Revised Report: A Close Call on a Frigid Big Sandy
On January 14th, 2023 there was an incident at Big Splat Rapid on the Big Sandy in West Virginia. Zach, Blake, and Nathan, three paddlers from the South, planned to run the Lower Big Sandy. When their planned shuttle partner didn’t show they elected to proceed without a shuttle, hoping to catch a ride with local paddlers. Trouble was, it was a cloudy day with temperature in the 20's. Most of the locals were taking the day off.
Even though they were expert boaters who had run the Green River Narrows, the group didn't know the Lower Big Sandy. A few of the rapids here are tricky, and one of them, Big Splat, is really dangerous. There has been one fatality and several serious injuries here, including a paddler who had to be carried out. The level was 6.4, a solid medium flow, when they put on
The group scouted Big Splat. Blake portaged left and set safety; Nathan was at the top of the final drop when Zach ran it. Zach flipped in the last big drop, swam, and although he was out of range of the throw rope he was able to get to shore. The boat washed downstream with no one to catch it, finally hanging up on a strainer over a mile downstream, at the landslide. Fortunately, Ethan Hartley and Patrick Shehan had put in behind them. They ran the drop, raced downstream, and found the loose boat over a mile later. It took them 30 minutes to unpin it!
Here is where things got complicated! Zach (in a borrowed boat) and Nathan paddled downstream, expecting Blake to hike downriver. But both sides of the river are very steep, with many sheer cliffs. A tough walk without snow and ice! After 45 minutes he came to an impassable cliff and wisely decided that it made sense to hike out upstream. He hiked to a ridge and was able to get a cell signal. He made a gabled call to Zach, telling him to finish the run and meet him at the van. He then called his girlfriend and told her that he was separated from the rest of group, his phone was dying and that he had been hiking for almost 3 hours. The group had waited for two hours for Blake to appear. Luckily Ethan and Patrick were able to start a fire when Zach started turning hypothermic. Nathan also tried to go upstream, looking for Blake, but ran into the same obstacles.
At this point it was starting to get dark. Blake’s girlfriend, after consulting local paddlers, dialed the Preston County non-emergency line. Her detailed report is in the AW Accident Database, but one thing led to another, rescue squads were mobilized, and there was even talk of scrambling a helicopter from Maryland! Some rescuers were sent to the Little Sandy rather than to the Big Sandy. Three hours later Preston County called to say that they had met the kayakers driving out of Jenkinsburg and they were all fine. Blake reached the van and reunited with his group.
People swim in the bottom drop of Big Splat from time to time, but the bitter cold turned a routine rescue into a much nastier situation. In this weather, swimming or any other kind of mishap can get ugly fast, even if you have good gear, so it’s often prudent to dial back your ambitions. Ethan and Patrick kept things manageable, and even went back the next day to recover the group’s boat and gear! Imagine having to walk out of Jenkinsburg at sunset, not really knowing the shuttle route, or worse, being stuck and hypothermic in the gorge in such miserable weather. It could have been a lot worse.
As William Neally said, "Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good."
From Nikki Jo Fair:
This is the detailed descriptions of the event with accounts from all 3 kayakers: Blake, Zach, and Nathan roll up to LBS and park the van at the put in hoping to hitchhike a ride back to the vehicle at the end of the trip. Group puts on and everything is going fine.
Eventually they come to Big Splat and take out to scout on river right. Blake decides he is not comfortable running so he ferries over to river left to portage. Nathan stays on river right. Zach then ferries over to river left looking to see if a left line was an option. Blake continues to portage Big Splat. Zach gets back in his boat and attempts to run Big Splat running on river left. He flips over at the bottom and is pulled into the main flow on the right and after a few attempts to roll in the boils, he swims. Nathan is on river right watching Zach come through. When he sees Zach’s attempts to roll and miss, he grabs his throw rope to help rescue Zach but realizes that there isn’t a good way down. He then signals to Blake asking if Zach is okay and Blake responds “yes”. Nathan then hopped back in his boat and made his way down running through big splat. He thought this was his best and fastest option to reach Zach and Blake quickly.
Blake gets to the bottom of the portage, gets in his boat and ferries to river right to Zach who is now on shore. This is when Ethan Hartley and Patrick Shehan show up and ask if everything is okay. Zach, Nathan, and Blake inform them that Zach’s boat is way downstream. Blake offers Zach his boat to go chase down his boat. They took off to chase the boat while Blake looked for a way down river. After about 45 minutes of attempting to climb downstream, he realized he couldn’t move any further. He had 2 options from where he was at: 1. jump into the water and attempt to swim to a place he could keep going, or 2. Climb up to the ridge to try and head back to the put in. He waited for another 45 minutes to weigh the options and decided to hike out. He did not want to risk getting in the water just before dark and become hypothermic. There was no one within hearing distance of Blake so he was unable to inform the others he decided to hike out.
During this time, Zach, Nathan and the two other boaters paddled downstream to recover Zach’s boat. It was pinned and took them 30 minutes to unpin it. They decided to start a fire to get Zach warm and wait for Blake to make his way down to them but he never showed. After a while, Nathan started hiking upstream to try and find Blake with no success. Zach, Nathan, Ethan and Patrick continued to wait. Blake got to a ridge where he had just enough service to get a garbled phone call to Zach telling them to meet him at the van. So they continued downstream to the takeout. After Blake called Zach, he called me and explained that he was separated from the rest of group, his phone was dying so he didn’t have a GSP to try and find the van, and he had been hiking for almost 3 hours without extra gear or supplies (because it was in the boat Zach took downstream). At this point it was close to dark, temperatures were dropping, hypothermia was a risk, we didn’t know if he was headed in the correct direction, or if the rest of the group was okay.
I was unaware that Blake called Zach to tell him to go to the van. When I got off the phone with Blake, I talked with my friends who are also paddlers and thought we should call the local non-emergency number for Preston County and explain the situation. The safety of the kayakers was our main concern. When they didn't answer, I left a detailed message with my name and number. I did call 911 after that and explained to the woman what happened and asked if she knew anyone I could reach out to. She gave me a different number for Preston County that would work better since they didn’t answer. But the line wouldn’t connect. Remembering that I was on a paddling page in WV, I reached out stating that there were 3 kayakers potentially stranded. One kayaker was separated from the others unable to find his way back to the van. (Unaware of the rest of the situation).
I had called local non-emergency police with no response and asked for help from the community. Many people immediately reached out for details. A local paddler called me who knew the area and asked who I reached out to. I stated that I called Preston County, so he also called to give them a more detailed description of the location. Preston county called me back to ask questions and get more of an understanding of the situation I heard from Blake. They said it would be best for them to send someone to check the takeout and the put in locations to see if the kayakers made it back okay and make sure they were safe. They were worried about hypothermia for all the kayakers and Blake not making it back to the put in. It wasn't until after I heard back from the local that someone called Search and Rescue and that Preston County wanted to deploy a helicopter out of Maryland.
There were a lot of comments immediately reaching out to help or ask questions that I couldn't respond or keep up. Things got very out of hand very quickly and I realized it was a lot to handle and unaware there were things going on outside the conversations I had with the local and Preston County. After over 3 hours of back and forth with Preston County and the local, Preston County called me back to say that all 3 kayakers had been found and they were checking to make sure they were okay. With a sigh of relief, I updated the post saying they had been found safely."