mcadoo is worried. time may be running out for the rafters. had these people lost consciousness, fallen off into the river, we would have had a much more perilous mission that we might not have been able to save them. finally, mcadoo reaches ed and deftly whips the harness over his head. he got it around me just really quickly, then the helicopter maneuvered me toward the shore. a grateful ed rejoins his fellow rafters as deputy mcadoo goes back to lift the other man off the log. it was quite an amazing feat to have walked away with as limited an injury that i had. both men are aware of how close they came to becoming one more dismal notch on the belt of the killer kern. you never think you re going to be a statistic. you think that s only going to happen to someone else. this really was a close call. it s not a disneyland ride. if you fall in the river, there
much more perilous mission that we might not have been able to save them. finally, mcadoo reaches ed and deftly whips the harness over his head. he got it around me just really quickly, then the helicopter maneuvered me toward the shore. a grateful ed rejoins his fellow rafters as deputy mcadoo goes back to lift the other man off the log. it was quite an amazing feat to have walked away with as limited an injury that i had. both men are aware of how close they came to becoming one more dismal notch on the belt of the killer kern. you never think you re going to be a statistic. you think that s only going to happen to someone else. it was a close call. it s not a disneyland ride. if you fall in the river, there are no guarantees that you will live at the end of it. coming up a football player has a miraculous save. kind of like did that just really happen?
the united states, and it flows really fast. but the river has a dark side as well. one that keeps the rescue team at the kearn county sheriff s office busy. people go in and swim or fall in and they get tired fighting the current, and they drown. the boulders that are just under water level, they re the size of a volkswagen. that s usually what people smash into. we ve had over 250 actual drownings in the kern river since they started keeping stats. the river s nickname is the killer kern. on a warm june day in 2010, two friends, mike mccave and ed flickinger, decide to try rafting for the first time. with a group of friends, two rafts and two guides, they head for the river. when they get there, mike wonders if they ve made a mistake. the river was flowing at a high rate of speed. it was at a very high level, but i didn t really know what to compare it with. despite the boiling current,