* * *
For this leg of the trip, Ally found herself at the stern of their raft and last in line after Rene, Pam, and the two camera boats. That was fine by her. It gave her the chance to observe the other four rafts as they entered the rapids and learn what she could from their successes—or in this case, failure. Pam’s raft was in trouble. It had scooted around the first obstacle with ease, but was somehow out of position to take on the second. From her viewpoint, it looked like they were trying to blow right over a series of visible and invisible rocks that made this part of the river so treacherous. Then someone was overboard. She couldn’t tell who, just that it was one of their group as their helmets were a different color than those of the outfitters. Ally watched as first one, then the other crew boat tried to make it over to grab the woman in the water. They were moving too fast to get close. Behind them, Rene’s raft made attempts, but nothing close.
As they neared, her pilot’s precision eye quickly calculated the speed of the river and their progress compared to those ahead of her and she knew they would fail too. Operating on pure instinct, she pushed herself over the edge of the raft, keeping her head above water, her eyes open, and one hand still clinging to the raft’s safety line. She was close, so close, and managed to grab a limb, an arm of the woman floating facedown, clearly unconscious. Her plan was to pull her in, then perform mouth-to-mouth, but they weren’t on some quiet run or near the shoreline. Still hanging on to the unconscious woman and the raft, she was struck hard by a passing rock and almost lost the victim she was intent on rescuing.
Instantly the river tried to pull the woman in one direction and her and the raft in the other. Even with several hands clamped onto her arm, the force was too great, and she knew the drowning woman would soon be pulled away from her and the last raft. Making a choice, she consciously let go of the safety line, clamping on with two hands to keep hold of the woman.
She had her, but the raft, and hands desperate to keep a hold on her, separated. As the raft flashed past, the guide yelled that a rescue party would be back for them. Then they were out of hearing range. She could see worried looks and mouths shouting, but the roar of the river did everything it could to separate them first in sound, then distance, and finally, they were gone.
Fighting the river, she clung to the woman. She knew the best defense was to keep her feet ahead of her and concentrate on keeping her head above water and her eyes open and focused on what lay ahead. With the dead weight in her arms and the river intent on separating them, it took everything she had to hang on. Twisting and rolling, she could barely keep her own head above water much less the woman she was struggling to hold. And as for turning to keep her feet ahead to protect herself, there wasn’t a chance with her load uneven and dragging her this way and that. Her only course was to hang on tight, taking the blows as they came and praying she could stay conscious long enough to get them to shore. Hit after hit, she knew she’d be badly bruised. Bruises heal, broken bones too, so she fought with every inch of her being to keep her head above water. If she were knocked unconscious or worse, neither she nor the woman in her arms would survive and knowing that made her fight even harder.
She didn’t know how long it had been, but finally, Ally was pushed more than swam into what she would have called a tide pool. They weren’t clear of the rapids, but in a section relatively calmer than the rest. It would take some work to get to shore from here, but first, this woman urgently needed her help. She wrestled with the limp body, only realizing who it was when she had maneuvered her into a position to perform mouth-to-mouth.
“Erin—no!”
She blew, counted, and observed, watching for Erin to take a breath, then she did it again. Ally was starting to panic, unsure she could revive her under these conditions. Her position was tenuous at best. She couldn’t be sure she wasn’t over-flexing the windpipe and there was zero chance of performing CPR under these conditions of no solid ground. Was Erin even getting the oxygen she was repeatedly forcing into her lungs?
Try after try after try…then Erin began to cough. She coughed and battled wildly making it even harder for Ally to keep hold. “You’re okay, Erin! You’re okay! I’ve got you! Don’t fight me!” she screamed over the roar of the rushing, breaking water. “You’re okay Erin! I’ve got you.”
Ally wasn’t sure if her words were reaching her or if she was just too tired to fight, but the wild struggle stopped only to be replaced by collapse and a rush of tears. “No, no, no. No crying, baby. I’m here, and everything’s going to be fine!”
Erin looked confused, trying to find her bearings.
“You got pulled from your raft. Me too. And we’re okay, it’s just we need to get to shore, and I need to get you warmed. Will you trust me?”
Erin nodded, but the tears were still flowing strong. Her own emotions were running high too, and she hadn’t been knocked unconscious and almost drowned. “No worries, honey, okay? We’ll pick an easy route, and I promise, no matter what happens, I’m here, and I’m not letting you go.” That seemed to calm Erin more than the prospect of trying to get from the relative calm they had found past the wash of moving water all around.
From where they were, the north bank was closest but the route most treacherous. Ally gambled on the longer course hoping it was as steady as she hoped. “Erin honey, listen to me. I need you to get on my back, kind of like a turtle, and you’ve got to hang on tight! If I lose my footing, we need to go feet first down the river until we hit another shallow area.”
That caused a rise in tears, but Erin, for all her trials, nodded, allowing Ally to turn and wrap Erin’s arms around her neck. “Legs too,” Ally suggested. “Erin, you need to wrap your legs around me too.” She had one hand on the rock face in front of them, and the other tucked around the two arms pulling against her neck. She didn’t want to tell Erin to loosen her grip, but she was slowly being strangled.
“Okay Erin, keep your head up. Whatever happens, you need to protect yourself first. You hear me? Try to keep your eyes open, then you’ll know when it’s safe to breathe and when to hold your breath.”
Digging her booted feet deep into the sediment that was the river bottom, Ally pushed her back against the tide and began her trek toward the shore. She lost her footing here and there, but always regained control; then one slip cast them back in the full current. They ripped downstream at an alarming rate, but this time Erin hung on, and she was able to keep her feet forward for the most part. They tore past rocky outcroppings, but Ally was unable to get a handhold anywhere. She came close once, but all she managed to do was get them turned around, with Erin’s back taking the blows. She grabbed and grabbed with her hands and kicked and dragged her feet until they were turned feet first again. Erin for her part never let go. Finally, she was able to get a handhold on an overhead branch of a fallen jack pine. The branches on the bottom side were ripped away, and the trunk was slippery with the water and moss buildup. Still, Ally was determined. Plus she could feel Erin’s hold slipping. Whatever her condition, they needed to be out of the water and out now.
Hanging onto the water-smoothed trunk with both hands and digging her fingers into soft spots on the upper side of the log, she managed to drag them to the rocky edge of the river and pull first their upper bodies and eventually their legs out from the wild current.
Exhausted, they lay on the rough rocky bank, clinging to one another. Erin cried like a baby, then began muttering her apologies.
“Hey now,” Ally soothed. “Nothing to be sorry for. The river has her own idea about how things get done around here and to be fair,” she said, through her exhaustion, “I was watching your boat, and your raft master screwed up. I think he was trying to give the cameras a better show and almost launched you guys into orbit. At least that’s how it looked from where I was sitting.”
“It was my fault. I wasn’t paying enough attention.”
Ally, still holding her, smiled. “How could you. I mean, have you looked around a
t this place? Have you ever seen anything so, I don’t know, rugged doesn’t sound right, maybe…”
“Unspoiled?”
“Yes, unspoiled. You just don’t come across that…” Erin was shaking in her arms. “You’re cold, aren’t you?” Erin looked embarrassed, but finally nodded. Ally’s greater concern was for shock.
Ally didn’t need to check her watch to know it was almost after eight. Even with the long summer days, here under the deep boreal canopy it would be dark soon. How long until the rescue party made it to them? Would they radio for rescuers? If so, the best she could imagine would be three to five hours. If the foot party didn’t find them tonight, air search and rescue would be out at first light unless one of the camera teams and their four guides on board decided to backtrack and find them first. Still, with the speed of the river and the lack of landfall places suitable for a raft, she imagined they would be a good few kilometer downriver or more. How long would it take an experienced crew to hike the dense forest back to where they fell in? Remembering she had grabbed a tourist map from the lodge as they were preparing to get underway, she sat up, gently letting go of her grip on Erin, and pulled the soaked trifold paper from her pocket. Lucky for them it was resin coated, which kept the ink from running or fading. Ally laid it out carefully. It didn’t have a scale marker or any standard map markings, but it depicted the route and their stopping points.
“You think you know where we are?” Erin asked.
She was too exhausted to sit and that too worried Ally. She showed her the water-logged page that threatened to separate at every fold or crease. “This is our lunch place, here at this mark. I can’t imagine we’re much farther than here,” she pointed, “at least when we fell out. What do you think?”
“It just looks like a bunch of squiggly lines. What does it mean if we’re here? Can we walk to camp?”
“No, the bush is way too hard to navigate, especially at night. We’d be lost before we were a thousand yards from here. It’s always better to stay put. I don’t imagine it will take them more than two or three hours to find us.” Tears began to well again in Erin’s eyes. “Hey now, no more tears. I’ve got a plan. First step. We get a fire going. How does that sound?”
“Like heaven.”
Ally grinned. “Then one heaven coming right up.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Are you kidding me! We can’t just sit here. We have to go back—”
“Pam, stop! Just stop and listen,” Connie begged. “They have procedures for this.”
They had cleared the rapids and had come alongside the camera raft holding their director Connie, and the three rafts carrying contestants. The fifth raft, the second one holding a camera crew, held their distance recording everything.
Trying to defuse the tension, the expedition leader, sitting aft in Rene’s raft, explained, “We have choices to make. One, we can stop here, and everyone waits as we send guides back to find them and bring them to us. The problem with that is simple—a kilometer is a lot of distance to cover in the bush, and we’re already three hours behind, which means it’s going to be pitch black within the hour. Getting the rest of you down the river in the dark is dangerous and just plain stupid.”
Pam took offense with the “stupid” comment and had to be shut down by Connie again. “For God’s sake, Pam. Just listen!”
The guide seemed to realize that presenting options was not the best course of action and said decisively, “This is what’s going to happen. All of you will proceed down the river to the base camp where you will report our situation to the women running the camp. They know what to do. While they’re doing their part, the rest of you will set up your tents and settle in for the night.”
Pam couldn’t help but interrupt again. Ally and Erin were her closest friends in the world. “If you think we’re going to play happy little camper while—”
“Lady, you haven’t got a choice! We’re out in the middle of the bush. You can’t exactly call for an Uber or anything else for that matter. And it’s nightfall. And whether you understand that or not, it changes everything. Even if we called Trenton right this second for search and rescue, there is no place to put a chopper down. The best they could do is drop them a radio and survival kit and hike in tomorrow morning. Stop!” he ordered, seeing Pam ready to pounce. “We are going to send one raft back.” He pointed to the camera raft circling their impromptu armada. “I will take three of those guys and emergency gear and hike back to find them. By the time you have your camp set up, we’ll have found them, and you’ll know their condition. If all goes well, we’ll all catch up with you at the base camp tomorrow.”
“I’m sending the camera crew with you,” Connie said with firmness.
“Look, I get that this is a big show and all but—”
“They have floodlights,” Connie added, signaling her crew who immediately hit all the lights. The pool of rafts lit up brighter than the ice for a hockey playoff game.
“Okay, we could use that, but pick two guys who can keep up.” This he said looking directly at the rather robust woman handling the camera rig in Connie’s boat.
That pushed her over the edge. “Listen fuckface! Were all stressed! Insulting my people is not in the best interest of our situation. And for your information, Sandy here can bench press three-fifty, so stuff your—”
This time it was Pam’s turn to talk down her sister. “Enough. My friends are in trouble. Take whoever you want, just figure out who that is and get going. Please.”
He nodded. Then signaled to the raft circling them. “Jimmy, switch with me. Then get these ladies downriver and settled in. I’ll call you as soon as we have word.” The young man he called Jimmy gave orders to his fellow guides paddling the raft and they moved quickly alongside their leader. It took only seconds for the experienced men to switch places and then they were off. They would paddle hard as far as they could upriver. Then they would land guides on each side and begin the trek on foot to find the missing women.
Jimmy was much more careful with his charges. “I’m so sorry folks. But I don’t want anyone to worry. It’s nice and warm tonight, so even if your friends don’t remember any of the survival stuff we covered this morning, they’ll be fine.”
“Ally’s a pilot,” Rene offered. “She’ll know what to do.”
Nodding, Jimmy looked relieved to have positive news. “Oh, they’ll be fine then. Hell, by the time the guys get there, she’ll probably have a summer cottage built and a big mouth bass smokin’ over the fire.”
It wasn’t a great line, but it was enough to dissipate the extreme anxiety they were collectively feeling. “You’re right,” Pam added with authority. “As teens, we would camp with our grandfather on these alpine expeditions. You know, a week cross-country skiing somewhere. Ally was always so resourceful. Every time we stopped to camp, she’d serve up all sorts of things she would collect along the way, from berries to dead leaves and stuff she’d boil into some remarkable teas. And nothing scared her, well nothing but our grandfather’s campfire tales.”
Between Jimmy’s authority and Pam’s personal experience, the others began to relax. They weren’t back to their earlier level of fun and camaraderie and couldn’t be, but they were better, enough so to tend to their own needs. “Okay, ladies. I gotta say, you are the toughest group we’ve ever had go through here. It’s nice. If you were all guys, the fists would be flyin’ and most of you would be in the water by now, so this is cool. We ready to get goin’?”
Now in agreement, and with Pam and Connie calmed, they put their paddles back in the water and worked to finish the last five kilometers of the first-day course.
* * *
The last thing Erin wanted was for Ally to stop holding her, soothing her, but she was cold and it was getting dark. Ally had tried twice to extricate herself to build a fire, but she seemed unready to let Erin go either. Now, realizing just how fast the dark was creeping in, she knew she was too cold to help and that Ally would ha
ve a hell of a time finding firewood in the dark. “I’m…I’m still cold, but I’m okay. I want to help, but I don’t know what to do.”
“Can you manage a few minutes alone? I won’t go far, I promise.”
“Yes, okay,” was all she could say. Slowly she let her cold, stiff arms and hands fall from Ally’s warm body. As Ally moved away, struggling to get to her feet, it occurred to her that Ally might be as cold and sore as she was.
Sitting up, she wrapped her arms around her soaking sweatshirt, then decided it was probably better if she got the wet thing off. Ally was right. The air wasn’t all that cold. It just felt so after spending so much time in the water. If they were camping as she used to with her family, she would have found a sunny spot and let nature dry her off. From where she was sitting, she could see the last rays of daylight on the trees on the other side of the river while their side was already plunged in deep shadow. Both her fingers and Ally’s had been too numb to unfasten her helmet chinstrap. So, with nothing to do while Ally gathered wood, she fussed with the snap, willing her numb and shaking fingers to do her bidding. It took work and determination to make it happen, but minutes later she was able to toss the thing away. Rubbing her head and trying to finger-comb her tangled hair, she did know the helmet had probably saved her life. That and Ally. Ally had not been long on specifics in telling her what happened, but Erin had a good idea she was unconscious when Ally found her. She could remember the shock of being revived and the stinging burn her closed throat felt as she struggled to gulp in air.
Ally had been there. She had calmed her racing thoughts and comforted her aching body. Ally. Of all the people who could have gone in after her, it had to be her. And now they were alone and maybe for the night, and she couldn’t think of what to do or say. How could she be so tongue-tied and nervous now? Unwilling to confront that question, she forced herself to concentrate on their situation. Ally had said the first task was a fire and she was right. While she was hunting in the dark for firewood, the least she herself could do was prepare a fire pit. At lunch she had noticed the long pit dug in the sandy silt and ringed with granite rocks the size of her head. At this spot, there was no shoreline of any kind. There was fast-moving water, then you were in the woods, with zero transition. With no idea where to light a fire, much less how, she focused on gathering rocks to build a firewall. She couldn’t manage any of the larger rocks but accumulated a rather large pile of fist-sized specimens. It was hard to do with her hands still raw from the cold water and her trip down the river, but it had to be easier than Ally’s job.
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