1999
Escape From Vertical Pins and Entrapments
A boater's worst nightmare. Over a steep drop, and then thunk, your bow strikes rocks lurking in the froth below. All forward movement stops. Pain radiates through your feet, ankles, and knees. Frigid water cascades over your back and head; your chest is forced to the cockpit. You can see almost nothing: only froth and partial darkness. It's hard to breathe. Time to get out, now! You let go of your paddle. And then what?
"And then what?" is the crucial question that we want to discuss here.
The dynamics of the vertical pin with entrapment can be easily simulated by leaning a kayak against a grassy vertical slope of 45 degrees or steeper. Climb in the boat and you will discover that gravity can be sufficient to entrap a paddler in a vertically pinned kayak! When we first tried this exercise as part of a river rescue clinic, we were astonished by this discovery. According to conventional wisdom, a kayak must be slightly folded in the bow, snaring the paddler's legs, in order for entrapment to occur. Not so! Gravity alone can prevent many paddlers from escaping a vertically pinned kayak.
Cockpit size makes all the difference. Many of the boaters in our clinic that tried this simulation could not escape a Dancer (presumably an old model... Ed.), and some could not escape a vertically pinned Infinity. On the other hand, everyone could escape from boats with keyhole cockpits, such as the Prijon boats and the Perception Corsicas. In these boats both legs could be bent, then withdrawn simultaneously. Both feet could then be placed on the cockpit rim, allowing the paddler to dive or climb from the boat.
In the Prijon boats, the forward end of the cockpit is slightly more narrow, initially allowing only one foot to be extracted to the cockpit rim. As the first leg is straightened, the second could be withdrawn, and the foot extracted. Standard C-Is, such as the Gyramax and Slasher, were easy to escape as well.
We found a great difference in the ability of our participants to escape from simulated pins. Smaller, more agile boaters could usually work their way out of the small cockpit boats. Larger, less adroit folks were doomed. Practice helped, and many who could not escape at first were successful after several tries. We had several participants who were excellent rock climbers, with strength and agility honed on the big walls of Yosemite. These folks set the standard for escape from the tighter watercraft, using heel, toe, and knee to chimney their way from the narrow confines of the pinned kayak.
We created a more challenging predicament by having two assistants press on each paddler's back as he attempted to escape his entrapment, thus simulating the pressure of water coming over the drop. Now here was a difficult and exhausting simulation, even though it was practiced in a warm, dry environment! Under such awkward conditions, only a handful of the participants could escape a pinned Dancer, and then only after a prolonged struggle. In some of the boats with medium-sized cockpits, many boaters found they could extract their legs only as far as the middle of their shins before they would topple from the cockpit, an obvious scenario for bilateral tib-fib fractures.
Remarkably, despite the simulated water pressure, even the most clumsy and chubby of us could escape safely from the large cockpit craft! Most modern large cockpit designs have the added advantage of forward bulkheads, reducing the risk of broken ankles secondary to impact. Our conclusion: large cockpit boats are the only safe choice for steep rivers and creeks.
Escape aids can make the difference on boats with marginal cockpits. German boaters developed the idea of tying a piece of one inch tubular webbing to their stem grab loop and then leaving the forward end dangling in the rear of their cockpit. A vertically pinned boater could hope to push himself back into the current, reach over his head to the webbing, and then pull himself from the cockpit. Various stern-mounted tow systems might be substituted for this rig.
We tried the German system, and some of us found that it helped us escape from small cockpit kayaks.
But other boaters still could not escape. Many of those that benefited had to engage in a lengthy struggle.
Every paddler that tried the German system was forced into a position that would have prevented an airpocket from forming around their head and upper body.
Practice with the snag tag rescue method can be incorporated in a vertical pin and entrapment simulation. Two line handlers, standing as if they were stretching a rope across a river, bring the line up from downstream of the entrapped boater. As it reaches his chest, he can lift his arms over the line and use it to stabilize himself. Providentially, almost every participant in the clinic could escape a small cockpit boat, despite simulated water pressure, with the assistance of a snag tag line.
Based on this discovery, the snag tag should be viewed not only as an aid to stabilizing a boater entrapped in a vertical pin, but also as an aid to the boater's extrication. A paddler in a vertically pinned boat has two choices as to what to do once he has his feet on the cockpit rim. One choice is to dive or jump downstream. A less risky choice, if there is a boulder or exposed rock near the lip of the drop, is to climb back up the boat onto the rock. A German escape system, a tow rig, or a rear broach loop can be a tremendous aid in climbing the boat to safety.
One of the authors (Richard) has been foolish enough to vertically pin twice in his paddling career: once in a Gyramax C-1 on the North Fork of the Kaweah and once in a Corsica Matrix on Sespe Creek. Both times he was able to climb without assistance up the boat onto dry rock. On the occasion of the C-1 pinning, his body was engulfed in water, with only his head protruding from the flow. Nonetheless, the escape from the roomy cockpit and the subsequent climb back up the stem aided by a stem tow system, were easy feats.
Practice some of these exercises the next time you are hanging around, waiting for a shuttle. If you can't escape your kayak or C-1 quickly and safely, try adding an escape aid. If that doesn't work, retire that outdated boat and get a large cockpit craft!
