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Comment by jupp0r | Hacker News Reader

> 100% mortality rate

Not if you count kayaking[1]. In general I doubt that this is more dangerous than other whitewater creeks. They are all death traps that people can't normally survive swimming in, especially if it's hard to get out. The article seems to be based more on local legend than actual facts.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MkPUPxPfFHw

edit: different video, there are really lots of them folks

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My brother-in-law drowned in the Māwhera/Grey River on the West Coast of the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand.

The geology of the river that got my BIL is very similar to the Strid - swift deep waters cutting through a limestone bed, creating shelves that currents and buoyancy can trap you under, eroding through to natural caves, or in the case of the Māwhera, eroding into the old coal mining tunnels that burrowed beneath the riverbed in the 1800s.

End result is a highly treacherous waterway. The Police Dive Squad refused to search for my BIL's body due to the shelves and tunnels, and the current.

So, yeah, this is more dangerous than your whitewater creeks, mainly because it doesn't look dangerous, but also because of the additional hydrological dangers that a sweet whitewater run doesn't have.

It's supposed to be especially dangerous because it doesn't look like a whitewater creek. There's a part where the river becomes narrow enough to jump across and the water appears calm but is extremely deep and fast moving. It's a popular beauty spot and the river can be mistaken for a shalllow stream.

The article is indeed of very low quality, though, and claims of it being "the most dangerous stretch of water in the world" are hyperbole at best.

Is that the Strid? They don't say the name of the location in the video or in the description. It also looks a bit different to me than the pictures and videos of the Strid.

If you Google "whitewater strid" there are many videos of people kayaking it. Here's another one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MkPUPxPfFHw

Scary video, someone almost drowns at about the 3:35 mark.

The person in the video almost drowned while on a buoyant kayak and wearing a life jacket… doesn’t really counter the point of the article!

the upbeat music is really incongruous with the guy practically killing himself

Such is the life of a daredevil.

I'm no whitewater expert, but this doesn't look like a near drowning to me. He probably attempts to roll but is obstructed by the rock and current, then exits just as assistance arrives. The hydraulic is potentially dangerous, but most of the circulation he's stuck in looks to be horizontal, and I don't see reason to think he couldn't have swum out if need be.

Trees, on the other hand, are scary.

Not according to all the information discussed in the other comments.

> most of the circulation he's stuck in looks to be horizontal

This section has up to 60m depth, the underwater currents are extremely turbulent and will you pull you under the rock on the sides (the whitewater is just a 'slit' on the surface, there's a whole river running underneath). If he didn't have someone ready to pull him out in two seconds like in the video, it's a good bet he wouldn't make it out.

I don't believe much of what is said on the internet about the Strid. It's not a magical river. The Strid is dangerous, but it acquired that reputation by killing unprepared people who fall in. I've not seen much to indicate it's especially deadly to helmet and PFD equipped paddlers.

It's possible that the man depicted could have been dragged under an undercut if he'd swum the full rapids, but the video doesn't show evidence of that. Rather, he's pulled out of an eddy without much drama.

Maybe with a big enough life jacket (and helmet) one is pretty safe

(Whilst anyone unprepared, or a daredevil, wouldn't have had a life jacket, and then maybe 100%)

What about trees?

In a river, they're called strainers. If someone is caught against one, water pressure often makes it impossible to extricate themselves without assistance, and if their head is underwater when they become trapped, rescue may not come quickly enough.

They're also less predictable than a lot of other river hazards. It's possible to come around the bend and be faced with a big strainer that wasn't there the last time you ran the river.

Here's a good video showing a rescue from one: https://www.reddit.com/r/whitewater/comments/cn6k8k/nasty_st...

Couldn't have guessed that such a small tree (in the video) can be that dangerous! And that's enormously much force in the river ...

Thanks for the explanation and link

Article sais it is deep and there are tunnels also. It sucks you down and you are lost in a tunnel and die.

How exactly do you plan to survive when falling off the kayak?

You lit just came up with the invention of the scuba-kayak..

Call it the "sub-marine" or something such

You'd hope to not fall out of the kayak, but stay in it (with the skirt keeping most water out of the body of it), and do an Eskimo roll. The kayak, being very buoyant with all that air inside, would be unlikely to be sucked under. If you can't do an Eskimo roll, you would drown (presuming the whitewater traps you in the one spot rather than pushing you downstream)

There is literally somebody falling out of the kayak in the video I linked, around the 3:30 mark. He's swimming with a life vest on.

And he was pulled out of the water by two other persons using a paddle. Before that he was stuck upside down under the kayak for a solid 10 seconds before another person grabbed the kayak. There was no indication that they could've uprighted the kayak under their own power (we can only speculate). The person didn't look like a happy camper afterwards.

10 seconds isn't long at all, and it doesn't look like he was stuck (probably just trying to roll before committing to the wet exit). He walks away under his own power in the uncut version. I've seen footage of far, far closer calls.

I talked to someone in a reticulated pedal boat the other day about how he rescued a kayak instructor from drowning because he could not reverse himself from being turned upside down in front of his own class who didn't realize he was serious about tapping the hull to indicate he needed help. He calls kayaks "death traps". I believe him.

Wet exits are the fallback and aren't hard. Just pull the strap on the spray skirt or, failing that, grab a double-fistful of skirt and pop it off the side.

Probably the instructor knew about that, and something went wrong anyway? I wonder, then, what that might have been

Sometimes people tuck the grab-loop inside their spray skirt by mistake, which is why it's worth practicing one of the back-up techniques. It's also possible for an improperly burped dry-suit to trap someone in a boat (I know of at least one fatality in this way). I wouldn't expect an instructor to make these mistakes, but it's possible.

Oh, that sounds really dangerous to forget / happen

> 100% mortality rate

Translation for pedants: Lots of people die - especially know-it-all idiots, thrill-seekers, and show-offs. We locals - whose taxes pay for the paperwork & such after each death, by the way - are utterly sick of it. Go earn your bloody Darwin Award somewhere else, arsehole.

> can't normally survive swimming in

What about with life jackets?

What IS BEAUTIFUL is the people who are standing on the side waiting to freaking help.

What if you capsize?

Ideally you roll. If you do wet exit, the helmet and PFD provide a lot of protection. You can see this in the linked video around 3m20s.

Watch the video he links to and find out. ;)

To me the whole idea of attempting this is like picking a fist fight with a polar bear; complete hubris.

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