Here’s a detailed report on a near miss on the Poudre River on 5/17/2026. We were running the Lower Mishawaka section, and the incident occurred just above Ansel Watrous rapid. I was in my Pyranha Scorch and a member of party swam out of her Dagger RPM well above the rapid. I was downstream, closer to the rapid, but I thought I had time to tether the boat and take it to shore. I should have been wary because the boat was so full of water that the stern was completely underwater, which given the low volume on the boat is not surprising. Later on we determined that one of the float bags had broken and detached from the boat. When I started towing, I realized immediately that I was hardly moving the boat. I immediately gave up on getting to shore and turned around to run the rapid, at which point the boat I was tethered to pinned on a rock.
What happened then was that I was being held against the rock in my kayak and the quick release was hard to reach because the tether was twisting around my lifejacket. When I did release it, nothing happened, apparently the friction in the system was just too much to slide, even under pressure. More on this below. I have experienced this before so I should know better. Pretty quickly I decided to climb out of my boat to unclip the tether, luckily that wasn’t too difficult. Next, the boat to which I was tethered took off with me attached and swimming. I was able to swim along with it and unhook the carabiner, before entering the rapid and encountering more rocks.
Some notes on the tether. When I tried to recreate all this with a dry jacket, the tether had problems coming off. So, when it was wet and under pressure, not a chance of working correctly! I checked my Astra Green Jacket manual, and the tether was attached correctly according to their instructions. I think that the setup on this jacket is dangerous, because the metal and plastic release buckles get pulled together when under pressure, inhibiting the release of the tether.
To summarize, a lot more caution is required when tethering. And probably I would set up the tether to go through but not around the second buckle, and test it in the water before using it again. And I plan on talking to Astral very soon.