Although I had been kayaking there for a week before my accident, I hardly knew the river at all.

The Slave is a very large river, at times stretching a mile and a half from bank to bank, filled with thousands of cumecs that alternate between mass chaos and calm pool. To ferry a kayak from one side of the river to the other takes between 30 minutes to an hour. Because of this, it's hard to recognize the landmarks needed to differentiate features, rapids, and even channels.

On that fateful day, my 17 year old friend and I, who also swam after unwittingly following me into the rapid, were stranded on a mid-river island until midnight, clinging to each other for warmth as the rain raided our bodies of a dwindling supply of heat.

Hours earlier, we had planned to paddle a rapid called Molly’s Nipple—similar, in character and in consequence to Lochsa Falls, only much bigger.

But unbeknownst to us, we ran the wrong channel—mistaking an island for the far river-right bank. When I peered over the edge of that rapid, about to drop in, I was shocked.... stunned really. My stomach dropped, my throat dried, and the air from my lungs evaporated in an instant. I was only able to scream a few words back at my friend before dropping into the ledge. The ledge is large, a vertical drop of almost 10 feet, but instead of calm water at the bottom, there is whitewater folding back in on itself, over and over again, creating a pit of a hole. Behind the initial hole, is a 2nd hole, the size of a large bus. And behind that, a 3rd hole, again, as deep as the first, and as wide as the 2nd hole.

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