IGNORANCE IS DEATH!

I thought I was going to witness the first fatality on the Bitterroot River yesterday (June 29th) while fishing clients in the town section; Angler's Roost to Woodside. We were stopped fishing a back channel when I heard a loud scream off in the main channel. I looked over and saw a man and his wife hit a strainer and flip their "boat". When I say they were in a boat it is a GROSS overstatement. This thing was an 8 foot dingy style raft that looked like it came off the shelf at Kmart. I wouldn't have been on the thing in Lake Como in a five mile per hour wind! I watched the couple grab their paddles (not oars) from out of the snag. Yes, they had two, three foot paddles they were each trying to use to row their dingy in very large water. As my clients continued to fish, I kept one eye on my clients and the other on the soggy couple. After fumbling around for a few minutes, they got in the boat only to make it a whopping twenty feet before t-boning another strainer! This time the genius couple managed to completely taco the boat around a root ball. It was amazing to me at this point no one had been seriously hurt or killed. The ironic thing is this was happening at the exact place where Dick Galli was killed last year. As I watched Dingyman try to free his folded "boat", I told my clients I should not go help him which would force them to walk out. However, I decided against my initial feeling and walked over. When I got to the couple, I asked them if they realized they were on the most dangerous river in the State of Montana. Dingyman replied, "Oh ya, we have floated this before." I immediately responded, "You have obviously never floated before because I just witness you flip your boat twice in twenty feet. Furthermore, this is the exact place where Dick Galli was killed last year. I will help you pull this boat out but you need to walk due east of here and go to the Fetch Inn. Do you want to die today? This river will kill you if you go back in it. I do not want to be pulling bodies out of the water today!" Against my better judgment I pulled the boat off the strainer. I tried to reinforce the fact that he and his wife were in a very life threatening situation if they got back in their dingy as the river got real serious in the next 400 yards.

I pulled my anchor and headed to the Skalkaho Creek channel, where I planned to make lunch for my clients. As soon as I got back up the channel and dropped my anchor, I heard shouting coming from the main stem again. I thought, OH SHIT HERE WE GO! Immediately I took off running for the main channel. By the time I got there I saw Dingyman hanging onto another raft while trying to hold on to his dingy. The wife was nowhere to be found. I stripped off my shirt, hat and sunglasses and swam across a small channel to an island on the main channel. My intent was to help the other boat rescue this guy because it was obvious they were struggling to oar; the guy and his raft were hanging on where their starboard oar needed to go. However, they were able to get into the Skalkho channel backwater. I yelled at the man in the water, "Where is your wife?" I thought for sure we would be pulling her body out of one of the MANY strainers upstream. Luckily, she somehow managed to jump on shore when they hit the first strainer. At this point I completely lost it on Dingyman. I yelled at him, "Do you have a fucking death wish?! I told you you were gonna die today if you got back in that boat. Do you see this channel? This is Skalkaho Creek. Take that boat, put it on shore and walk your ass outta here. You have absolutely NO business being on this river. Not only have you endangered your life, you have put your wife at risk as well as my life and the lives of these two people who just saved you! It is not our responsibility to pull your ass from the river because you are ignorant." He told me he was not in the mood to be yelled at right then. Maybe so, but I was very pissed off. He finally did heed my advice and the last I saw of the couple they were walking east toward Highway 93.

I don't know if this guy realized it but if it weren't for the two guys from Washington State, me, or someone else, would have been pulling his body from the water. The Washington boys were heroes yesterday! There would have been no way that Dingyman would have made it through that maze of log jams and strainers. I think Dingyman is part cat because he used up at least three lives yesterday. I know some of you who read this probably think my comments to Dingyman were probably a little too harsh; maybe so. However, I have been posting on my blog and my reader board at the shop that the river is super dangerous. Dingyman put way too many people in harms way multiple times yesterday. It would have been real tragic if they came here on vacation and left in a casket! On this river ignorance isn't bliss, ignorance is DEATH!!!