How a Rescue Innovation Changed Commercial Rafting on the Futaleufú
In the early 1990s, commercial rafting on Chile’s Futaleufú River was a bit of an experiment. The river was magnificent, but it posed a troubling question: could commercial clients be safely taken down one of the world’s most powerful whitewater rivers? Several incidents in the first few years convinced me that the standard rescue craft of the era, the safety kayak, wasn’t adequate. If we couldn’t reliably protect our guests, I wondered whether commercial rafting clients belonged on the Futaleufú at all.
The solution arrived unexpectedly on a remote expedition in Nepal. There, a rescue involving a small cataraft would change the future of rafting on the Futaleufú River.
The Incident that Changed Everything.
Dave Allardice, whose company Ultimate Descents pioneered most of the rivers in Nepal, invited me to join one of his expeditions on the newly opened Karnali River. I brought an agile, 14 foot, stable two-pontoon cataraft to row from the U.S.. With a small army of local sherpas carrying the gear, we trekked three days through the Nepalese lowlands to the put-in. The trip was uneventful until the final day, when a small paddle raft carrying a guide and a client accidentally entered a minor rapid on the wrong side of the river, where the swift current began sweeping them toward a hollowed-out wall on a 90-degree left bend. Their only recourse from being sucked under the wall was to catch a small eddy of still water carved into the wall directly upstream of the treacherous spot. The strong current made it impossible to paddle the raft out of the eddy and back across the river without being stuffed under the wall. For the moment, they were safe but trapped.
The rest of us pulled over on the other side of the river to survey the situation. The cliff above them was too high to climb and there was no way to reach them with a rope. The only option was to send a safety kayaker into the eddy and, one by one, ferry each person across on the back of the kayak.
The kayaker paddled across the river and caught the eddy. One of the marooned rafters lowered themselves into the water and grabbed onto the back of the kayak. When they pulled out into the current, the person holding on to the kayak created so much drag that the swift current instantly began sweeping them toward the undercut wall. The kayaker quickly retreated back into the eddy. It was possible a helicopter could drop a basket down, but we were a long way from civilization, helicopters were scarce and this was years before the advent of the satellite phone.
I volunteered to try with my cataraft. After catching the eddy, I instructed them to lie on their stomachs on my cataraft tubes, and raise their feet out of the water. Using a sharp upstream angle, I charged into the current. Unlike the kayak, the cataraft, unburdened by drag, easily maintained the upstream ferry angle, allowing me to pull away from the wall and cross. Without the cataraft, they would have been forced to attempt the crossing on their own, which could have ended in disaster. Any experienced rower could have rescued them with my cataraft. The combination of the greater power generated by long oars compared to paddles, the agility and speed provided by gliding on two pontoons, and the absence of drag from someone in the water made the rescue possible. In that serendipitous moment in Nepal, the “safety cataraft” was born.
Introducing the Safety Cataraft on the Futaleufú
When I got home, I ordered two large catarafts and custom-designed rowing frames with raised front decks that sat just a few inches above the water. These “safety cats” would be positioned at the bottom of rapids. If someone fell in, the cataraft could be quickly rowed into the current with its low front deck facing upstream. The swimmer would float between the pontoons and slide right onto the deck, often without the guide even having to let go of the oars. Unlike the safety kayak, a cataraft could pick up multiple people at once.
On the first trip of the 1994 season, we took a charter group from Chicago that had done the Bio Bio River with us the year before. I rowed one of the two safety catarafts. We had six swimmers in one of the rapids, and the safety catarafts effortlessly picked them up. The “safety cat” had been inaugurated.
The safety cataraft quickly proved its value. What began as an improvised rescue solution on a remote river in Nepal became standard equipment on the Futaleufú. Over the years, it allowed us to expand access to one of the world’s great whitewater rivers while maintaining a level of safety that had previously seemed impossible.
About the Author:
“I’ve rafted with Eric down some tough rivers—the Futaleufú in Chile, the Colca in Peru. He’s one of the best in the business—obsessed with safety.” — National Geographic Magazine, November 1996
Eric Hertz has spent more than five decades pioneering whitewater expeditions and developing innovations that have improved river safety around the world. In 1973, while guiding on California’s Tuolumne River, he invented the first raft foot cups, a simple but effective innovation designed to help paddlers stay in their rafts in turbulent water.
Throughout his career, Eric has focused on adapting equipment and techniques to make challenging rivers safer and more accessible. In 1989, the year he founded Earth River Expeditions, he began running oar-paddle combination rafts on Chile’s Bio Bio River, among the first such operations in South America. On the Futaleufú River in the early 1990s, Earth River was among the first companies to emphasize active self-rescue, teaching swimmers to aggressively swim to safety rather than simply float defensively through rapids.
In 1993, after confronting the limitations of safety kayaks on large-volume rivers, Eric developed the concept of the safety cataraft, a rescue craft that would transform swimmer recovery on the Futaleufú and eventually become standard practice on many commercial rafting expeditions. In 1995, Earth River became the first company to routinely double-guide paddle rafts through Peru’s remote Class V Colca Canyon, opening one of the world’s most challenging whitewater rivers to commercial rafting.
Today, Eric continues to explore remote rivers and share the lessons learned from a lifetime devoted to whitewater adventure, innovation, and, above all, safety.