SULTAN — The rescue of a woman thrown from her kayak and pinned against a snag Tuesday underscores the dangers of Snohomish County’s rivers at this time of year.
She was with three other local women in their 30s and 50s. All enjoy the outdoors. Each had their own kayak. Each wore a life jacket.
They went online to study up on the stretch of Skykomish River they would be following out of Sultan. It was described as a flat-water paddle — free of rapids and waterfalls.
What they hadn’t anticipated was the massive amount of debris in a channel off the river’s main course. Sultan absorbed five floods over the winter. Left behind was an obstacle course of tree trunks, branches and root balls.
The river is rife with strainers, the debris that water flows through but can catch people and pull them under.
“It was an experience in reading the river,” said Snohomish County Sheriff’s Lt. Rodney Rochon, who heads up his agency’s marine unit. “When they decided to go right at that fork, the river caught them and forced them into a bad situation they weren’t able to handle. Had they gone left, they would have been fine.”
The river narrowed, the current picked up and they were swept toward the snags.
Two empty kayaks were left wedged into a wall of debris a few feet from one another. Another made it through and ended up in the backside of the snag.
Two of the women made it to shore safely. Another was in her kayak pinned against a strainer close to the woman clinging to branches, Rochon said.
Water rescue teams from Sultan, Monroe and Gold Bar fire districts as well as the sheriff’s office marine unit worked in the river and along its banks that morning.
The women stranded in the river were brought ashore. The one thrown into the water was driven to a hospital to be treated for hypothermia and exposure.
It was a timely rescue because the river was running high and swift and the water was extremely cold after a rapid snow melt in the mountains, said Chief Merlin Halverson, of Snohomish County Fire District 5 in Sultan.
“You are not going to last very long in the water before you become hypothermic and your body stiffens up and you can’t really think logically and bad goes to worse,” Halverson said. “The water is relentless and it keeps coming.”
The sunny warm spring is luring people to the rivers earlier than the fire chief is used to seeing.
Like Rochon, Halverson cautioned people to know the river and understand that it is constantly changing.
“The lesson to be learned is you want to pick your route and you don’t want the river dictating where you are going to go,” he said.
Rochon said people should not only wear a life jacket on the river, but they should wear the right one. Some life jackets are meant for rivers; others for lakes.
People also should wear a helmet because they can knock their heads against rocks.
Rochon also recommends bringing a whistle and attach it to the life jacket. It can be used to signal for help.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; stevick@heraldnet.com.
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