This is not the eddyline.

Water cycles. There is a little spot on the Klamath River, aptly named “The Eddyline”. It’s just that, an eddy line at the bottom of a class II rapid. Water in the Klamath River is warm, making this a great swimming spot (with a pfd). Sometimes you just swirl around in the eddy, hit the eddy line and do some quick spins while staying on the surface, very benign. On some circuits the eddy line will grab you, and if you don’t resist, can take you 15′-20′ deep while moving about 20′ downstream. This is just a little swirly in river with 1,500cfs. I’ve spent a lot of time here and had been mildly scared a few times, it can take quite a while to get back to the surface if you hit it right.

Looking back at my experience here, and general respect for the power of water, how could I stand at the lip of Lower Heath Springs on Royal Gorge and declare that resurfacing on the left isn’t an issue?

Heath Springs, Royal Gorge of the North Fork American, High Sierra, California.

Upper Heath Springs is a clean but still technical forty foot waterfall. Stacked right above Lower Heath, there is still enough recovery room for swimmers, so it gets run on a regular basis.

Chris Korbulic styling Upper Heath. If you look at the opening photograph you can see the base of this drop on the top right.

Lower Heath is a different story. A fifty to sixty footer that’s occasionally run with a history of epic close calls mixed in with clean lines. It’s generally acknowledged that the primary concern with Lower Heath is not the falls itself, but “the notch”.

The notch is an incredibly narrow fifteen foot off vertical falls that pushes hard into a deep undercut. What’s interesting is the notch is created by a log jam. The largest concern is staying in your boat, keeping your paddle and hoping you skirt doesn’t implode. Besides of course the general concerns entailed in running big waterfalls.

The line is far right, finishing with a little right angle just to be safe. The lip is about twenty feet wide. While scouting from downstream I underestimated the power and declared that since we were on the far right, there was really no chance of resurfacing on the left.

The left. You can’t see all of it from scouting, but the left side of Lower Heath is a cave of colossal proportions.

Evan Garcia runs Lower Heath, you can see part of the cave from here.

We deliberated for a while, but Chris Korbulic and I eventually decided to give it a go while Taylor Robertson and Devin Knight would set safety.

I really wanted to shoot this angle, but would have to sacrifice seeing Chris run the falls.
Chris Korbulic runs Lower Heath.

I took one more look from the lip and talked to Taylor, who mentioned that Chris went a little over vertical but had no problems and ran through the notch. Still feeling it I hopped in my boat and lined it up down the right. Rolling over the lip I leaned left and took a stroke, but it didn’t feel like enough, so I took another left stroke on the way down, trying to pull my bow up a little and angle right. Finishing the stroke I tucked up and braced for the impact.

Taking my first big left stroke…

I was relieved not to feel a big hit on impact, and stayed tucked up waiting to resurface. Waiting. Wow I must have gone deep. Did I just cartwheel? I feel my boat rush to the surface. “Thin slicing”. My subconscious takes on the whole situation in under a second. This is really bad. Rolling up I know I’m on the left and under a second away from going into the undercut wall. No time to paddle against the force of so much water, I lean into the wall hoping to work my way off it upright. I underestimated the current flowing in the wall and window-shade right into the undercut.

No time to contemplate it, but I know it’s a no swim situation. The undercut blocks my paddle from getting anywhere close to the surface, so I reach up the wall and feel around. A small pothole in the wall offers perfect grip for a wall assisted roll and I am upright again and leaning hard into the wall. Something feels physically wrong and I push my way into the far back of the cave. No helmet. Not sure how it came off but that doesn’t matter at the moment. (Note the buckle sheared, it was 8+ years old)

The options back here are clear, try to paddle out because it’s the only option. Thankfully the cave is so deep there is a “pool” where only a moderate amount is moving into the back wall and I can catch my breath. It’s a long ways across and very uphill from here, but just maybe…

I knew it would be a tough ferry the second I started to leave the cave. There was no slack water at all, just the outflow from the falls pushing into the undercut wall. The closer to escape, the more uphill it was, until the very boil from the falls met a rock outcropping. I ferried out into it but a surge shoved me back into pocket of “slack” water that was swelling 2-3′ up the rocks every couple seconds.

It was undercut right next to me and I was expending a lot of energy just staying upright while looking for options. Facing the wall it was undercut and overhanging to my left, but on the right an outcropping sloped in a forty five degree angle. I searched for hand holds hoping to be able to step out onto the shelf, but the rock was incredibly polished. If I fell in while getting out, which looked almost certain, I’d go right into the undercut wall. Maybe I could still paddle across.

Surging in the pocket I turned my boat around with considerable effort and tried to paddle across several times, once making it almost five feet across the boil. It felt so close but I was still at least five feet from the peak of the boil, a long ways to climb uphill. As I made more attempts I saw Chris had climbed up on the river right bank and we were able to make verbal contact. I gave paddling across a few more attempts but could feel my energy fading fast and went back to the pocket to catch my breath as well as I could. The pocket was so violent that I was having a hard time conserving energy.

Chris signaled that he would try to throw his rope across the river to get me out, so I turned around and watched Chris have the perfect throw, dead on to me and coming in fast. His bag landed three feet in front of my bow, and quickly vanished underwater as I paddled forward. We decided to give it one more try, but the next throw was not as successful as he tried to get a little closer, which took him near the falls which impeded his throw. I told Chris I was too tired to continue this, as it had already been about forty five minutes of hard paddling between escape attempts and avoiding the undercut.

The worst case scenario plan. Vertical extraction is never easy, let alone when you can’t make visual or verbal contact. To complicate matters there are no anchors on Lower Heath, just a ledge fifty feet above the cave. Taylor and Devin had made contact with Chris and lowered a rope over the edge. Paddling back to the deep part of the cave I grabbed the rope and clipped it to my rescue belt. I slung my camera bag over my shoulder and clipped my personal throw rope from my bag to my boat. Knowing my helmet was gone and I wouldn’t be continuing downstream, and quite frightened by the situation, I wasn’t too concerned about the boat besides my overnight gear. Then I made a major mistake.

Unable to make contact with Devin and Taylor they started to put tension on the rope and I exited my boat. My first key mistake was doing something we all know not to do. Having just done Dinkey Creek and some other lower elevation runs, I didn’t dress for the swim. Wearing just a drytop/base layer combo and shorts, I was already cold. Once out of my boat it was seconds before I was shivering, and as they pulled the rope taut I was still halfway in the water.

Up top another common mistake was made. They started pulling, and although they had the strength, they could not get enough grip on the rope to pull me up because of the amount of friction added in from the overhang. Taylor anchored the rope while Devin ran to get prussics from his partially portaged boat.

Down in the water this five to ten minute interval felt like an eternity. I was slipping into hypothermia and couldn’t decide if the water was warmer than the mist blasting off the falls. I had made the right choice by clipping into my rescue harness, there was no way I could have on this long. I tried to pull my boat back to get in it again, but the angles didn’t work and it would just slip back into the undercut. Shivering uncontrollably, feeling sluggish and tired I started blowing my whistle, I could not hold myself upright enough to keep my head out of the water for too much longer. I couldn’t help but think “I wonder how long I’ll take off kayaking if I get out of this”. For me the first “if” not “when” I’ve ever thought while on the river.

Immense relief flooded my body as the first good pull was made. They had the prussics attached and were able to get big 2-3′ pulls on the rope and within seconds had me out of the water and on my way out. At the brink of the overhang I barely had the coordination to help out, and with the help of Chis, Devin and Taylor I made it up to the ledge and gave everyone a round of hugs and huge thanks before staggering off to start a fire while they pulled my boat up.

I can’t thank my friends enough for the superb safety and effort they put into the rescue. Considering the difficulty of the situation the rescue was quick and efficient, but still took an hour.

Looking back my largest mistake was not wearing a drysuit on a run this cold. No excuses there. In my situation a swim probably, if not certainly, would have been deadly. Nothing that floats flushes from the cave, unless it goes unbelievably deep in the pool and moves over fifty feet downstream underwater.

Taylor Robertson summed it up about Lower Heath; “If you chose to run the bigger drops on these runs, shit will happen sooner or later.” Thankfully I was with the right people to help me out when it was well beyond my control.