Dave says that his foot was caught briefly under a thwart as the canoe rolled over, but he twisted his body and pulled away. I didn’t see either of them at the time. It was like being caught under a wave at the Huntington Beach pier. High white foam and overpowering currents drove me down for an instant. Then I bobbed up, and the canoe was there within arm’s reach. I grabbed for it, pulled on the keel for support, and the canoe rolled upright. I caught the gunnel, and then I glimpsed Dave grabbing for the cliff rocks at water level! The rocks! We had been swept by a cross current across the river to the Dihedrals! I abandoned the canoe, and swam for the cliff, which was sweeping by at a mighty rate.

But why was I mostly under water? What had happened to my life vest? It was still around my left arm, but not my right. Then I realized that in the excitement of the launch, I had not tied my life vest stings. No wonder I was nearly submerged. I grabbed onto the vest and tried to swim at the same time.Then Bill bobbed up out of the green deeps nearby, and I saw him grabbing for a hold on the rocks, and the current swept me past. Bill said afterwards that he had gone down seven times, and fought for the surface as many times. I noticed as I weakly stroked toward him that he didn’t seem to have his life jacket on. He had made the same mistake as I had. I called out to him for a hand when I saw that he had gotten a grip on the rocks, but my voice was too weak to be heard over the roar of the rapids. His first hold seemed to be solid, and he thought that his 350-lb bench press strength would keep him on, but the current toyed with him like a cat with a mouse, and pulled him right off. Meanwhile I kept swimming as hard as I could, life jacket in tow. When I reached the rocks I grabbed a slippery edge. “Not very good climbing holds”, I recall thinking.

Then I glimpsed the mostly submerged canoe hovering nearby—maybe I could keep it from being swept downstream. We seemed to be in an eddy, so I released my hold on the rock, and felt for the bow line. But in seconds, the main torrent pulled the canoe away, and I reached back for the rocks. A few fumbles, and I was secure. Then I noticed how cold the water was. Now I had to concentrate on getting up and out onto dry land.

As I worked my way up onto the gravel shelf a few feet above water level, I caught sight of Bill’s blue shirt behind a projecting rock. He was out! I called for him, and then saw Dave. He still had his baseball cap on. Mine was long gone. Bill’s life jacket was dangling from his waist. He, at least, had tied the waist string of his jacket. His pockets had been stripped clean along with his hat and glasses during the bobbing and dunking towards shore. The currents had nearly beaten him, but he was a survivor. Gasping, we congratulated ourselves. A tourist came up to us, and remarked, “Boy, I wish I had taken some videos of that!” We smiled deleriously.

Then we took stock of ourselves. I recognized the spot we had come aground. It was the climbing spot where Katie and I had climbed the year before. Because of some misplaced carabiners, I had had to make a poorly-executed body rappel down to Katie, and rope-burned my shoulder. As it turned out, that experience would be useful later that day.

Plan A had failed. It was time for Plan B. Did we have a plan? We agreed that it might be a good idea to look for the canoe. So we followed the river trail above the cliffs, every now and then looking for signs of debris— paddles, pieces of aluminum, turkey sandwiches, whatever might have been caught in an eddy. We hiked about a mile downstream, and encountered two friendly girls from Oregon. They seemed interested in our plight, and we milked it to the hilt. Their names were Karen and Roochi. Bill was shivering, and they lent him a sweat shirt.

Then Dave sighted something on a ledge at the base of the cliffs on the other side of the river. The canoe! It seemed curiously flat, maybe even bent, but it was high and dry, with its bow only slightly submerged. The girls pulled out binoculars, and we checked out the contents of the canoe: lunch box, waterprooof bag, kneepads, and Bill’s pack. But there didn’t seem to be any paddles. Well, there were other pressing matters: How to get to the other side of the river? How to get to the point above the canoe? How to get down to the canoe? Was Bill’s missing car key in his pack that we could see in the canoe?
Karen offered to give us a ride to our car on the other side. We gladly accepted, and settled in to an enjoyable walk with them back to the parking lot upstream past The Dihedrals to the Visitors Center. We made a few phone calls, and I went upstairs to tell the rangers that when someone reported a canoe beached on a ledge, that they needn’t run down the river looking for bodies. We were all ashore and more or less intact.

About half an hour later we were on the other side of the river waiting in a line of cars to enter Great Falls Park, MD. A ranger came up to the car, and Karen showed her receipt for the Virginia side, and asked, “Do you want to hear our canoe story?” The ranger replied, “Oh, so it’s you; we heard all about you, go on ahead.” So we were having our 15 minutes of fame, courtesy of the cross-river park radio system. When we reached our car, we thanked Karen and Roochi profusely and said goodbye. They let Bill keep the sweatshirt, and we piled into the car. Dave and I put on our dry clothes, but Bill’s were in the canoe, so he stayed wet.

The hurricane had wiped out the C&O tow path and access to the Billy Goat trail. It was nothing but rubble gullies now and was fenced off by the park service. So we were forced to drive down to the Old Angler’s Inn a few miles downstream, where we could hike back up the trail to the canoe. The trail was twisty and rocky, with quite a few detours around deadfall and washouts. By the time we came to the right point on the cliff top, the sun was setting below the Virginia cliffs . We couldn’t tell exactly where the canoe was without crawling over the cliff edge. I was a little ahead of Dave and Bill, and located the right place to come out of the woods to the river by sighting a favorite climber’s route—the “Armbuster” climb, which I had noticed earlier was directly opposite the canoe. Dave, following a few minutes behind, having reached the approximate location, called across to the climbers on Armbuster, and they told him where the canoe was.

We clambered down to the edge of the precipice, looked straight down about 60 feet, and, yep, there it was. Now, we had to figure out how to descend. I had carried along the old German climbing rope that I use for tying the canoe on my car, and we uncoiled it as I tried to refresh my memory about body rappels.

Back in the old days before rappelling biners, body rappels were second nature, but that was some time ago. I had been burned once, literally, when I did a body rappell, so I racked my memory and figured the right way to wrap the rope around my body—through the legs, around the back, under the arm, then over the shoulder. I tied one end to a solid tree and backed off over the cliff.

Well, I made it down to the canoe, and found Bill’s car key (whew!), but then what? I wasn’t going to paddle anywhere, and we were in no shape to haul it up the cliff and tote it back to the car. Suddenly a guardian angel spoke to me from the river. One of the ever-present kayakers had pulled up to the shore. (Maybe he was the one who had tied the canoe off when it came careening down the river by itself?) Without any prompting from me, he offered to ride it down to the take-out point by Old Angler’s Inn, where we could pick it up. I gladly accepted, and I hauled my weary ass up the cliff.

Sure enough, when we tottered in to the Old Angler’s boatramp, there was the canoe waiting for us. We dragged it over to the car, tied it on, piled ourselves in, and drove over to the Inn. At the bar we sat down for a beer or three. We vowed to each other that one day, maybe soon, maybe later, we’d paddle Mather Gorge again. But two decades later we still haven’t tried it, scared off by those death waves, and since then my old Grumman canoe has only seen placid rivers and lakes.

• rakkity