Pikes Peak Whitewater Club on FB
August 6, 2023
Dan Mikalian: Had an overall good day on Pinnacle-Parkdale on the Arkansas River in Colorado today. Saw something new. Someone in another crew had a swim and they swam up on a rock, where their skirt snagged. They were stuck with their face just above water, and unable to get themselves loose. A few rafts guides and some peoples from our crew all gathered to get the individual loose, and hold their head above water. We wound up cutting the skirt off their body.
I'm posting partly as an FYI/learning opportunity, as I'm not sure I've ever been witness to a "skirt pin" before. Also, there is a cut up skirt somewhere in the lower part of Parkdale or farther down, we were not able to recover it.
Be safe out there. Summer is starting to wind down. Don't get complacent.
Nik White: Glad everyone is ok. Can you speak a bit about how you cut the skirt off of them? I've always envisioned it being easiest to just open up the back of the tunnel but I'm not sure if that works best in practice
Dan Mikalian: I wasn't the one cutting. I wasn't actually hands on, to be honest. Our crew came up on the 2 raft guides holding the person up. The guides later told us as we did an informal debrief at the take out that the crew of the pinned person said they had been there for 5 mins. One of our crew jumped fast out of their ducky and helped be hands on. I caught the eddy immediately below and assessed there were enough cooks in the kitchen and stayed there in case something went swimming. After the person was stabilized and people took a breath, I asked a guide from the eddy why the persons skirt was half cut at the waist. Guide said he started cutting then had issues cutting pants, etc, and got stalled at the bungee/rand (I'm not sure the exact style of skirt. Guide used the word "rand"). I asked the Guide if he needed a knife to finish the job, at which point he pulled the knife back out and a few moments later the skirt was off. Later at the debrief, the 2nd Guide mentioned the rand was troublesome, so they tried moving over to the stuck deck part, before my crew arrived, but had issues with that too, I'm not sure what kind. The final cut was at the waist, with some clothes etc damaged as well.
I guess this is as good as a spot as any to give Kudos to River Runners. It was their two guides who were on scene providing assistance. I apologize for not knowing their names.
Bill Tiedt: I had a skirt get snagged on a tree in current fast enough that I could not reach back to get it released. Finally just wiggled out of the skirt and swam to shore. Bought and carried a knife for the next 40 years, and never had a need to use it for rescue purposes. Great for lunch though!
