Yuba Gap

As the the river dropped out from under me, one thing was clear: I shouldn’t be running this rapid. But, I was already committed. That split second at the lip of this monstrosity is forever freeze-framed in my mind: the river falling away, hitting a wall, then dropping into darkness. I was on Yuba Gap, one of the hardest day runs in the US, with Sage Donnelly and Steven Schmitz. None of us had done the river before. While we had a vague idea that there were some huge rapids and some mandatory portages, we didn’t know where they were. And here I was, about to run what turned out to be a “mandatory” portage, called the Rainbow Pool Portage.

Yuba Gap is a long day, even when you know the lines. The river consists of seemingly endless blind horizon lines, with rapids that drop from 15 to 50+ ft. We had been aggressively boat scouting in a slightly mellower boulder garden section. I was leading, and I thought I could catch an eddy. I ended up hitting a rock. I had a moment where I could have still scrambled into the eddy, but then I made a very poor judgment: “it’s probably fine.” As soon as I had that thought, I looked again, and realized it was NOT FINE. But by then I was committed. I was at the mercy of the river.

Ben Coleman running one of the big rapids on Yuba Gap. I unfortunately did not get many pictures of the run because we were racing daylight.

Risk

Kayaking is inherently risky. While I’ve tried to convince myself at various times in my career that I can make it “safe,” the truth is that rivers are wild, chaotic, dynamic places. You can decrease your risk through skill, knowledge, and your choices on the river. But, you can’t eliminate it. If you decide to run a rapid, it could be different than it looked from shore. You might mess up a move you thought was a gimme. There could be an unseen hazard. You might decide to portage, but the portage turns out to be sketchier than running the rapid. Loose rock, steep slopes, and a 50lb boat on your shoulder are a hazardous combination. There is a level of unmitigitable risk involved with travel on and around rivers.

So, how do we control risk?

First, knowledge. We have to know what may or may not happen. If I enter on river right, where might I end up? What are the hazards, and how bad are they? What are the rescue options if something goes wrong? On a river, gaining knowledge generally takes a lot of experience, trial and error, and mistakes. But gradually, we get a sense for how rivers move and act, and the bounds of what could possibly happen. Where a novice sees only chaos, an expert sees order and rhythm.

The second risk mitigator is knowing your skill level. Having a precise grasp of what you can and can’t do mitigates your risk. In some sense, your accurate assessment of your own skill level is your protection on the river. Knowledge of the river and knowledge of self combine to give you tighter and tighter error bars on what could possibly happen in a rapid. If you are right, that makes rivers safer.

The Rainbow Pool

My grainy photo looking up at the rapid from the Rainbow Pool. Note Sage in the top left for scale.

At the Rainbow Pool, I had messed up in both areas. I had misjudged the river, thinking that there was nothing major downstream. I had also misjudged my skill level, thinking that I could definitely, easily catch that eddy. I was wrong.

So, I dropped into the Rainbow Pool Portage, and took the biggest boof stroke of my life. I climbed up on the pillow coming off the first wall with that one stroke. Then, the river turned 90 degrees to the left, and I fell away into the abyss towards another wall. I got a glimpse of a dark, swirly landing, but didn’t know anything beyond that. In the air, I lifted my left edge away from the incoming wall, and hoped.

Hard hit, water pounding, flip, pain, chaos, more pounding water, loudness, then suddenly freedom. I rolled up in the Rainbow Pool, at the bottom of a crack drop that probably falls ~45ft into a wall. I was fine.

And that’s the paradox of kayaking. I had just had my most uncontrolled moment in a kayak. I had no idea what I was dropping into, and literally anything could’ve happened. I could have been broken, unconscious, or drowned. But 10 seconds later, I was completely safe and uninjured, floating in a calm green pool. I’d even go so far as to say, I had a decent line.

To me, risk is one of the most interesting aspects of kayaking. Its presence gives all actions on the river a weight that is not found in everyday life. Decisions have real and present consequences. However, unlike free solo climbing, the risk is not binary. You can walk up to the edge and often get away with it, and also get good feedback along the way. The assessment of risk and how those situations play out have taught me deep lessons about myself, and the way the world works.

Decision Analysis

One thing that I have learned is that the quality of a decision cannot be measured by its outcome. Too often, I see someone have a terrible line, roll up at the bottom, and then claim that they made a good decision to run the rapid because they ended up ok. Or, someone has a good, but lucky line, and are blissfully unaware that they were flirting with disaster. In both cases the boater is likely taking on more risk than they realize. To accurately judge the quality of a decision, one can only use the information and probabilities known at the time of the decision. The outcome is not relevant¹. While I learned this idea on the river, it turns out to be one of the fundamental rules of decision analysis, and is used widely in business and engineering.

A non-kayaking example: let’s say you play rock-paper-scissors with someone and lose. In that scenario, some people will claim they made a bad decision. Actually, the decision was perfectly reasonable based on the information at decision time, and the result was unlucky. The flip side is also true: if you win, it was not necessarily a good decision. Unless there was some information that was missed (like the opponent had a tell), the decision can’t be second guessed. Likewise, risk can only be assessed based on the information you have at the time of the decision. You can make terribly risky decisions with good outcomes, or great decisions with bad, unlucky outcomes.

For me at the Rainbow Pool, did I make a bad decision? The decision was to boat scout down to that low eddy. The assessments I got wrong were, A) I was going to catch that eddy, and B) there was nothing downstream. Clearly I was incorrect on both. But, in looking back, I think that B was much more problematic than A. I could have caught that eddy if I knew I absolutely had to. But, I hadn’t gathered enough information about the river, or been suspicious enough about what could lie around the corner. I had misjudged the probability of a dangerous rapid downstream. To me, this was a serious mental error, and hopefully one I will never repeat.

Reality

Outsiders have often asked (or accused) that risk = thrill. For me, that’s not the case. For me, the risk is about grounding. It’s about knowing that I'm right. The thrill and meaning are in the execution: the proof that I understand how the world works and that I can operate under pressure.

Kayaking is not a game. It’s not a fantasy or make-believe. There are no guardrails, and no one else is, or can be responsible for my safety. Kayaking is fully real. For me, that experience is empowering and enlightening. I get to see the world as it is, and to see if I understand both myself and the river.