And, as the river traffic began to increase, OhShit! really reached it's heyday. People began dying on OhShit!, mostly out of ignorance, or drunkenness, or both. Once I was about to launch from the landing above the rapids, zipping up my life vest and taking off my waders 'just in case', when a driftboat came calmly backstroking around the blind corner from above. The two passengers sucked on their beers and were looking down at a book. With each foot of progress you could see the backstroking tempo of the oarsman increase as the overwhelming roar of the rapids engulfed them. There was an animated word or two between the occupants, then they settled back and progressed another ten feet. Another nervous exchange, then settled back again. They knew what they were doing, I concluded. Then one passenger
spotted me.
"Is this Whiskey Dick?", he called out. He was weakly pointing to a page in a guidebook.
"No, that's Whitehorse", I yelled. There was a short huddle with the oarsman while they digested this information. Then all hell broke loose. One passenger dropped to the floor under the bow, the other frantically scrambled to pull out a life vest, while the oarsman beat the water to a froth pulling for shore.
They made it.
Many didn't. It was routine to find a driftboat jammed tight on the hump of OhShit!. There was even an article and a television news feature about an enterprising fellow who made his living in the summer salvaging aluminum drift boats from the rock, using strung cables and scuba gear to pull himself and a winch line out to tie onto the stranded hull. (It's hard to do much from a boat as you pass by at 20
MPH). Having one boat hard on OhShit! did nothing to lessen the danger to others, it only decreased the time and room you had to clear. I once saw two boats stacked one hard on another, and Bob Guard who came through a day later said a third boat hit and temporarily lodged while he was watching. At the worst, two or three people were drowning a year in Whitehorse, with and without life vests.
And not to say that we always got by untouched. I came close enough more than once, riding up on the hump of water and washing off the side to know that it was just a matter of time. John Soreng has twice, to my knowledge, been thrown clear off his seat landing head down in the rear compartment by crabbing an oar trying to pull away from OhShit!. Dave Carlson once did the perfect 180 degree touch
