Swallowing Water on the Skykomish

Skyomish Rafting Trip-Boulder DropLast year, a woman jumped into the Skykomish River to save her young son. The water was running too high and they were both swept down the river until they were rescued and flown to Harborview. He lived, but she didn’t.

Almost exactly a year after the woman jumped in the Skykomish River, I went rafting on the Skyomish a few miles farther upstream than where the woman and her son had been. If I’d read the news about her and her son, I probably wouldn’t have decided to go on the rafting trip at all.

The Skyomish Run I went on is considered a Class 5 Rafting trip. Class 5 means: Exceedingly difficult, long and violent rapids, following each other almost without interruption; riverbed extremely obstructed; big drops; violent current; very steep gradient; close study essential but often difficult. 

On the day of the trip, I was more worried about being cold than anything else. I knew the river was running high, but didn’t understand the significance of the high water all that much. Once we were outfitted, we picked our “teams” and the 6 of us got on the boat, which was the same color pink as a Malibu Barbie house. The color did nothing to make me feel that I was in jeopardy, but I did feel slightly nervous after having my life-jacket changed no less than three times.

We got on the boat and were assigned positions by our captain, Ray, who was a middle-aged gung-ho type of guy with a paunch. Ray quickly ran through our commands, which I listened to as closely as I could. We practiced for roughly two minutes, and were off downstream with the warning that, “This is not Disneyland”.

Despite the Disneyland warning, Ray acted like we were on the Tea-Cup and quickly spun us around- just for fun. For whatever reason, (I’m assuming it wasn’t necessarily our high level of expertise), we were the lead boat. The rapids we went through were fun, but mostly didn’t seem too challenging. As a beginner, I felt comfortable, but wet.

Abruptly, we stopped at the side of the river before some rapids. Ray had us get out of the boat so we could inspect “Boulder Drop”, the most dangerous stretch of white water in Washington state. He gave us instructions to listen closely as we went through and told us which route we would take down the rapids. I paid close attention to which way to go in case we happened to tip.

As we went through “Boulder Drop”, two things happened that scared me a little. First, we veered off course and took an alternative route, which seemed more than a little challenging. Second, the girl sitting next to me almost hit her hit on a giant rock unbeknownst to her. After that, our boat started to tip and the guy in front of me jumped in the water and four of us came tumbling out of the boat. (The other guy was in front hanging on literally by two toe-straps.)

I went under fast. When I came up, I heard someone yelling for me to swim, but the water swept me downstream and under again. I kept swallowing and coughing water and didn’t know where I would end up. I honestly thought that I was going to drown.

One of the kayakers with the Rafting Company found me. I stretched out my paddle to him and then it drifted away. He asked me to grab hold of a small hook on the back of the kayak and brought me to shore. I didn’t know if I could stand up and was worried that I would be carried downstream, but he had to look for the rest of our party.

A minute or two later, another girl was brought up onto shore about five feet away from me. We both had felt like we were going to die.

Someone asked me after the trip how I liked it and I had to answer honestly; rafting is a lot more fun when you don’t feel like you’re drowning.