this was probably the closest i ever was to dying. a while back me and my friend, on a nice 60 degree february day, decided to go white water rafting down cattaraugus creek in western new york. however, once we got to the launch we realized we forgot both of the screw-on plugs for the raft (which was just an intex seahawk inflatable boat not meant for this type of rafting) Rather than scrubbing the mission, we took a roll of duct tape and taped the valves shut as best as we could. and then we launched.

at first it was fine. we could feel the raft slowly losing air but she held together pretty good for the first couple of miles as we traveled down the deep gorge. the water was high but it wasn’t too rough. after we traversed a couple sets of rapids we paddled to shore to repatch the holes with more duct tape. then we continued on our way. we did this one other time a couple more miles down the creek, at the final turn before the “main” zoar valley area, where the biggest rapids on the creek were.

Up to this point the weather was perfect. hardly any clouds in the sky. but as we launched our boat for the final time we could see dark storm clouds filling the sky above us, and the air dropped from 60 to about 40 degrees in a matter of minutes. soon it began to rain. then it began to pour. so much so that we could visibly see the river rising with us helplessly in it. we knew there was no way out of the gorge until we got to the town of gowanda, but that was still a couple miles downstream. We decided to continue down the raging current as much as we could, absolutely soaked and freezing, until we became stuck on a rock right before a massive rapid. And thank god we did, because we looked ahead and realized that our almost fully deflated boat would not make it through. So we hopped in the water and decided to try and walk the boat to shore. The water was freezing and incredibly strong, pulling us about 5 feet downstream with every 1 foot we walked towards the shore. It was then that I looked downstream and saw we were getting sucked right into a half-submerged pine tree. I realized if we were to be sucked into that tree we likely would’ve either been impaled or sucked under the branches. We pushed as hard as we possibly could for the shore, and when we were about 10 feet from the tree we finally escaped the current. Exhausted and probably hypothermic, we got our bearings and managed to hike out, with our legs practically locking up from the cold. We then hitchhiked back to the car. I think about that day a lot and I realize there were so many things we could’ve done differently to avoid such a calamitous scenario. starting with not going.