The SWR class this weekend was fantastic!

1. Anyone can benefit from this class. We had a really, really, broad range of paddlers. There were some class V gnar boaters who have had buddies drown right in front of them, and who had themselves swam some of the nastiest sieves/undercuts that we all have nightmares about. There were some people who had never even been on a river, and some who have done class I-II only, along with some in the middle.

We started out with swimming, and quickly moved to work on strainers and other hazards found in rivers. Here we are working on the Strainer Bar Drill.

They all did great. Better than great. We had two people who were under 15 years old, they ended up being some of the strongest swimmers, and did most of the line ferries and set up anchors for the drills.

The group worked together like clockwork, which is pretty hard sometimes as we all know when you just met the person and dont even know their name.

Everyone knew the strengths of each person in the group and people were directing each other and just filling in where they needed too.

The class was even watching out for people that werent in their group dealing with tubers, rafters, kayakers, and rednecks who looked like they were about to drown. We almost did a few “real” rescues in our class.

2. The class learned a lot from experience, I tried not to do too much and the class set up the line ferries, set the anchors, and did all the work to set up the strainer bar, v lowers, live bait, and other drills. It was almost like every drill was a scenario. I have learned that the participants dont learn much from watching me set up the anchors, z drags, and other things that are necessary to make these drills happen quick and safe. It may take a little longer, but not much, and they really learn.

They set up/downstream safety for themselves and made teams and decisions throughout, so it was easy once they got to the scenarios, and got a chance to do more realistic exercises more than in 1 scenario. Of course they were backed up by instructors just in case.

Here we are doing a line crossing technique called zipline.

3. I am getting better and better at setting up scenarios thanks to “friends” who have come out and let me practice and experiement on them in “unofficial” classes this year (thanks Dave, Josh, Eric, Erik, Will, Quay, Brandon, Candace, and everyone else). I hope you all come back out again, I have some new evil ideas that will hopefully challenge you more!

The great thing is that I have to sit home for days trying to think up harder scenarios because the paddlers I have had in class are so good they solve problems quick, simple, and safe.

This time we did a scenario where we had a pinned boat, two paddlers in the water, AND a victim foot entrapped 40 feet out in the river in chest deep moving water. The group rescued the swimmers, and got up a stabilization line in like 2 minutes and had the entrapped victim to shore in like 3 min. WOW!

We didn’t get to practice mechanical advantage as much as I would like, time and the weather are sometimes working against you. I hope everyone goes home and practices a bunch, and teaches the other people they paddle with.

You can never practice enough, I hope everyone out there that has taken SWR will come back and do it again.

I will be scheduling more Advanced SWR classes later this summer with super complex scenarios and more in the water topics that arent covered in most basic classes, like cinches, now that I have found a way to foot entrap a victim in the middle of the river in a relatively safe way.

The next SWR class is July 18-19th. With advanced classes scheduled whenever people want to take it, just email or call me.

More information and pictures are up on the website, with video and tons of photos coming soon.

www.piedmontlakesnc.com