As Rafting Draws a New Breed of Adventurer, Experts Worry Its True Risks Are Being Ignored

For a long time, the people who launched themselves down whitewater rapids were stupid or crazy or courageous.

Without a clue as to what might lie around the next bend, men like the bearded, one-armed explorer John Wesley Powell would ride wooden dories, full-speed-ahead-and-damn-the-waterfalls, down rivers such as the Colorado. That people would die was a given--the price of purposeful adventure.

After World War II, a handful of recreational thrill seekers decided that the adrenaline high of rodeo rapids was worth the clear threat to life and limb. As equipment improved, though, the danger in whitewater rafting dropped dramatically, and in the last 15 or 20 years hundreds of commercial outfitters have opened shop, catering to people who wouldn’t be caught dead risking their lives.

Last year, however, turned out to be the best and worst of times for the booming sport. More people than ever tried it. And more than anyone can remember got killed. Now the issue of acceptable risk is again roiling in the minds of some river enthusiasts.

The biggest shock came last summer, when, within six weeks, 11 people, including five of the top executives in American advertising, died in highly publicized accidents on rivers in British Columbia. At least another four people died that summer on other commercial trips across the United States.

This year’s death count began in California last April, when a boat on a Wild Water West trip slammed into a rock and “reverse wrapped” on the challenging North Fork of the popular American River.

In that incident, the guide and passengers were momentarily pinned between the boulder and their raft. Wedging himself between the boat and the stone obstacle, the guide enabled most of the rafters either to scramble onto the protruding boulder or flush free of the raft, which was pinned vertically by the current. Other guides on shore and in boats rescued those passengers as they tumbled down Staircase rapid.

But, according to a spokesperson for the company and a report filed with the Placer County Coroner’s office, one man remained trapped between the raft’s inflated rubber tubes and an undercut in the rock.

32-Year-Old Man Drowns

Rescuers apparently did everything by the book, slashing the inflated tubes with knives and quickly hauling the boat off the rock with lines. But when they extricated 32-year-old Ali Unutkan of Newark, Calif., seven or eight minutes later, he had drowned.

He was the third rafter to die on that stretch of river in just over a year--the second to be killed on that exact rock.

There are a lot of reasons why people die on rivers, the most important of which may seem the most obvious: Rivers are dangerous.

The piecemeal statistics available suggest that rafters on commercial trips are much safer than people on private raft trips, and that they have a much greater chance of whacking themselves in the head with their own paddle or spraining an ankle playing Frisbee on shore than they do of getting hurt running a rapid.

But experienced river guides warn that the very slight objective danger in the sport is compounded by the contradictory belief of a new breed of thrill seekers--that adventure can be risk-free.

“The river industry is growing at a rate of 20% a year, and (injuries and fatalities) are going down,” said Sherry Griffith, a veteran Utah river guide and president of Western River Guides Assn., which represents about 200 river outfitters in 12 Western states.

She added, though, that while whitewater rafting once attracted only “real outdoorsy adventure seekers,” in the past few years “people who’ve never been camping in their lives” have been hopping into outfitters’ rubberized-oar or paddle-powered rafts for trips of a few hours or a few weeks, sometimes on “Class IV” rivers that were “unrunnable” only a few years ago.

“I think part of the risk is (the result of) people not taking responsibility for themselves. . . ,” Griffith said. And no matter how well-organized a trip, how well-trained a guide, and how harmless and meandering a river’s currents might be, a passenger’s life is ultimately in his or her own hands, she and other guides said.

Complete statistics on rafting are hard to come by, since different rivers are regulated by a variety of agencies, ranging from the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, National Park Service and even the Coast Guard, on the federal level, to various state and county agencies locally.

In the East, where the industry is expanding less rapidly than in the West, visitors last year spent more than 600,000 days on the 12 major rivers served by the 55 outfitters belonging to the Eastern Professional River Outfitters Assn., said David Brown, executive director of that organization. About 2,000 guides ran the trips, which brought in about $30 million in gross revenues for the member rafting companies, he said.

Jerry Mallett, executive director of Western River Guides, estimates that people spent 2.5 million days on 195 rivers in 12 Western states last year, producing revenues of about $60 million for California outfitters, $50 million for Colorado companies and millions more in several other states.

As the popularity and financial incentives have risen, so has the professionalism of the industry, most observers agree.

Colorado, for example, launched a rigorous inspection program after 11 people--most of them on private trips--were killed in whitewater incidents in 1983. “There were too many (outfitters) in the state who were real scary,” said Jim Kirschvink, river coordinator for the state. Now outfitters must be licensed and six rangers in the state perform inspections on the rivers, checking to make sure guides meet minimum training and experience requirements for the river they’re running, that first-aid kits are complete and boats in good shape.

“We’re real rigid about it,” Kirschvink said. “If we find a single guide with expired (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) card, we’ll issue a citation.”

Inspections by one agency or another are also routine on other popular and potentially dangerous runs, such as the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, although the requirements vary widely from river to river and agency to agency.

In some states, including Utah, Arizona, Idaho and Maine, guides are licensed. In Maine, Idaho and Utah they must pass written tests. And even in states such as California, where there is less formal regulation, most companies require their guides to complete a “whitewater school,” specialized classes in wilderness river rescue and some sort of apprenticeship.

Old Breed of Boatmen Fading

And with increased government scrutiny and peer pressure, as well as rising insurance premiums, the old breed of boatmen--the ragged eccentric and renegade adrenaline addict--is quickly fading into folklore.

“That avant-garde, laissez-faire business is gone. It’s more of a service industry than a white-knuckle trip now,” Mallett said. “Instead of high risk, we’d call it high adventure.” He and others argue vociferously that what happened last summer in British Columbia only reinforces the fact that the safety measures that are routine with most responsible outfitters were glaringly absent in that accident.

Still the report of the coroner in British Columbia is chilling: “The incident has served to focus attention on a seemingly harmless activity which should provide a high adventure thrill in an exciting environment. Although the guide successfully navigated the rapids 207 times without loss of life, the circumstances presented there demonstrated that 10 ‘tourists’ capsizing at the headwaters of Lava Canyon had a 50% survivability rate.”

Released last December, the report reached conclusions similar to those experienced boatmen had voiced informally as details of the tragedy were announced last summer.

Guides said, for instance, that outfitter Ron Thompson’s most serious mistake was in using only one boat. Had there been a second boat--even a “safety kayak”--and perhaps crew members positioned on shore beneath the rapid with throw bags to toss to the people dumped into the water, it is unlikely there would have been such loss of life.

No Wet Suits or Helmets

Most outfitters also require, or at least suggest, that passengers running rivers with particularly cold water--such as the Chilko--wear wet suits. None of the passengers on the tragic trip last August were so equipped.

By the same token, outfitters generally require passengers to wear helmets on rivers where collision with rocks is a possibility, but the passengers on the Chilko did not have helmets. It isn’t clear how significant this was, but the coroner’s post-mortem showed that “at least one decedent . . . was apparently dazed at the beginning of the ordeal (by a possible blow to the head), and he and three others demonstrated minor head injuries. . . .”

Guides also said that the raft, with 12 passengers, a guide and some supplies on board, was seriously overloaded. The coroner’s report is inconclusive on this, but it does raise the possibility that overloading, coupled with a slowly leaking inflatable tube, may have made the raft sluggish, contributing to the accident.

Perhaps the most controversial issue raised by the accident focuses on life jackets. Although no one involved in the Chilko tragedy lost his life jacket, several of the survivors said their jackets rode up over their heads and did not keep their faces above the water.

When he testified on issues of life-jacket safety before a House subcommittee last February, Wayne Williams, president of the National Transportation Safety Assn., used the Chilko accident to illustrate his longstanding contention that life jackets used in whitewater rafting should be equipped with “crotch straps,” to keep them from riding up over the heads of survivors as they are tossed through rapids.

“Probably all the deaths could have been prevented,” if crotch straps had been used, he said. Most outfitters and guides contacted, however, said that the life jackets used on commercial trips are more than adequate, provided the jackets are properly adjusted.

There is also disagreement about whether the inexperience of several passengers on the “difficult” to “extremely difficult” (Class IV and V) rapids of the Chilko added to the danger.

Screening the Passengers

Mallett of Western River Guides said that most outfitters screen passengers, making sure than anyone running a Class IV river has experience and is in reasonable shape to survive the relatively common experience of falling into the water. Many companies, he said, now ask passengers to swim through a small rapid to acquaint themselves with the initially unsettling sensation.

He added, however, that he has flipped a raft carrying a paraplegic on one of the biggest holes on Westwater canyon of the Colorado river and no one was hurt, and that “we’ve run trips through the Grand Canyon with people on dialysis machines.”

“There’s an opportunity for just about anyone in any physical condition to enjoy a river experience . . . “ if proper equipment and safety measures are taken, he said. He added that most outfitters will ask some or all passengers to hike around a problematic rapid.

Such reassurances aside, everyone involved agrees that the buyer must beware in selecting an outfitter. Recent flyers for commercial companies--many of which do not belong to either the Eastern or Western professional organizations--show passengers crashing through waves and rocks with unbuckled or poorly fitting life jackets and no helmets.

Even though the North Fork of the American River--where three people have died in just over a year--has been officially closed since mid-June because of low water, at least one Northern California outfitter contacted by The Times offered to guide a trip, using a single boat, down those currents.

The final advice in the British Columbia coroner’s report is to “the general public”:

” . . . Be aware of the potential high risk to life associated with whitewater rafting, as demonstrated by this incident and others. Challenging and demanding rapids must be respected and approached with an attitude of safety, coupled with individual fitness and ability.”

Like most people who dedicate their lives to river sports, Charlie Walbridge, chairman of the Safety Committee of the American Canoe Assn., does so because he believes the rewards of whitewater far outweigh the dangers.

He points out, however, that in rafting rivers: “You’re dealing with some powerful forces. A good outfitter can decrease the risks, but he can’t eliminate them. If someone can’t accept risks, he’d be better off going to Disneyland.”