Paddlin’ with Thaxton

By Jim Thaxton

For those who have experienced the trauma massive flooding can cause, the recent heavy rains here in Pendleton County likely triggered some troubling memories.

My oldest son lost his house on Route 609 during the Great Flood of 1997. The family’s canoe rental lost their office, several kayaks, rafts stored in the office rafters, and all their office equipment.

Thanks to the heroics of my office manager our main computer was saved at the National Association of Canoe Liveries and Outfitters office on Matilda Street in Butler. Everything else was lost.

Strangely, for me, my son, James, and my daughter, Lori, that flood, as devastating as it was, served only as a reminder of our rafting trip through the jungles of Costa Rica in early December 1994.

The first day on the Pacuare River was everything we could have imagined it to be — exciting rapids, lush vegetation, monkeys swinging in the trees, deadly spiders larger than a pie plate, colorful iguanas, dangerous poisonous frogs and the infamous ‘two-step” or Costa Rican “land mine” viper.

We arrived at the jungle camp about two hours before sunset. We tied our fleet of solo canoes, kayaks and rafts to trees along the banks and climbed about 40 steps to a small village of jungle huts each sleeping about eight to 10 people. Hammocks were strung between posts that supported a thatched roof.

We were served a delicious native meal of steamed fish wrapped in an edible leaf. We told stories and sang as the rain began to fall, gentle at first, then increasingly stronger until it was as if we were in a hurricane-force storm.

We were.

Throughout the night our guides scrambled to and from the river moving the boats to higher ground. It seemed everyone was up before sunrise complaining of little to no sleep and that there were puddles in their hammocks.

The rain slowed down a bit. One guide said he measured over 18 inches of rainfall. That would have been catastrophic in Kentucky, and practically anywhere else on the planet, but we were in the jungle, so I just shrugged it off as normal until I looked down to where the river was supposed to be.

All the steps were gone. We would not have to walk down to the river to launch. The river came up to us.

Over the guides’ radios, we learned that the roads to the camp were all flooded and would remain so for at least a couple of days.

While we ate breakfast, the guides and several of the experienced wild water paddlers in our group discussed our options. We had enough food to last if we rationed it.

As we discussed what to do, a large group of people in rafts and inflatable kayaks floated by. That was the catalyst needed for a group decision. We would continue, finish our trip and avoid interrupting our itinerary.

Once we were on the river, there was no turning back.

It didn’t take long for me to realize we made a bad decision. The guide in my raft, Pedro, positioned me in the back on his left. Four of my friends sat in front of us.  Pedros’ English vocabulary consisted of “paddle, paddle hard, back, back hard, we gonna die, stop,” and a few other phrases he learned while guiding.

Around the first bend from camp, the current took us directly toward a waterfall pouring tons of muddy water, debris and an occasional tree with roots and all into the river from the mountains to our right.

According to our guide, this was a waterfall that shouldn’t exist.

It looked like we were doomed to be crushed by water and lumber but amazingly as we approached the foaming monster, the wind it was creating as it hit the river pushed us left and we skirted around unharmed.  I immediately felt more confident. At least we wouldn’t be swept under the jungles’ equivalent of Niagara.

My sense of calm was not long-lived. My son paddling a kayak directly in front of us disappeared into a massive hole. Seconds later our raft went over top of him.

My guide and I spun our raft around to set up a rescue. There was no sign of James. Another kayaker downstream caught James’ paddle when it popped to the surface next to him.

Our fleet was using every available eddy to hold our position while watching for James and his boat to surface. Nothing.

The lead guide made the gut-wrenching decision to keep going. The river was still rising. There were more waterfalls where there never were before and spontaneous bursting waves that seemed to come out of nowhere and then disappear. If we stayed, it would only get worse.

One member of our group who was paddling an inflatable kayak shot up so high in the air that we were looking up at him as he and his craft fell into the turbulence and disappeared. He popped up way downstream and swam as hard as he could against the current as his kayak floated towards him. Maybe that’s what happened to James I thought hopefully. Perhaps he is way ahead of us.

We pulled onto a small beach where two people paddling solo canoes got in the rafts. We tied and towed their canoes. My daughter switched out of the smaller raft into the oar-framed bigger raft with all the supplies.  Her wild eyes were filled with terror. There was still no sign of James.

Several rafts in our group, including another kayaker and, I hoped, my son, were somewhere downstream of us.

Once back on the river, we were approaching another raging waterfall when suddenly my friend Scott and his wife, Patty, sitting directly in front of me shot straight up out of our raft into the air. An explosive wave bent our raft in half.

Scott fell back into the center of our raft at the guide’s and my feet. I handed Scott my paddle as I leaped over him and managed to grab Patty’s life jacket as she was falling into the river alongside our raft. I fell backwards pulling her back in and we both landed on top of Scott.

“Paddle senior! Paddle, paddle or we die, senior!” I could see the panic in our guide’s eyes as I scrambled to get back into position.

Our raft slid over a steep drop between a massive boulder on our left and a waterfall to our right.

“Oh, look! A toucan.” Our guide said calmly in perfect English without the slightest hint of panic in his voice just seconds before. The beautiful bird flew from our right to our left in what seemed to be slow motion. Amid the chaos, time stood still.

Scott and I brought our team back to real-time when we both yelled “Everybody high side” as the river slammed our raft up against a boulder at the bottom of the drop. We came close to flipping as the raft caught an eddy and we spun into a calm pool.

“I hear a whistle,” I said to our guide pointing to the one I had on my lifejacket. He nodded in agreement and yelled for everyone to backpaddle out of the current. We floated under a bridge. On a gravel beach just ahead of us on our left, the rest of our group was waiting — including James.

“Wow, Dad that was awesome,” he said as I gave him a bear hug and let tears of joy flow as free as the river.

We were at the takeout. We had floated more than 20 miles of river in less than two hours.

Months later, we would learn that 13 people from different outfitters died that day on the river along with several villagers who were swept away.

Thaxton is a retired Pendleton County High School math teacher. He and his wife, Ann, own Thaxton Canoe Trails in Butler.