Happy birthday to me. That was the thought going through the head of despondent whitewater kayaker John Hereford, who, trying to celebrate his whopping 70thbirthday by solo kayaking the Colorado’s Cataract Canyon, ended up swimming in Big Drop #3, losing his boat and having to get a helicopter evacuation out.
“I scouted it and tried to go between the two big holes, but I got caught in the first one, which worked me a little bit, and then I flushed into the second one,” says the longtime Colorado boater. “It was my first swim in 30 years.”
Hereford, while not making excuses, said he had a new bentshaft paddle he wasn’t used to as well as tweaked shoulder and gear mounted to his boat’s stern, which might have affected his ability to roll. But he realizes as well that the fault was all his. He says he “tried to roll about 12 times,” but couldn’t stick it in the swirly water, which was running at about 14,500 cfs.
After pulling his skirt and wet exiting, he says he tried to hold onto his boat as it was swept downstream but the current was too strong. “I’d get separated from it, swim for a while, and then go try and grab onto it again,” he says. “It took a while to get through eddy lines. Sometimes I’d get into one but the boat would stay in the current and I’d have to let go. Eventually, I made the decision that it was either me or the boat.” In all, he says he swam for about thirty minutes, his drysuit protecting him from the cold but not the swim. “I definitely swallowed a bunch of water,” he says.
After he realized he had to forfeit the kayak, he made it to shore cold and tired and missing one of his wetsuit booties. He then walked the left shoreline for a while but couldn’t see any trace of the boat, a Dagger 10.4 Katana with 100 gallons of volume, which had washed far downstream. Two hours after reaching shore he activated his In-Reach Mini at about 2 p.m. for a distress message, which rescue personnel picked up and responded to.
“It’s been 30 years since my last swim,” he says. “I’d forgotten how hard it can be in big water.”
After activating his In-Reach, he says the helicopter landed about an hour later to fly him out.
Four days later he got a call from Canyonlands National Park saying they had his boat in Moab. He went down and retrieved it, to find everything still packed inside.
Hereford had done this same trip solo four times in the last four years, but the other times were at lower water with flows of 4,000 to 8,000 cfs. This time it was at 14,500. And he’s no stranger to big water. Hereford, known as a “big water paddler” in the olden days ran Cataract Canyon during the big water year of 1983 at a whopping 90,000 cfs. “That was the first year the lake was filled, and now 40 years later it’s down to its lowest point,” he says. “I was trying to show that at 70 years I could still kayak Cataract,” he says. “But it was way pushier than my other recent descents.”
“I wanted to be on the Grand but couldn’t get a permit,” he adds.
In all, Hereford spent two days kayaking 50 miles of flatwater on the Colorado before arriving at Spanish Bottom below the Confluence with the Green. Then it was straight into the meat of Cataract.
As far as lessons learned, he says there were plenty. “It was embarrassing and humiliating and as brutal a swim as I’ve almost ever had,” he says. “It was a trashing mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. A lot of thoughts were going through my head, one of them being that the human lifetime is so insignificant. The take home is to practice with your gear and make sure it works.”
His paddling buddies back home, meanwhile, are a bit less diplomatic. “He’s a dumbass,” says friend Steve Conlin, a former commercial guide on both the Grand and Cataract. “But at least he was smart enough to wear a drysuit and bring his In-Reach.”
