Inner Tubing down the Sacramento River in the 1970s

 LIkely this was around 1970 when this happened. A friend of ours told us how they had fun getting a truck or car inner  tube and riding down the Sacramento from where Lake Siskiyou Dam is below that towards Dunsmuir. Of course I'm not sure where we thought we were going to stop going down the river maybe near Shasta Springs and then hike up a dirt road to the main highway (Interstate 5 I think). This wasn't that well thought out like many adventures in my teens and early 20s because we were immortal young men if you know what i mean.

Well. I realized that the rapids in one area were too rough for me to safely negotiate without harming my tail bone or spine especially at that level of the river with the speed of the river over this one location. So, I was to the west side of the river and so I decided to "Bail out" of doing this. 

I grabbed a limb of a tree but the current of the river washed away my inner tube down the river so I was pulled under the water by the current where I couldn't breathe at all.

So, the water was very cold being snow melt so somehow I held my breath and pulled myself arm over up arm up this limb of the tree until I could breathe again. So, I had survived being underwater and now I could breathe even though the water was snow melt which means around 34 to 38 degrees at that point.

I then finally climbed from that limb onto the Western Shore of the River. However, there are no even dirt roads in that direction for miles and miles. So, now I needed to cross the river to get out of there safely. We were in  cutoff Levi Jeans and tennis shoes so if I could just find a good crossing point where I might walk across the river without being washed over this particular rapids I might be okay. I think I found or broke off a large limb to use to keep me from being washed down the river and then I put it downriver down into the river as like a crutch or walking stick to finally successfully cross the river and then I found a dirt road heading towards Interstate 5 from there.

Also, I have a friend I went to high school with in Santa Fe, New Mexico that lived in Colorado after High School Graduation who died Kayaking one of the Colorado Rivers in his early 30s who was also my age.

So, dealing with moving streams and rivers can be fatal when you least expect it.

After that I gave up river inner tubing because of that close call and mostly just kayaked on Lakes like Castle Lake after that there in the Mt. Shasta area of California.