Yangtze River Adventure

Bigger and Better, August 29, 1986

The next day we went for another hour-long ride after filming what we called "Buddha's Hole." Named that by Paul as he told us to pull over or we would "see Buddha." We had been expecting the river to let up, thinking nothing could be bigger than what we ran the day before. So we were prepared for this, a 75-foot wide, 30-foot deep hole in the river which looked like a keeper, one that if you hit it just wrong, it would hold and re-circulate the raft. We filmed this run, and this time I got to ride, as the film crew didn't need any help. Chen photographed the stills from the bank for China News Service. His photo shows our four-boat rig on the right edge of a massive hole, leaning toward, but not going into, the maw. It is over in seconds, and it was the deepest water hole I had been able to look into without entering.

Ron had repaired some punctures the rafts had suffered the previous day, so we came through Buddha's Hole just fine. The water was smooth for about a half mile. Paul was again scouting ahead in his kayak. All of our Motorola walkie-talkies were tuned for his warnings, which we had come to expect, and while not exaggerations, were warnings which we had gotten used to. The worst of the water we ran anyway when not able to pull over.

"Pull over! Ohmygod, it's un-runnable!" There he goes again. We had just finished bailing after the last big hole. Taking Paul's advice, Ken, Ron, Chu, and Zhang pulled toward left bank. Ahead was the smooth straight line of the drop. Beyond that, the dancing plumes of a fierce river ballet gave us a clue to what Paul saw from his rocky vantage point.

We were not able to pull over in time. Too late to stop.

The oarsmen pulled back toward the center slick. The left side of the four-boat rig plunged straight down a ten-foot-high rock, making a 12-foot long rip in the floor of the left raft, the one Ken and I were in. The other three rafts stayed in the main current, pulling the wounded raft with Ken and me at a twisted angle. I though the rafts were going to tear their D-rings and snap the frames. The sounds of the twisting frames and rubber and the crashing water deafened us, again. I can still hear it in the back of my skull.

This water was bigger than the day before, and just as relentless. By now I have run out of superlatives. Monster, King Kong water, no, Godzilla. Somebody afterward said 30-foot waves. It was like being on the ocean. Halfway through, our raft disappeared. I reached for the adjoining raft and yelled at Ken, "What happened?"

"I don't know," he gurgled, as water by the ton crashed on us again.

We headed down a North Sea-sized trough with no raft beneath us, only hanging on to the ropes of the other rafts. The others were screaming for us to hang on, to get back in. Less then twenty feet away loomed a sheer rock wall, and the rafts were about to squash us against it. We lunged on with no time to spare.