Washington State’s Skykomish is a river of shifting moods, from furious whitewater to tranquil flatwater. But any section of any river can become volatile—a lesson Nichole Gaertner learned 10 years ago when she nearly drowned on a class I stretch of “The Sky.”
It was a hot May day and snowmelt from the Cascade Mountains had caused the Skykomish to flow faster than usual. That was partly why Gaertner and her three friends had planned their paddle, the swift current would make a quicker trip of the 20-plus miles downstream to the Puget Sound.
“I’d been kayaking a few times before, but I wasn’t super experienced,” Gaertner says. Everything was going well until the group entered a channel where a bend in the river prevented them from seeing a downed tree which had created a dangerous strainer.
The danger of strainers for paddlers
A strainer is an obstruction in the river like a tree or logjam that allows water to flow through but can trap a person or a boat. The hazards often form where a river curves or constricts due to the natural push of the current. The best way to avoid them is to scout blind bends and always scan downstream for obstacles, but that day, says Gaertner, it all happened so fast.
Once they’d entered the channel, the water began to swirl as it swept towards the tree. Two of her friends capsized and went under. When her third friend flipped, Gaertner says she instinctually reached out to grab her and flipped, too.
Instantly Gaertner was sucked into the strainer. Her life jacket kept her head above water but her body pinned against the tangled roots, the force of the flow trying to tug her under. She fought to get her arms over head, lodging them between branches to help hold her in place. Then she began to panic.
“I thought my friends were dead,” says Gaertner. A few minutes later she spotted them downstream safely on shore and knew in order to survive, she had to calm herself. So she sang hymns. She thought of her three young children. The water was frigid and its weight was crushing, she remembers.
“I could feel the energy leaving my body,” Gaertner says.
It took 45 minutes for local fire and rescue crews to locate Gaertner after one of her friends dialed 911 on her cellphone.
Life jacket and 911 response saved kayaker’s life
“She was up to her nose when we pulled her out,” says Pete Parrish, firefighter paramedic with Snohomish Regional Fire & Rescue, who roped her to safety with the help of two other first responders. She was hypothermic and unresponsive. She’d inhaled water and sustained internal injuries.
It took hours for emergency personnel to bring her body temperature back to normal, days for her to expel the fluid from her lungs, and weeks to heal from the bruising that covered her body inside and out.
But ultimately, she made a full recovery.
And this past month, on the tenth anniversary of the rescue, she and Parrish met again for the first time since the accident for an emotional reunion at the firehouse.
“I’ve thought about Nichole for 10 years,” Parrish says. “I just wanted to see her and tell her I was glad she was alive.”
As a first responder, Parrish is no stranger to aiding in rescues and even body recoveries. Strainers, he says, are one of the most common river hazards they see, especially in the late spring and early summer when runoff moves debris and creates pushier flows.
Parrish advises that if a paddler is headed toward a strainer and a collision is inevitable, they should paddle or swim aggressively toward it and use their momentum to get on top of it. But, he adds, the more common risk to paddlers—especially where rivers rely on snowmelt—is the water temperature.
“Cold water will shock your body. It takes your breath away and causes your muscles to seize up,” says Parrish.
To minimize the risk of cold shock, paddlers should always dress for the temperature of the water, not the air, and wear thermal protection such as a wetsuit even on warm days—and, of course, a properly fitted Type III life vest, he adds.
“We see a lot of tragedy, and I always think back to the life lived by Nichole to remember why we do what we do,” says Parrish.
Feature image: King 5 Seattle/YouTube
