THE "STOPPER" AT HORSESHOE RAPID
by Stephen G. Warren
Launceston, Tasmania, August 1997

On Saturday I joined about twenty students and researchers from the Antarctic group for a raft trip on the North Esk River. The river was high and fast-flowing. There were four rafts. I was one of four people in the smallest (and tipsy-est) raft: a guide (John) in the back and three novices including me up front. In my experience with whitewater canoeing, most of the time we are backpaddling to go slower than the current. But rafting is different; John asked us to paddle hard forward most of the time, so that he could steer using his paddle as a rudder. So we hit the big waves hard and got soaked. We all wore wetsuits and helmets. I also had wetsuit boots and gloves so I was comfortable. But Kieran, with no gloves, was suffering from cold hands.

The rapids were Class 4, but, unknown to us at the time, a pulse of water came through as a brief flood during the two hours we were on the river. That raised the difficulty of some of the rapids to Class 5, which is only for experts. At the third big drop, Horseshoe Rapid, our raft did a quick flip and dumped us. I think we were at a bifurcation of the current, at the edge of an eddy under a ledge. The boat and the other three paddlers went downstream while I was carried back upstream toward a little five-foot waterfall. My paddle was quickly ripped out of my hand in the turbulence.

Below sharp drops like this one there is a rolling motion of the water that the Aussies call a "stopper" because it stops one's progress downstream. The American name is "hydraulic," or "hole." I was carried back upstream to the waterfall, then down toward the river bottom, out and up and back into the surface eddy. I was a captive of the river. I concentrated on noticing when there was air in front of my face, and took breaths at those times. But because of the turbulence I got a fair amount of water in my lungs.

I had read about these stoppers when learning river-canoeing twenty years ago, so I knew they could be deadly. I thought there was a good chance I would drown right there in the stopper. But after four or five circuits the stopper flung me out, far enough downstream that the eddy couldn't pull me back, and I floated in the main current, head held up by my lifejacket, feet aiming downstream to push off any rocks. I was happy to be out of the stopper, exhausted but enjoying the easy ride downstream. I actually caught up with the empty raft and grabbed the rope. But I was too weak from hypothermia to hang on, let alone pull myself in.
That's where my memory stops. The next thing I knew I was in Launceston Hospital. So for what happened in the interim I had to ask a friend. She told me that about half of the group were dumped into the river; not just the people in my raft. Some swam to shore, ropes were tossed to others who grabbed on and were pulled out. After passing through two more rapids, nearly all of the group were on shore or in a raft. I was the missing one; they saw me in the water a short distance downstream. I had swum through two big rapids but don't remember any of it. Matt (the trip leader) and two others swam down to me and pulled me out onto the bank. They say that I flailed about with my eyes open, chattering incoherently. I had been in the water only 15 or 20 minutes.

Launceston was only ten miles away on the nearby road, so my friends were able to call for help rather quickly. After some 45 minutes on the riverbank I was loaded into an ambulance, where they started to warm me. My body temperature was measured as 29.1°C (84.4°F), down from a normal of 37°C (98.6°F). In the hospital the emergency-room team continued to warm me up, and I regained consciousness on a bed, with electric blankets under and over me and around my head, and an oxygen mask on my face. I went through a severe shivering episode while passing through 33 to 35 degrees. My leg muscles got such a strenuous workout during the shivering phase that they were still sore two days later. However, I had no bruises, so apparently I did not hit any rocks in the stream.

After my temperature reached 37°, what remained to be addressed was the water in my lungs. I was turned over to the intensive care unit. Because of my reduced lung capacity, they had me breathing pure oxygen at first, then 70% after a few hours, then 40% by morning. The water was gradually absorbed through the lungs into the bloodstream. The North Esk water is quite clean, but waterlogged lungs are highly susceptible to infection, so to prevent that they gave me doses of three antibiotics every few hours, some of which I had to continue for 10 days.
The hospital workers were very nice to me. I had no clothes, no eyeglasses, no money: only a bag of shredded damp scraps of my wetsuit and thermal underwear (the ambulance crew had used scissors to undress me quickly). The intensive care nurse found a magnifying glass for me so I could read magazines. One of the administrators let me use his computer to type this message. Mel drove the Institute's car up from Hobart to fetch me.

What did death-by-hypothermia feel like? In the stopper, when I realized I was probably going to drown, there was no panic, no fear, just a fleeting tinge of sadness that I would miss out on the rest of my life. Later, after exiting the stopper, when I bumped into the empty raft in the stream, I was too weak to hold onto the rope, so I let go. I just let go; gave up. Then I faded out, with no particular thoughts, not even any pain or feeling of intense cold. It was not unpleasant.

That's all: the river was kind; it captured me but then released me, and I’m quite happy to go on living.