driving you to the
bottom and pinning you there with tremendous force.  In the case where
you're holding on to an overhead rope that runs straight across the river,
it seems to me that introducing leverage at head height is probably going to
reduce the leverage you have with your feet, making it more likely that
you'll lose your footing.  Once you actually get swept off your feet you
might have a very hard time getting them planted on the riverbed again even
if you manage to hold on.  Then you're basically body-surfing in the water
and while you might be able to pull yourself across hand over hand, I
wouldn't want to experience it.

The bottom line is that while there may be some specific situations where an
expert could make a difficult river crossing significantly safer using a
rope, there are many, many ways of screwing it up.  For the average hiker,
any river crossing that's above the danger level without a rope is going to
remain above the danger level with a rope.  It's one of those things that
sounds a lot better in theory than it actually is in real life.

Eric