“Learning By Accident”

Presented by
Wayne Gman
ACA Swiftwater Rescue Instructor

Safety Concepts
&
Creeking Rescues
Analysis of Fatalities and Close Calls
Examples provided in a Multimedia Presentation
Attend This Safety Class at the LVCC Filmfest
Saucon Valley High School
Hellertown, Pa 18055

DIRECTIONS MAP: http://tiny.cc/LVCC_FILM_FEST_SITE

Saturday, March 20st, 2010 12pm –2:30pm

$25 class admission
BACK STORY OF “Learning by Accident”
A couple years ago I contacted Charlie Walbridge to get some images and several
detailed accident reports. The weekend had been amazing having bagged 4 personal first
decents on the Middle, Tygart, Meadow and Fikes. When I got home at 2 AM I picked up
email and found out a friend had passed away tragically in a strainer. I suddenly found
myself charged with motivation to create a Safety presentation that I had been thinking
about for years.

Crystallizing the need was that just hours earlier that day I was boating with one of my
Advanced Swiftwater Rescue graduates. We had portaged around a benign looking
Class 6 hazard with a known deadly double pin spot at an undercut sieve block. It was
only 8 feet wide and full of nastiness. We put in downstream and I stared intensely
upstream looking at the teeth of the beast as my boat drifted. While I was reading the
hazard my buddy said he didn’t see what I was staring at and that summed up my
problem with the standard advance swiftwater rescues class.

Many hazards cannot be fully captured on video, but video can usually go an extra step
beyond just a verbal description that an instructor relates in the two-day rescue course.

So started my mission to develop a multimedia presentation that would aid paddlers in

understanding: what a sieve is, what an undercut is all about, what a piton does to a boat,
what different strainers looks like, what a frowning hole looks like, what a poor fitting
helmet can do to you, what a Low head dam can do to you, what a pot hole looks like,
what a boat looks like pinned in a pot hole, what a pot hole the size of a house can do to
you, what the Metewee sieve looks like that took a life, what makes the “Coming Home
Sweet Jesus Sieve” a class 5.3 or 6, what the sieve at Initiation looks like as a boater is
extracted, how a boat is pinned and extracted in the Upper Yough’s Time Warp, how was
the Metewee boat extraction pulled off, what does that Geddes vertical pin site look like
dry with a boat in it, how is it that a paddler had to be tied to a tree to survive a near head
down for 2 hours while his buddy went for help. In short this instructional extends how to
recognize hazards better, anticipate them and hopefully paddle with better appreciation
for risks regularly taken.
In time this presentation morphed into a much broader endeavor. I stopped counting time
once I got past 100+ hours. I continue to cut it down and add new better material. For
example this year I’m adding a tethered Rescue PFD tethered rescue of a trapped boat at
Surform on the Bottom Moose that someone taped of me. Currently the presentation now
has 200+ Power Point Slides and many have imbedded video driving home the nature of
the hazards. I’ve boated hundreds of 3-5 runs and I always boat with a video camera. The
video clips are from my adventures.

Amusement riding big rivers is balanced at the other end of the spectrum with tragic
injuries and occasionally death. New class 1-2 paddlers need to concentrate on learning a
good roll as their primary way of addressing Safety. Taking a basic safety course is
advisable as well. Newer paddlers are welcome, but this Presentation is aimed at
paddlers who are pushing into class 3 and beyond. The core of the presentation is
most useful for a new class 4 paddler negotiating many hazards for the first time. I
learned much compiling this information as a class 5 paddler; it will not disappoint
advanced paddlers.

Contact me with questions by email:

waynegman@aol.com or cell phone (732) 672-1817

If interested in Adv Swiftwater Rescue Classes

@ Scudders &Lambertville, NJ On:
6/5-6/2010
7/10-11/2010
Email waynegman@aol.com