Level 4: Swiftwater Rescue

Article Index

Page 3 of 8

Throw Ropes	Line Ferries and Line Crossings
Selection based on rope material, diameter, and length	How do you get a line across the river?
Advantages and disadvantages of traditional bags, waist bags, coiled lines	Essential skill for many rope-based rescues
Care of the rescue rope	General principles
Avoid sun exposure, keep clean, avoid stepping on the line, avoid sharp or rough edges	Look for narrow areas
When in doubt, replace the line	Look for clear throwing zones
Rope Safety	Establish a line receiver
Avoid standing over lines	Tethered line receiver using rescue vest
Avoid tensioning lines perpendicular to current	Keep the line as high as possible out of the water, to avoid drag
Keep your body out of loops in the line	Upstream safety and downstream safety vital
Consider clean line techniques	Throwing techniques
Keep entire rope in bag to avoid accidental deployments	Direct throw
Throwing and recovery zones	Buddy throw
Consider where the victim will land, don’t make their situation worse	Messenger line
Types of throws	Boating, swimming, and wading techniques
Over-arm (football and arc), underarm, side-arm	Use a reverse pendulum and, whenever possible, keep the line out of the water
Deploying less than full length for close targets	Downstream loop
Factors impacting an accurate throw	Rescue vest
Rope length and diameter, brush and trees, footing, distance to target, cold hands, practice	Simple line crossings
Receiving the rope	Pendulum (can be done with multiple people, vector pull speeds the pendulum)
Hold over your shoulder, with hands on your chest and elbows tucked into stomach	Hand over hand tag line (hard in fast water, excellent wading assist)
Rope ideally should sit on the shoulder opposite the target shore (to set ferry angle)
Belay techniques
Hip belay, sitting, buddy, dynamic, tree
Line on downstream side
Coiling and rethrowing
Vector pull to assist landing
Stuffing techniques
Multiple swimmers

Level 4: Swiftwater Rescue

Article Index

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