Did you miss it? You can watch this online discussion, and many others, on the club’s youtube channel HERE.
Accident Reporting with Charlie Walbridge
Tuesday, March 16th at 6:30 pm PST.
As Safety Editor of American Whitewater, Charlie Walbridge collects accident reports so that the whitewater community can learn from them. Charlie will discuss why accident reporting is important, describe some of the lessons learned in the past 45 years, and answer any questions you have.
Accident Reporting
By Teresa Gryder
People have different approaches to thinking about and processing a crisis on the river. Some need to understand in detail what went wrong in order to inform their own future behavior. Others may prefer to not dwell on river accidents. They may plug their ears and sing “la la la” when others are talking about a disturbing accident or fatality on the river. Some middle ground between obsession and denial is probably healthiest.
As tragic as river accidents are, they do bring with them lessons that can and should inform our approach to river safety. All of us hope that our paddling trips will go smoothly. But without understanding the bad outcomes when they happen, we won’t have a realistic understanding of the risks involved in paddling. A balance is necessary. We need to know, but getting sucked into a wormhole of worry isn’t productive.
If you haven’t heard of Charlie Walbridge, and you’re a paddler, it’s high time you did. I first heard of Charlie in the 1980’s when I was a budding paddler. Every few years he’d author a new Safety Report tallying whitewater injuries and fatalities that had taken place. His reporting included an attempt to sort out the causes of each incident. For incidents involving experienced paddlers, he’d often share the whole story. For the ones involving novices not wearing a life jacket, the stories were brief. In all cases the reports served as both warning and lesson.
Back in those days Charlie’s reports were published as paperback pamphlets. I worked in the Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC) store and I knew when each one came out. I read them cover to cover. It’s fair to say that I went down the wormhole. I obsessed. Someone I cared about died on the river and I almost quit paddling. When I went to the Gauley to start video boating, I wasn’t sleeping well. I was spending too much time imagining my own drowning, deep under some chunk of sandstone.
I’m not recommending that you do what I did, but I do think there is value in knowing what the river can do. Knowing might persuade you to limit your risk-taking so that you live to be an old boater. If it wasn’t for the warnings in Charlie’s reports, who knows if I would still be here. In fact, Charlie’s Accident Reports have likely saved innumerable lives.
Now Charlie’s Accident Reports are catalogued on the American Whitewater website and circulated on Facebook. Paddlers can post incidents directly to the site. Charlie collects reports of river incidents, even when they are just inklings. When novices die, the reports can be sketchy because no one around them really understands what happened, including the newspaper reporters. But the boating community can likely understand. Indeed we can and should glean information from accident reports to inform our understanding of the risks we take on the river, and in turn the strategies we might employ to minimize them.
Charlie Walbridge started canoeing at summer camp and got really involved with it through his college outing club. He's been a serious slalom racer, river guide, and kayak instructor. He ran a mail order company, Wildwater Designs, for 22 years where he was one of the first to build and sell a throw bag. After the company closed, he and his wife, Sandy, moved to Bruceton Mills, West Virginia. He worked as a sales rep for Northwest River Supplies in Idaho, serving outfitters from Maine to Georgia, for 20 years before retiring in 2015. After witnessing a fatal accident at a slalom race in 1975 he wrote an accident report which became the first published description of the mechanism behind foot entrapment. He has been collecting accident reports ever since. He currently maintains the American Whitewater Accident Database, which has over 1800 entries covering accidents, near misses, and serious injuries. As Safety Chair of the American Canoe Association, he worked on education and outreach to the U.S. Coast Guard and a number of state boating safety agencies. Later he helped develop their river rescue program and published the Whitewater Rescue Manual.
About the River Safety Series
Guides and instructors are routinely trained on safety, but regular recreational paddlers can get years into their paddling life without any training. These talks are for you: regular paddlers.
The River Safety Series is organized and hosted by Teresa Gryder, the LCCC’s Safety Chair, who has made it her mission to help paddlers manage the risks of being on the water. Guides, instructors and subject matter experts will share their vast knowledge and experience gained over decades on the river. Instead of learning the hard way, join us to hear their insights and stories, and let useful tips sink in so that you might lower your risks and prevent injuries and fatalities on the river.
FREE and open to the public, you do not need to be an LCCC member to participate in the online River Safety series. Join us via Zoom on alternating Tuesday nights, starting Tuesday, February 16 at 6:30 pm PST and running through April 13.