Blanchard Trip

This picture was taken at 12:30 at night in the Yukon

Your not the only one that can save lives.

This last weekend was amazing. My guides and I went on a five hour road trip into the yukon to run a 3 class pushing 4 class river. It was amazing and so fun. During the whole trip we were able to see 5 bears, more than I can count porcupines and two foxes. The drive was amazing as the pictures will show but the river was SWEET! 

It was a huge party as can always be expected when we Chilkat Guides and Alaskan Mountain guides get together in any group but this weekend we were 75 strong. It was insane how many boats and people there were. The amount of people were cool but the river was even better, it was an epic day on the water even though it had snowed on the mountains above us only the night before. 

It was a great day to raft and we had a long trip ahead of us. The stretch of river we did was 21 miles long and bumpy all the way through. It was awesome but my worry free day came to a sudden end half way through the trip after the biggest rapid in the river. We had just past through the  rapid and had pulled over to empty the boat of all the water that we had taken on during the big section of rapids when I looked up river a good 50 yards and saw a swimmer in the 36 degree water. I was holding the boat so I could not let go without loosing the boat so i could not throw her a throw bag but my buddies could but they thought she would just swim over but she was in to much shock at the moment to save herself. Se she passed us by with a boat at her heals trying to save her also. As the boat past we lost vision of her due to the boat and the sweeper boat than passed and we were than the last boat of the whole outfit left. We thought that mabey she swam over to the side of the river and on a whim we went looking for her. 

We found her face down in fetal position on the rocks about a foot away from the water. She did not respond until the forth time. After talking to her we literally picked her up put her in our boat to get a bigger hypo kit. When we got on the water again the boat she feel out of was gone unbeknown to us. She was in my arms then, we did not have a good place to pool over and she was drifting in and out of consciousness. She was freaking me out, but luckily the next place to get out safely there were already people stopped there. We then stopped and swapped all her clothes for dry clothes and started a fire. After an hour and a half with fire and our body heat she revived well enough to go down the rest of the river. The river was still class 3 pushing 4 rapids the rest of the way and myself was picked to row her down the river in such a way that she got down as fast as possible and with out getting wet. So I made an hour and a half float to a hour float with a stop to puck and use the restroom. It was crazy and exciting all in one. So I can also save lives.