I was paddling on the Columbia River a few days ago; the river was high and running fast with the spring freshet and the tide going out. I had just paddled around one jetty without a problem on my way upstream. There was one more jetty to round before I reached the head of the island I was paddling around. This second jetty doesn’t stick out nearly as far as the first, so I thought it would be no big deal. Even so, I knew better than to get too close to the end of it. I paddled out into the channel to where I thought I would be clear of most of the turbulence. I was surprised at how powerful the current was even though I was giving the jetty a very wide berth. Suddenly I was caught in a giant upwelling which turned my boat away from where I was headed. At the same time a very large whirlpool formed too close for comfort. I let the current turn the boat around and headed back downstream a bit and then went to shore. I decided it would be prudent to carry the boat up the beach around the jetty and I’m not the least bit embarrassed that the river was just a bit too daunting that day.
That’s pretty amazing. There are a couple of stories of whole lakes disappearing that way (one disappeared into a coal mine, and another into a salt mine). How scary to meet one’s end that way.
I’ve seen smaller versions of those upwellings and whirlpools that show up randomly on the Wisconsin River when it’s in high flood, and even though I’m guessing they are far smaller than what you encountered, they are quite scary to look at. They also feel very powerful when grabbing the boat, even though I’m in a boat which is much more “turny” than your sea kayak, and thus not affected nearly as much.
In one of Bill Mason’s books, he describes being parked along a canyon wall, seated in the bow of a tandem canoe, and the next thing he knew he was underwater and had no clue regarding the reason. The stern paddler later told him that a compact and powerful whirlpool had come along with the current and it sucked the front end of the boat right down. The stern paddler threw a heroic brace and kept the boat upright so both paddlers were none the worse for the experience when the front end of the boat popped back up, though the canoe was partly swamped too.
There used to be a railroad bridge on the Wisconsin River where an enormous whirlpool would form about 60 feet downstream of the bridge during high water. The bridge is gone now, but I recall the whirlpool being roughly 40 to 50 feet in diameter and about two feet lower in the center than at the edges, and boy, did that thing ever spin!!!. A friend of mine who is an avid fishermen sometimes went through it with a small motorboat and it took everything the motor could do to slowly crawl uphill to get out of the thing when going upstream.
It was on our local news, and as I recall, the guy who drowned was actually trying to rescue others? Not surprising with the Karst topography we have in this area. So many caves, sinkholes, and old mines. In fact, just a few miles away from where this happened, we have a Grand Gulf State Park on the MO side of the border. Grand Gulf is somewhat of a miniature Grand Canyon formed by a collapsed cave system.
https://mostateparks.com/park/grand-gulf-state-park
Growing up on the Mississippi, I can remember some scary looking whirpools that would sometimes suck huge trees out of sight only to have them pop up suddenly downstream. Growing up on the Mississippi gave me a healthy respect of the river. A few times every summer we would meet a few people making the trip to New Orleans; I had ZERO desire to paddle a canoe on the lower Mississippi from what I’ve seen!
Yesterday while I again was paddling upstream on the Columbia when I was about to round a jetty at the same time that a giant freighter was passing by. I couldn’t go very far out into the shipping channel, so I kept fairly close to the end of the jetty. Just as I powered up to get past the accelerated current at the end of the jetty a giant whirlpool formed right in front of me. I got a little squirt of adrenalin and shot through that thing with nothing more than a little sinking feeling. I made a split second decision and it worked out fine. This whirlpool was big, but only about a foot deep. I’m not sure I would have done the same thing If I hadn’t already been up to speed.
Tidal races routinely generate whirlpools and boils in Maine
The most famous is Old Sow which has spun tankers
@wildernesswebb said:
It was on our local news, and as I recall, the guy who drowned was actually trying to rescue others? Not surprising with the Karst topography we have in this area. So many caves, sinkholes, and old mines. In fact, just a few miles away from where this happened, we have a Grand Gulf State Park on the MO side of the border. Grand Gulf is somewhat of a miniature Grand Canyon formed by a collapsed cave system.
https://mostateparks.com/park/grand-gulf-state-parkGrowing up on the Mississippi, I can remember some scary looking whirpools that would sometimes suck huge trees out of sight only to have them pop up suddenly downstream. Growing up on the Mississippi gave me a healthy respect of the river. A few times every summer we would meet a few people making the trip to New Orleans; I had ZERO desire to paddle a canoe on the lower Mississippi from what I’ve seen!
Kind of similar features here on parts of the Snake. Boats have been stuck in the whirlpools, and swimmers lost and never found. Those “tube” features aren’t always so visible at the surface.
Very sad. I was there. We conduct an annual paddling school on the Spring in June. Not sure what else anyone has read but Mr. (I think maybe Dr.) Wright was running a residential addiction recovery center in his home and had taken a group of his people up there for the weekend. I didn’t put two and two together until later but they were camped next to my GF and me. The spot where the tragedy occurred is Saddler Falls, one of many ledge drops for which that river is known. It’s really not runnable because there’s hardly ever sufficient water to carry boats over the ledges, but folks always try and usually end up having to drag their canoes which is very dangerous due to the potholes in the river bed. The river’s very wide there and the section referred to as Dead Man’s Curve is a narrow, sporty little class II on river left that terminates in a drop. It’s separated from Saddler Falls by an island and isn’t very wide. I can see why someone who doesn’t know the river would choose to try and run Saddler instead. Due to the shenanigans (think hillbilly mardi gras) that transpire at a riverside house there we always spend Saturday up river (don’t want to have to explain anything to twelve to fourteen year old boys’ parents) and work the Saddler Falls section Sunday. It was surreal to see most of the river roped off like the swim beach on a COE impoundment. Fortunately the students (and most of the instructors) didn’t know why it was there.