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Dredging River Dance; or, how to almost die dredging. 



(This rather lengthy tale is about one of my dredging misadventures experienced while I was investigating what I thought was promising bedrock.)


Well, here's tale of summer's fun, more or less.

Once, I tried to cross the swiftest part of the river to get to the other side. I like to think of it (my attempt) in terms of the world famous River Dance—there are common elements: both of them require very rapid movement of the feet, clever planning, and lots of spinning and whirling of the body, with accompanying vocal tones that may be melodious (well, sometimes).

As I got suited up one gorgeous summer’s day to get into the dredge hole, I saw a cliff across the river at the base of a terrace of other cliffs that marched up the mountain in a series of timbered steps that rose upward for several hundred feet.



Cut into the bottom of this black bedrock, there’s a wicked pool of water where the river fires most of itself through a bedrock chute. Just upstream of the chute, the river slams into the bedrock wall, cuts back on itself in a foaming suction eddy, then whirls on in a quick right angle turn to create a channel around eight feet deep, yet the width is only a couple of yards across.

The rocks and boulders in that hole perpetually shimmy and shiver under the relentless thrumming of the stream.

Nevertheless, my giant brain had a feverish idea—a true inspirational melon buster of an idea it was. I peeked across the river, and since I was already suited up for underwater gold hunting, my brain devised a way to get me safely to the other side to investigate.



Now, remember, there’s a cliff on the other side, so holding on to that far bank isn’t an option. However, with the weather nice and hot, and the river level dropping day by day, it seemed a good plan to saunter over and have a peek underwater, right alongside the chute's edge to see if any nuggets were trapped in its cracks or crevices. I’d just peek around over there and have a shot at the coarse gold before the snipers cleaned it up later in the summer.

As I’ve mentioned, I was geared up for dredging which works great for sniping as well. In fact, I had on two wetsuits, the shorty, and my farmer-John 7mm, with a cold-water hood; my mask, and snorkel; and my Hooka harness with my regulator slung over my shoulder. I was ready.

So, my pea-sized brain (notice how my brain shrunk from earlier on?) decided it would be a glorious idea to secure my arm around an anchor rope and then tiptoe across the river—all while keeping constant pressure on the line to maintain my balance in the stiff current. That was the idea.

I’d work my way to the far side of the chute, gently lower myself into the river, and then let the sixty pounds of lead I had strapped to me do what lead does best. While it sunk me, I'd casually examine the bedrock for orphaned chunks of gold, little river children in need of adoption, so to speak.

That was the plan. That is not what happened.



While the motor purred contentedly on the dredge to fill the reserve air tank, I stepped away from the Keene 4505PH four-inch three-stage model to work my way over to the chute to snipe for gold. I was excited to get going, to get into the hunt so to speak, and it reminded me of when I was younger and was excited to hunt pheasants with my gun dog.

Come to think of it, it’s too bad I didn’t have my hunting dog with me then, as he’d have absolutely refused to test the waters for the golden game I was after that day. Being a smart dog, he’d have looked at me like I was crazy, turned tail, shot back to the cab of the truck, hopped in with a smug look on his face and then bedded down for a safe snooze!

Upon reflection, there’s something about a dog being smarter than a human that just doesn’t sit well. Regardless, maybe some humble pie is in order and I should wise up and pay him a consulting fee to save myself future grief.

Dog brains and canine wisdom aside, I decided that I’d quickly get to the task and cross that stream. So, I walked away from the dredge and immediately stepped onto a slippery sheet of slate. Not to worry, I told myself, for in addition to my weight-belt around my waist, I had ankle weights that would quickly stabilize my feet.



Thinking back on it, there must be some science of river physics that my rice-sized brain hasn’t quite grasped. It must be a ratio or an equation that goes something like this: river velocity x mass + slippery rocks =stupidity run out to a power of 10! And, if you divide that by the dimwit factor high on gold fever steroids that day, you get a very predictable result. With every misstep in the stream, the river exerts an ever-increasing degree of control over the flailing foreign body that’s trying to stagger across it (NASA should consult me on bizarre test theories when they get stumped!).

Well, the river's fun started almost immediately as my left foot, moving forward, slid down the slippery rock, the force mashing my big toe into a boulder, thus causing that formerly happy dredger (we’ll refer to this numb-skull in the third person, on and off, for the next while to keep things simple) to commence to weave a tapestry of glorious, colorful words in the mountain air, all accompanied by melodious tones (Well, as melodious as the sounds of a boar grizzly attacking a cougar with newborn kittens is melodious, I guess!).

This verbal explosion of excited speech in turn created a momentary lapse in sanity, causing said golden boy to move his right foot in reflex to the hammering pain of his throbbing left foot's big toe. Furthermore, the river current promptly seized said bozo’s right leg in its grasp, at the exact moment when the right foot slipped quickly down a submerged incline.

This in turn caused the back of the doomed dredger to twist slightly, creating some sort of physics wonderland where the broad part of the dredger's back now acted like a garage door trying to navigate the river perpendicularly, and yet the dredger was still trying to keep his body upright!

This exponential force utilized the might of untold millions of gallons of glacial melt water moving at roughly Mach III (This guess of the speed is only an estimate as I had no calibrated instruments for measuring water velocity with me that day). These enhanced forces acted out their vengeance on the dimwit porpoising back and forth across the river, the same dimwit that somehow managed to keep a death grip on the safety line!

I must call a brief pause here to say that there’s nothing so annoying as a smug dredge buddy that watches you thrash about as you helplessly struggle in the grasp of a raging river. It's not annoying that your buddy is watching. No. What's annoying is that while he’s watching he's laughing such a jackal-like, high-pitched laugh that it's effects terrify and frighten off any man or beast within three miles that could help with a rescue in any manner.

But, not to worry, after several ballet-like corrections on micro-brain’s part, he’d righted himself by using the safety line. Well, almost righted himself that is . . . For, as he pulled back hard on the safety line to come upright, his garage-door-like body, playing the part of a super-rudder, rocketed him back across the river, bouncing him playfully off the boulders as it propelled him toward, while pointing him downstream of, the dredge. This liquid inertia started a barrel roll, spinning the attached twit around on the safety line like a tailless kite in a hurricane.

Oh, did I mention that his Hooka regulator was hanging across his shoulder as he artfully (Yes, but more like really bad art than anything else) stepped into the stream? Well, with his regulator streaming straight behind him, and as his snorkel wasn't in his mouth either, he began to try to drink the river dry.

Oh, desperate drinking it was! For, after his head plowed underwater furrows, he’d burst forth, shaking his melon side to side, smacking his lips loudly as he bellowed unpronounceable syllables from Viking drinking songs. Songs sung only after drinking steadily for two days! Nevertheless, he soon floundered (both eyes now felt as if they were the squashed and compressed eyes found on the side of the flounder) his way up the safety line. He then stood waist-deep in the placid river, magnificently in control, feet firmly anchored once again.

Yes, rest from turmoil was finally his. However, then befell the shame of trying to explain his aquatic aerobatics to his mining partner.



Nonetheless, after a witty explanation, the dope on a rope cautiously proceeded to the chute on the other side. Once there, he launched himself into the slack water behind a lip of protruding bedrock guarding the head of the chute.

With regulator in place, he stuck his head under water only to see that the bedrock's surface was as smooth as a bathtub for most of its length . . . But there, just off to the right, was a small crevice, and in that crevice was a chunk of sassy yellow gold.

(Oh, it was magnificent and glorious, the bright sunshine winked off it as it sparkled and shone.)

Therefore, the dauntless dredger forgot the function of his gray matter and tried to reach the golden prize, forgetting about his precarious footing, and abandoning the shelter offered by the bedrock outcrop.

This unexplainable act launched him yet into another River Dance. Clearly, this performance was not in any way connected to the one that played on the world stage for years. No, this was a river dance accompanied by colorful and strangely explosive, yet disharmonious tones instead of the lively, upbeat music of the famed production.

At last, the soggy dredger, much refreshed after finishing his two-time audition for the River Dance, returned to his still purring dredge, stuffed his brains back in through the openings originally intended for his ears and nose, reinserted an eyeball, reattached an ear, and then quietly returned to a boring day of uneventful dredging.



River Dance indeed.

All the best,

Lanny