I have not been on the Lower Yough since the early 90's, but Dimple Rock had a reputation of having killed a number over 10 or 11 then - all raftoids though from my recollection. I never confirmed that and it was only the hearsay of the time. But, it is easy to avoid. Sounds like a fun trip George. Have a great time.
Brent

While I don't recall a kayaker or canoeist death at Dimple, there have been fatalities on the Lower Yough in the kayaking crowd. Without digging through all the old accident reports and from memory, there have been several fatalities at Cucumber, all at high water. There has been one fatality and a number of close calls at Railroad. Rivers End and Bruner's both have had fatalities over the years, again most at high water.

The Yough is running 3.17 right now, and I wouldn't really consider that an intermediate level.

All this talk of fatalities has me itchin' to get on the Lower Yough.......................

George, I'm interested, but not sure that I'm ready. I'll get back to you as soon as I decide. Regardless of my participation, thanks for getting the trip together. It's always nice to have options.

Bethany

Quite true. There have been a couple of kayaker deaths at Dimple, but not under the rock. As I recall they were not of the "watch out for that hazard" type, but more of the "if enough people run a rapid, somebody's gotta die there" sort.

For perspective, at least eight people are listed in the AW database as having died on the Nantahala, almost all at Patton's Run or Nantahala Falls. Five were commercial guests, two were private boaters and one is unknown. It is likely that there have been a couple that are not accounted for in this list.

The accident reports suggest that knowledge and proper action (such as never standing up in moving water) could have prevented most of these deaths. Over the last 20 years, literally millions of people have been down the Nantahala. When you really look at it from a statistical standpoint, the really striking thing is that there haven't been more deaths.

Whitewater is a sport where you can manage yourself in a number of ways to keep yourself much safer on the water than you are in your car. This includes judging the river and water level, making good choices about routes, paying attention, taking safety classes (like river rescue) etc.

Long story short, don't let all this extreme dissection of the intricacies of the miniscule number of deaths on the Lower Yough deter you from going. If we dissected the deaths on I-75 this way we'd probably make half the folks on the board swear off driving. I personally guarantee that any given American interstate highway has killed hundreds or thousands of people and a much higher percentage of the total number of folks traveling on it.

Hanley

Dimple rapid. Sounds so benign, so friendly and happy...but there it awaits with giant gnashing teeth and morning breath, waiting for the hapless noob to float into its jaws and disappearing into that dark, sucking hole of death...forever.

Bring scuba gear and a bulldozer. Or one of these...just cut the rock in half.

[bp0.blogger.com]

Bethany,

If I'm not mistaken I've paddled Muddy with you earlier this spring. I don't know what youv'e done since, but your welcome to along. The worst case would be to run the loop which includes Entrance, Cucumber, and some other class II's down to the take out a the rail road bridge If you don't feel comfortable on the river. Truthfully if you've spent much time at all on the Nanty and /or any local class three rivers you'll most likely be fine and we can give you every necessary line in detail.

As fo rthe rest of the discussion I'm a bit suprised, I never any conversations like this about the Russell fork, the New, the Ocoee, or the Gauley which have all consumed more lives (Assumption) than the Yough.

Gmead

George,

Good points. On the Ocoee, however, there have been an amazingly small number of fatalities in comparison to other class III ( or class IV to the newer boaters rivers in the southeast. It seems to me to be an unusually swimmer-friendly river run, with hardly any undercuts or other typical danger spots. . . .

BTW, I need to borrow the small club trailer for part of this weekend. Can you please give me the beta I'll need to pick it up and drop it off when I'm done ? Mucho appreciated, gear meister !

Mike Molnar

I think the Ocoee falls into the classification of "more likely to beat you black and blue than kill you". The fact that it is shallow, punchy and continuous acts as a pretty good deterrent for paddlers of modest skill, and the fact that all the commercial rafts are guided makes the commercial aspect considerably more manageable. Having a guide in every raft, even if that guide isn't very good, is a damned site better than having mostly self guided rafts reading their way down the river using Braille. Add to that the fact that the Ocoee has almost no undercuts and you have a pretty good formula for keeping people alive.

Some of the same can be said for the Gauley. Having a guide in every raft really cuts down on the number of fatalities.

The Russell Fork Gorge, according to AW's accident database, has 4 fatalities. Not nearly as many people as the Nanny or Lower Yo, but only if you compare the actual number of fatalities. More people go down either one of these rivers in a midsummer month than have boated the Russell Fork Gorge in it's entire history. So, if you look at it from that perspective, the Russell Fork Gorge may have taken more lives per capita than any river on the East Coast. Naturally, this is just guesswork in the absence of hard figures, but I think it's a pretty fair guess.

Hanley

Hanley: You may be right about the Russell Fork deaths per capita, but, it is hard to say. I remember my first down the gorge in 1989 R2 ing with my buddy Dave Martin of Friendsville ("Treehouse Dave") and it was packed with throngs of commercial and private rafts, kayakers and, hell, even squirt boaters. I remember the first death I was aware of on the River in 93 and the second in 94 which scenes I paddled upon (the second with my late friend Andy Lee who was seeing the RF for the first time). Before those two raft deaths (the second was a 17 yo raft trainee), there seemed to me a thousand people going down the river if not each day, for sure over the weekend. I remember seeing, in the early 90's, Cherokee Adventures among many others dumping swimmers at Fist, Triple Drop, under Maze, above El Horrendo, with great regularity. Wahoo would take anyone down, regardless of age, with $100 in their hot little hand. Hanley, you were out there during those days in the 91-93 range. Amazing the amount of traffic that used to go down that river. Not even close today. Anyway, the RF is clearly dangerous, but, it tends to be paddled by boaters with good skills. I have personally taken tons of folks down, some with marginal skills and most with adequate skills and always considered it a manageable and reasonable safe river - as far as classic Class V rivers go. That of course does not mean that you can't get your butt kicked there. I did last fall - first time in awhile. And, you can die there - a good friend of mine did 4 1/2 years ago. But, I would encourage those with good skill levels with a knowledgeable guide to go for it, because I think, and experience has shown, that they will have a good safe time and will fall in love with the river. I did. Hope others will too.
Brent

The threadjack continues:

Brent, you make some good observations. I really don't think we're that far off, but I will quibble with you about the number of boaters on the fork. As you noted, I used to shoot video there and I used to basically shoot all the traffic on the fork on a given day in order to supply myself with base footage for videos like, "River House Rocks and Rolls". USA Raft tended to get on the water early and I was frequently the first boat through Tower. Then they'd eat lunch at El Horrendo and tarry as long as possible to stretch the trip out. Basically the customers were paying $200 for 2 miles of intense whitewater ($100 a mile), so they stretched it out as much as they could. Then, at the end of the day I would wait at climax and shoot the tail end of the traffic coming through.

Basically, the RF is a narrow, steep, short run and it doesn't take many boaters to fill it up. A big trip for USA was 20 guests, and that was pretty unusual. Still, since we had to use small rafts that amounted to five or six rafts easily, plus guides and trainees.

The Lower Yough and Nantahala have long windows of water and companies run many trips throughout the day. We never ran more than 1 trip a day on the fork, and that was par for the course for most outfitters there, 1 trip was all anyone could fill. Wahoo bumped the numbers up as you noted, but I'd still say that the total number of rafting guests coming down in the whole season was significantly less than 1000. Compared to the literally hundreds of thousands of guests on either the Yo or Nanny in a season, just one rafting death puts the fork way over.

I still think the RF gorge is a great run and if a boater's skills are up to it and s/he wants to do it, then s/he should. I just think that it's important to consider the fun to danger ratio and keep in mind that the relatively easy moves (compared to other steep creeks with similar gradient) can lull you into a false sense of security. Most other steep creeks of similar gradient are generally more difficult on the average, but (IMHO) less likely to extract the ultimate penalty for a screw up.

Hanley