[HN Gopher] The Strid: The 'deadliest stretch of water'
___________________________________________________________________
The Strid: The 'deadliest stretch of water'
Author : Exuma
Score : 365 points
Date : 2022-09-22 00:56 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (the-yorkshireman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (the-yorkshireman.com)
| wikitopian wrote:
| JavaScript Creek
| slowhand09 wrote:
| Dump barrels of an environmentally friendly surfactant upstream,
| thus neutralizing the bubbles, foam, and froth temporarily.
| koheripbal wrote:
| No way to get rid of the peat stain.
| db1234 wrote:
| This reminds me of 'mekedatu' ('The Goat Cross') gorge in the
| path of river Kaveri in India
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mekedatu. The water here is
| similarly deceptive making it extremely dangerous. Many lives
| have been lost.
| tptacek wrote:
| To save a click: the "100% mortality" thing is a local legend.
|
| There are videos of people swimming it (not deliberately: it's a
| rapids, and they've fallen out of boats).
| Exuma wrote:
| The place where they are swimming is the part where its 5
| meters deep. Upstream it's 65+ meters deep, and when you watch
| the video there appears to be a zero chance anyone could
| survive that (watch the other videos down in the article)
| jupp0r wrote:
| People have swum down Niagara Falls. How can you possibly say
| it's "impossible" to survive this?
| jupp0r wrote:
| There are tons of videos of people kayaking this creek [1],
| some with people exiting their kayaks and swimming in it
| and not dying. When did HN become a place where
| extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence get
| defended by downvoting reasonable doubts?
|
| [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MkPUPxPfFHw
| theteapot wrote:
| Please don't make light of The Strid by describing it as
| a mere "creek". One video does not make "tons".
| Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence! This
| video is clearly fake, or if not perhaps the kayakers in
| this singular video are some kind of immortal demigods.
| kuschku wrote:
| There is one video, and even in that, a person with a
| kayak, a life vest, and assistance from others, still
| almost drowns.
| tptacek wrote:
| I 100% believe it's a very unsafe place to swim; it's a
| rapids, after all.
| TillE wrote:
| If we interpret the claim as "100% of people who have fallen in
| accidentally have died", that seems fairly plausible.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Eh, I know, internet literalism and all, but once something
| becomes deadly enough -- falling out of an airplane, going
| over Niagara falls, tangling with high voltage power lines --
| I'm happy to call it "100% mortality" and chalk up the
| residue of survivors as "miraculous", instead of getting all
| " _technically_ it 's only 99.7% fatal...".
| arcticfox wrote:
| There's no video of anyone swimming the whole thing. The
| conditions vary wildly from one meter to the next.
|
| > To save a click: the "100% mortality" thing is a local
| legend.
|
| Middlebrow dismissal, given that there's no proof that it's
| _not_ 100% and obviously there 's no way to prove that it is.
| It's very easy to imagine a design that would kill 100% of
| swimmers, it would actually be surprising if there isn't
| somewhere in the world that would do it.
|
| 3:20 of this video shows a well-prepared kayaker w/ a ton of
| PPE get quite the experience.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkPUPxPfFHw
|
| I don't think there's any way someone without a life jacket
| survives 3:40, or someone pulling them to safety at 3:54. The
| extremely bouyant kayak itself struggles at 3:54 to not go
| down. A ~neutrally bouyant human in that aerated water would be
| toast.
| davidguetta wrote:
| W.T.F.
| chasd00 wrote:
| they kayak almost getting pulled under blows me away. Thanks,
| but no thanks!
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Hate to break it to you, but all those people are going to die.
| xattt wrote:
| Correlation does not imply causation.
|
| :P
|
| Edit: fixed the accidentally reversed cliche
| orev wrote:
| You can't have causation without correlation.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Sure you can, "causation without correlation" happens all
| the time in systems with feedback from unmodelled
| variables. A canonical example is correlating braking
| force with vehicle speed while driving downhill; if
| you're trying to maintain speed, your data's going to
| look like your speed remains relatively constant no
| matter how hard you brake.
|
| (Or, I guess relevant here, you're not going to find much
| correlation between, say, getting guillotined and being
| dead 150 years in the future, even though getting
| guillotined absolutely does count as a cause of death in
| the conventional sense.)
| mellavora wrote:
| or, for a mathematical example x and sin(x) have zero
| correlation.
|
| correlation implies a linear relationship.
| swores wrote:
| Is that a definition of correlation inside the field of
| mathematics? Because the normal English definition of
| correlation just means a connection, and absolutely
| doesn't mean linear.
|
| " _a connection or relationship between two or more
| facts, numbers, etc._ " https://dictionary.cambridge.org/
| dictionary/english/correlat...
|
| edit: Ah, Wikipedia intro suggests that yes it's specific
| within statistics (though still seems to not be a hard
| requirement to call something a correlation?): " _In
| statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical
| relationship, whether causal or not, between two random
| variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest
| sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of
| association, in statistics it normally refers to the
| degree to which a pair of variables are linearly
| related._" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The slightly more fun version of that example is that
| cos(x) and sin(x) have zero correlation. But if you plot
| a bunch of coordinates that are generated that way,
| you'll quickly notice a pattern...
|
| You can easily view cos(x) as causing the value of sin(x)
| to change - if cos(x) starts going down, sin(x) will too
| soon afterward. If cos(x) starts going up, so will
| sin(x), soon afterward.
|
| In fact, if you allow for a time lag between your data
| series, you will find that sin(x) and cos(x) are
| _perfectly_ correlated.
| robocat wrote:
| I am in a sphere in space, and I throw a dart at a wall,
| and I measure the coordinates. I caused those coordinates
| to occur, yet there is no correlation between cause and
| coordinates. Or a coin toss.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Causation without correlation is the norm.
| gameman144 wrote:
| Not sure if sarcastic. Causation _definitely_ implies
| correlation.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Not always. There can be other more significant or
| equivalent causes.
| refurb wrote:
| On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone
| drops to zero.
| mellavora wrote:
| yes, but not all will die by drowning in the strid.
| loeg wrote:
| In the same sense that we are all going to die, right?
| jollyllama wrote:
| Is there like a really rough cross-diagram of this feature
| anywhere?
| NGRhodes wrote:
| I live 15 miles from there, its a beautiful, popular area, that
| is easily accessible via nearby carparks and riverside paths, so
| great for family visits. There are more challenging routes on the
| surrounding hills and moors, so attracts a variety of people
| there to enjoy the outdoors, its common for the large carparks to
| be completely full. I can't comment on the mortality rate at the
| Strid, the photos and videos do not do justice of how dramatic it
| is and how loud the water is where it escapes from the narrows.
| You only have to go a short distance downstream (1/4 mile) and
| there are safe paddling spots after the river widens again.
| spookierookie wrote:
| Shouldn't at least this section be cordoned off?
| modeless wrote:
| OT: Am I wrong in thinking the correct word to use here would be
| "deceptive" instead of "deceiving"? "Deceiving" in this context
| just sounds wrong to me but I feel like I'm suddenly hearing it a
| lot these days.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| Deceptive is the better word as it's passive, deceiving is more
| active.
|
| I think they're both technically correct, but there's a nuance
| in their meaning.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| They are words that have come to English via different
| routes. "Deceiving" is the present participle of "to
| deceive", with the earliest common ancestor being the Latin
| noun decipio. The passive past participle of this noun in
| Latin is "deceptum", and on this form it is common to derive
| an adjective with a postfix "-ivus", hence "deceptivus". This
| word then enters English in a parallel manner, giving
| "deceptive".
|
| In this case they have identical meaning in context, but
| there's frequently unpredictable semantic drift in these
| pairs, if both do end up in English.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| "Deceivingly dangerous" would sound better, imo
| brigandish wrote:
| If only because of the novelty in that phrasing, but
| ascribing some kind of (nefarious) intention to an object is
| a common rhetorical technique.
| marcodiego wrote:
| > Local legend has it that 100 percent of the people who have
| fallen into the Bolton Strid have died.
|
| Official statics, anyone?
| helipad wrote:
| It always warms my heart that The Strid is internet famous. My
| memory is walking by it and my grandad, not one for hyperbole,
| telling us how dangerous it was. Miss you gramps!
| kelsolaar wrote:
| 65 meters deep measured by the person in the second video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJFQXT6PIP8
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >The area is unfathomably deep
|
| Regardless, seems like never a more suitable description could
| be made.
| melonrusk wrote:
| Actually, it's about 35 fathoms.
| mod wrote:
| Unfathomable has a less-generic meaning that, given the
| context, should probably be used.
|
| That water is not fathomable, literally.
| secondcoming wrote:
| But that reading was invalid due to bubbles in the water
| melonrusk wrote:
| In a later video he goes back and checks with a better sonar,
| and gets the same results.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDskXBfyNes
| Anon4Now wrote:
| If you liked that, go to his Strid playlist and watch the one
| where he films underwater. Watching it, you can imagine how
| terrifying it would be to get sucked under water. Very creepy.
| lbriner wrote:
| This article is from 2021 but this was on HN 5 years ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16166419
| joncp wrote:
| In case you haven't already seen Tom Scott's video about it:
| https://youtu.be/mCSUmwP02T8 .
| scubakid wrote:
| It doesn't look particularly fast-moving, so I must be missing
| something here that accounts for the legendary 100% mortality
| rate. Unless there's a giant vortex of electric eels, this
| stretch of water looks tamer than what those extreme kayakers
| were up to in HBO's recent docuseries.
| graeme wrote:
| I heard it described as follows: the full force of the river
| you see upstream has been turned on its side and the current
| goes down. You can't pull against that, especially against
| curved, mossy, wet rocks
|
| So as if an elephant were pulling you down beneath the water
| and you only had your strength to grip against it. Can't be
| done.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| What I don't understand is how that works from a
| conservation of mass perspective. The water can't be
| literally flowing down at every point and keep a stable
| surface. I assume it's something more complicated, right.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| It can.
|
| It's an underground tunnel with a small exposed strip at
| the top.
|
| the water can be circulating around the tunnel, flowing
| back and forth under the rocks. It can be pulling
| sideways or down at the exposed strip with the water
| circulating back up in the underground areas out at the
| sides.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Looking at the underwater footage, I think this is
| roughly it. You could see bubbles running up the walls.
| jakeinspace wrote:
| Of course the flux of water into any volume is equal to
| the outward flux. But I would imagine the situation is
| that there are circulating turbulent branching streams of
| current pulling you down. If you were incredibly lucky,
| and not killed by impacting the walls, you might pop back
| up by catching a ride on another section of current.
| carabiner wrote:
| I bet it's flowing horizontally but faster the deeper you
| go. You fall in, the higher speed flow at your feet
| apparently "sucks" you under due to its higher speed
| (higher inertia), like being grabbed by your ankles and
| yanked down.
| rz2k wrote:
| In addition to the explanations of the turbulent water
| smashing victims against the rock walls, presumably a
| very turbulent flow could also turn into a mixture of air
| and water, with a corresponding decrease in density such
| that it would be more difficult or even impossible for a
| person to maintain buoyancy.
| amluto wrote:
| Sure it can.
|
| In an incompressible flow (e.g. water under anything
| resembling normal circumstances), there is no net flow
| into or out of any given _volume_ , i.e. a 3-D box or
| other shape. But the surface is 2-D! So you can look at a
| little box with its top at the surface and its bottom
| slightly below the surface. If there is downward flow out
| the bottom (and zero flow out the top, of course), there
| must be net inward flow in the sides. Nothing wrong with
| that.
|
| This could happen if the river has constant speed and
| constant cross-sectional area everywhere but gets
| progressively narrower and deeper. The water moves inward
| because it has to get away from the encroaching banks and
| moves down to fill the deepening channel. If this is
| abrupt enough even in the absence of turbulence, the
| downward current a foot or so below the surface will be
| substantial.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Part of the difficulty of turbulent water is that it can
| really whip you and smash you around. It doesn't
| necessarily look that violent from outside of the water,
| but you could be getting broken limbs and brain trauma in
| that kind of turbulence. The force of the water pressing
| you into walls and boulders is tremendous.
|
| Loads of fatalities in turbulent water occur because the
| victim rapidly becomes unconscious in the water.
| leeter wrote:
| So parallels can be made to other places to show the
| danger. It's a slot canyon; only one that's generally
| constantly full versus empty most the year until the
| monsoon hits like those here in the US where I am. But the
| danger remains the same, the sandstone geology allows for
| it to create very deep and fast flowing situation due to
| Bernoulli's principle. Even more so for constrictions in
| the rock which form natural venturi.
|
| <s>I looked but was not able to find CFM/CMM for the input
| and output</s>; but that would give a reasonable idea of
| what the volume of the canyon must be because what goes in
| must come out. So the volume of the flow at the outlet and
| inlet gives a very good idea of just how crazy it can be.
|
| Edit: Input flows:
| https://nrfa.ceh.ac.uk/data/station/meanflow/27096 Output
| flows: https://nrfa.ceh.ac.uk/data/station/meanflow/27043
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_canyon
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli%27s_principle
| [deleted]
| Quillbert182 wrote:
| I don't know about in a kayak, but I imagine that the current
| is too strong for a swimmer to hold on. The water will also
| suck you down deep underneath, almost certainly lodging you
| into one of the tunnels for the short remainder of your life.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| In a kayak if the waters too turbulent (frothy or foamy)
| you can lose buoyancy pretty hazardously and capsize
| _really_ easily with poor chances of unaided recovery.
|
| There's a few spots near me that are well known danger
| spots for kayakers due to this phenomenon.
| Exuma wrote:
| The sides of the rocks are also angled out, so not only do
| you get sucked down, you get sucked down and out, so
| there's no chance of even swimming back up.
| scubakid wrote:
| Ah, I was wondering about the extent to which it might pull
| you under. Like, is that quantified at all? Consistent or
| only in a few sections? And how does it compare with some
| of the world's other most dangerous rivers?
| HillRat wrote:
| Don't know about quantified, but some of the underwater
| videos show bubble entrainment in some kind of shear flow
| 25+ meters down, which indicates a terrifying amount of
| velocity and power pushing downwards.
| robotnikman wrote:
| Got a link to any of the underwater videos? I'm really
| curious to see what it looks like underwater.
| Exuma wrote:
| Go to the 2nd video, first comment on that video. Not
| sure if that's the same one the person you are replying
| to is talking about
| collyw wrote:
| You will see brownish / white foam. I have kayaked plenty
| in the UK.
| ineptech wrote:
| From a kayaker's guidebook:
|
| > The Strid (grade 5-) is a long thin section of river
| where the Wharfe narrows to 5-6 feet in places. The main
| problems are beneath surface in form of ledges which if
| you're swept under - you can forget it! At a higher level
| as seen in pictures, it's runnable. The pictures show
| med-high water and most of the ledges were covered. I'd
| have graded it at 5- this day. At lower levels it runs at
| class 5+ and many would portage, the ledges that trap you
| need divers to get to you and even good safety cover
| would be of little use in an entrapment situation. (2
| tourists fell in at the Strid last year and one didn't
| emerge for nearly a week)
|
| Portage in this context means get out and carry your
| kayak past it. From
| https://www.ukriversguidebook.co.uk/rivers/england/north-
| eas...
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| Sorry, what's the rating system?
| gregplaysguitar wrote:
| It tells you how difficult the rapid is to paddle - 1
| being basically flat water, 5 generally the highest that
| can be paddled. This website explains it
| https://gopaddling.info/river-gradings-simple-guide/
| gerdesj wrote:
| It's not in the FAQ for the site and Rivers -> Grades is
| a 404! I suppose we'll have to take up kayaking to find
| out.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's a pretty standard rating system. (I-VI--with the
| latter not being generally runnable) However, once you
| get to the highest levels there are unique features that
| can determine difficulty/danger. For example, if you do
| dump, is there a quiet section at the end of the rapid or
| is it miles of the same thing?
| toss1 wrote:
| What you are missing is that this is an extremely complex
| version of a drowning machine -- very good read here [0].
|
| Under the water is turbulence that just traps a person and
| keeps them tumbling underwater.
|
| In addition the article points out that there are numerous
| rock outcroppings underwater against which an unfortunate
| person's head would likely get bashed, reducing or
| eliminating consciousness.
|
| I also notice that the water is quite frothy and full of air
| bubbles. This reduces it's net density and thus reduces the
| buoyancy available to any objects that would otherwise float.
| It can be enough to sink ships [1].
|
| So, basically, the turbulent water will pull you under, bash
| you hard against the rocks, give you less-than-normal
| buoyancy, and hold you under. It's kind of a toss-up whether
| you lose consciousness first from the head injuries or the
| lack of air, and after a few minutes of that, you're dead.
| Have a nice afterlife
|
| [0] https://practical.engineering/blog/2019/3/16/drowning-
| machin...
|
| [1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1350-bubbling-
| seas-ca...
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| > What is known is that a powerful undercurrent will pull
| anybody that falls into certain death.
|
| > The reason for the dangerous network of caves is just
| further up above the mouth of the Bolton Strid the river
| flows 30ft wide and a lot easier giving a more idyllic,
| romantic and tranquil flow before being disrupted by a
| geological formation that abruptly funnels hundreds of
| gallons of water through a tiny six-foot channel.
|
| So, the surface appears tranquil, but under the surface is a
| swift turbulent undercurrent.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's like 100 feet deep. Better hope you are at the surface
| if you are trying to grab a rock at the surface.
| throw827474737 wrote:
| The guy in the second vid measures 65 meters (210 feet) at
| one place, 50 meters at another, thats really a wow deep
| hidden canyon there.
| carabiner wrote:
| Clearly you should venture forth and swim in it to prove him
| wrong. Godspeed.
| sideshowb wrote:
| I've not seen the documentaries you refer. But kayakers know
| that danger of a water feature doesn't necessarily correlate
| with how violent it looks on the surface. Plenty of very
| quiet weirs are known to be fatal while plenty of noisy ones
| (though not all!) will spit you out unharmed.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| It's embedded in TFA
| xeromal wrote:
| The fucking article?
| noSyncCloud wrote:
| The featured article.
| xeromal wrote:
| Oh, haha. Thanks.
| TylerE wrote:
| Yeah, and you read the fine manual. Sure.
| sam1r wrote:
| It would be an epic demonstration to Crash test a fleet of iPhone
| 14's and verify their waterproof capabilities.
|
| I've seen many demonstrations since iPhone 12 of people just
| recording video in their fish tank.
| thisisnotanexit wrote:
| As soon as I saw the headline I thought that it sounds like
| something Tom Scott would create a video about... and then there
| is his video right in the article.
| kazinator wrote:
| Did you mean "deceptive" or "treacherous"?
| tomcam wrote:
| decepcherous
| the_sleaze_ wrote:
| treacheptive
| Exuma wrote:
| Considering the very definition of "deceptive" is "apt or
| tending to deceive," which is the word I used, I'd say what I
| used is fine.
| kazinator wrote:
| But it came out as "deceiving"; check the title.
| Exuma wrote:
| What exactly are you correcting? I used the word right as
| far as I can tell.
|
| "Looks can be deceiving" is an extremely common idiom that
| means basically what I wrote in the title.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I understood the meaning and it seems like you and everyone
| else here did too. It may not be the word you would have
| chosen but that's life.
| kazinator wrote:
| HN submission titles can be improved based on feedback,
| which is one of the functions of comments. As you can
| see, the usage no longer appears in the title.
|
| The meaning being understandable isn't an effective
| criterion for good writing, because even egregiously poor
| writing with multiple errors of grammar, spelling and
| word usage can often be understood.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yes it seems like they removed it entirely. An impressive
| victory for nitpickers everywhere. This site embarrasses
| me sometimes.
| kazinator wrote:
| If you recommend the site to someone, and they see
| nothing but excellent titles on the front page, then in
| that situation you're spared embarrassment.
| hiidrew wrote:
| The Strid's calm apperance is what scares me (calm at least from
| the photos, I imagine it's loud in person). Would admire from
| afar, avoid any off chance of slipping in.
| daveslash wrote:
| Yeah. That Youtube video of the guy testing the depth with a
| fishing rod... builds my anxiety just watching him get that
| close. If that were a 2,000ft cliff instead of water, I
| wouldn't get half that close! Knowing how deadly the water
| is... one slip... _anxiety building_.....
| kart23 wrote:
| It would be pretty cool to send an underwater drone down there,
| with power/video line to the surface, so it would be pretty
| lightweight and enough illumination to see in the water.
| Nursie wrote:
| I've been thinking about a Gladius "Chasing Dory" for a while
| as they are comparatively reasonably priced. But even at a few
| hundred bucks I don't think I'd want to risk it in there!
| TT-392 wrote:
| I kinda doubt you'd get any useful control with those currents.
| Might as well just drop a camera in there on a rope or a stick
| (which has already been done).
| jeff-davis wrote:
| Mythbusters: looks like a job for "Buster" (the crash dummy).
| osrec wrote:
| Interesting story: my parents had a fashion business in
| Yorkshire, and one of their regular customers asked them to
| produce a t-shirt with the words "I jumped the strid" on it. We
| had no idea what the words meant. Turns out, in Yorkshire,
| jumping the strid was a way to express your love to your
| girlfriend. We got a few of those t-shirts made, and were
| surprised by the number of 50+ year old couples that bought them
| that summer!
| rob74 wrote:
| So you either jump the Strid or, failing that, you cross the
| Jordan (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Crossin
| g%20J...), in which case you won't need a T-Shirt anymore...
| chrisshroba wrote:
| Or you cross the river Styx [1], depending which mythology
| you believe.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styx
| anyonecancode wrote:
| Or the River on Which Nothing Floats
|
| (referencing Ken Liu's Dandelion Dynasty, which I just
| finished. Liu is the American translator for Liu Cixin's
| Three Body Problem, which has been discussed on HN, so
| other HN readers might be interested to learn that he also
| has his own fiction)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Liu#Novels
| TylerE wrote:
| Or the Rubicon
| collyw wrote:
| Doesn't look like 100% mortality rate to me. This guy is pretty
| shit in a kayak, but his friends knew what to do.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_q8KiEfW7k
| TylerE wrote:
| Now imagine if there weren't other people present.
| collyw wrote:
| I imagine he would walk around it. It's usually only very
| high end kayakers that kayak solo. Or people extremely
| familiar with the section.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| On the history page of York Sub-Aqua club, they refer to members
| having regularly gone diving in the "Stridd" at Bolton Abbey in
| years gone past [1]. The only other reference I can find to
| diving in the Strid is in Youtube comments [2], which apparently
| suggest that the dives stopped some decades ago.
|
| Anyone know differently?
|
| EDIT: More at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUamSryCUK4, but
| sadly without progess as reported at
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDskXBfyNes#t=179.
|
| [1] https://york-diving.co.uk/index.php/history/
|
| [2] https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-
| news/scub...
| thih9 wrote:
| Did anyone try throwing an airtag / other location device there?
| Would it reappear in some river or would it get stuck
| underground?
| tux3 wrote:
| Natural river water is going to absorb the airtag's Bluetooth
| signal, it'll lose tracking very quickly unless it stays near a
| phone at all times.
|
| You could chuck hundreds of iphones into the river along the
| airtag. I hear they're waterproof to some decent depth
| hirvi74 wrote:
| A YouTuber named, "Jack A Snacks" stuck a camera down the Strid.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot8lr_5oHE4
|
| and
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPO7cxHJgvw
|
| Looks absolutely brutal.
| rob74 wrote:
| If you compare the above-surface parts of the video to the
| pictures from the article, you notice that the pictures were
| taken at "high water", where the gorge is filled up to the
| brim. In the video, there is at least one meter of near-
| vertical wall visible, so it doesn't look like an innocuous
| stream anymore.
| jakzurr wrote:
| Really, really creepy to watch. I kept gritting my teeth when
| he was climbing on the mossy rocks, wondering how easy it would
| be to join his camera. :(
| jawadch93 wrote:
| [deleted]
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I remember seeing a few videos on this, it's super interesting
| because there are accounts of how dangerous it is, going back
| _hundreds of years_. Fascinating stuff.
| jupp0r wrote:
| > 100% mortality rate
|
| Not if you count kayaking[1]. In general I doubt that this is
| more dangerous than other whitewater creeks. They are all death
| traps that people can't normally survive swimming in, especially
| if it's hard to get out. The article seems to be based more on
| local legend than actual facts.
|
| [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MkPUPxPfFHw
|
| edit: different video, there are really lots of them folks
| szundi wrote:
| Article sais it is deep and there are tunnels also. It sucks
| you down and you are lost in a tunnel and die.
|
| How exactly do you plan to survive when falling off the kayak?
| askvictor wrote:
| You'd hope to not fall out of the kayak, but stay in it (with
| the skirt keeping most water out of the body of it), and do
| an Eskimo roll. The kayak, being very buoyant with all that
| air inside, would be unlikely to be sucked under. If you
| can't do an Eskimo roll, you would drown (presuming the
| whitewater traps you in the one spot rather than pushing you
| downstream)
| [deleted]
| samstave wrote:
| You lit just came up with the invention of the scuba-kayak..
|
| Call it the "sub-marine" or something such
| jupp0r wrote:
| There is literally somebody falling out of the kayak in the
| video I linked, around the 3:30 mark. He's swimming with a
| life vest on.
| exDM69 wrote:
| And he was pulled out of the water by two other persons
| using a paddle. Before that he was stuck upside down under
| the kayak for a solid 10 seconds before another person
| grabbed the kayak. There was no indication that they
| could've uprighted the kayak under their own power (we can
| only speculate). The person didn't look like a happy camper
| afterwards.
| omnicognate wrote:
| It's supposed to be especially dangerous because it doesn't
| look like a whitewater creek. There's a part where the river
| becomes narrow enough to jump across and the water appears calm
| but is extremely deep and fast moving. It's a popular beauty
| spot and the river can be mistaken for a shalllow stream.
|
| The article is indeed of very low quality, though, and claims
| of it being "the most dangerous stretch of water in the world"
| are hyperbole at best.
| samstave wrote:
| What IS BEAUTIFUL is the people who are standing on the side
| waiting to freaking help.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| My brother-in-law drowned in the Mawhera/Grey River on the West
| Coast of the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand.
|
| The geology of the river that got my BIL is very similar to the
| Strid - swift deep waters cutting through a limestone bed,
| creating shelves that currents and buoyancy can trap you under,
| eroding through to natural caves, or in the case of the
| Mawhera, eroding into the old coal mining tunnels that burrowed
| beneath the riverbed in the 1800s.
|
| End result is a highly treacherous waterway. The Police Dive
| Squad refused to search for my BIL's body due to the shelves
| and tunnels, and the current.
|
| So, yeah, this is more dangerous than your whitewater creeks,
| mainly because it doesn't look dangerous, but also because of
| the additional hydrological dangers that a sweet whitewater run
| doesn't have.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > 100% mortality rate
|
| Translation for pedants: _Lots_ of people die - especially
| know-it-all idiots, thrill-seekers, and show-offs. We locals -
| whose taxes pay for the paperwork & such after each death, by
| the way - are utterly sick of it. Go earn your bloody Darwin
| Award somewhere else, arsehole.
| [deleted]
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| What if you capsize?
| Lio wrote:
| Watch the video he links to and find out. ;)
|
| To me the whole idea of attempting this is like picking a
| fist fight with a polar bear; complete hubris.
| sio8ohPi wrote:
| Ideally you roll. If you do wet exit, the helmet and PFD
| provide a lot of protection. You can see this in the linked
| video around 3m20s.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| I talked to someone in a reticulated pedal boat the other day
| about how he rescued a kayak instructor from drowning because
| he could not reverse himself from being turned upside down in
| front of his own class who didn't realize he was serious about
| tapping the hull to indicate he needed help. He calls kayaks
| "death traps". I believe him.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Is that the Strid? They don't say the name of the location in
| the video or in the description. It also looks a bit different
| to me than the pictures and videos of the Strid.
| jupp0r wrote:
| If you Google "whitewater strid" there are many videos of
| people kayaking it. Here's another one:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MkPUPxPfFHw
| [deleted]
| paganel wrote:
| Scary video, someone almost drowns at about the 3:35 mark.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| The person in the video almost drowned while on a buoyant
| kayak _and_ wearing a life jacket... doesn't really counter
| the point of the article!
| permo-w wrote:
| the upbeat music is really incongruous with the guy
| practically killing himself
| jollyllama wrote:
| Such is the life of a daredevil.
| SamPatt wrote:
| >He was said to have been swallowed by the Strid in 1152 after
| trying to leap across.
|
| As an American it's always startling to casually see a date that
| far back in history, and know a specific event such as the death
| of a child was recorded, and has been remembered for nearly a
| thousand years.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Of course, the Americas has a long history, but much of it was
| systematically destroyed
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_codex .
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| As the joke goes: "In the US, 100 years is a long time, in
| Europe, 100 miles is a long way"
| skerit wrote:
| I'm from Belgium. Anything over 50 km (30 miles) away should
| ideally be turned into a weekend-long trip
| RajT88 wrote:
| Yep. I regularly drive 46 miles to visit my wife's family.
| The roads are long and straight, and the speed limits quite
| high.
|
| We get passed on the highway when we're doing 120km/h. I
| don't imagine you can maintain those kinds of speeds on
| account of speed limits and winding roads. Possibly takes
| an hour or three?
| r2_pilot wrote:
| Ha, (USA - MS here), my mom lives 17 miles(27 km) away and
| I visit her regularly, and prior to my current job, I
| commuted 44 miles (70 km) daily for 3 years.
| bergenty wrote:
| That's like a 25 minute trip if you're on the freeway.
| mod wrote:
| I own a business that's 124 miles away from my home.
|
| You can guess where I live.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| My wife attended graduate school 200km away and would leave
| and return the same day. At least one of the ways
| (depending on what time the class was) was in stop-and-go
| traffic for a decent part of it, taking up to 4 hours.
| koheripbal wrote:
| I routinely drive 10 hours in the US for week long vacations
| with the kids.
|
| My European relatives can't even believe it when I tell them.
| They think driving that long is some superhuman ability.
|
| I'm quite content listening to my history podcast for 10
| hours.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Counterintuitively, oral histories (and traditions) have been
| and may be a better long term store of information than written
| documents but someone in the future is going to find out for
| sure! There's the 10000 year Australian aboriginal tales about
| sea level rise that matched geological data and was on the
| front page a few years ago.
| Bakary wrote:
| The information obtained is so fragmented and imprecise that
| it's not really that useful beyond testifying to the the
| length of aboriginal history.
| lotsofspots wrote:
| The oral traditions of the Klamath people describe the
| eruption that turned Mount Mazama into Crater Lake 8000 years
| ago, too.
| Taywee wrote:
| > The most infamous life claimed by the stride is William de
| Romilly, the son of Lady Alice de Romilly, who owned the land. He
| was said to have been swallowed by the Strid in 1152 after trying
| to leap across.
|
| Why was he infamous? I'm not finding much information on him at
| all.
| mod wrote:
| I think the death was infamous, not the kid.
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| The Tom Scott video referenced below claims William was
| supposed to be the future king of Scotland, I did no further
| fact checking though.
| aaron695 wrote:
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| That is a genuine Yorkshire accent (i'm not sure which part), for
| those that are wondering. At least i think it is.
| [deleted]
| pmarreck wrote:
| An experienced scuba diver should go down there with a bright
| light and a camera... and a rope leading back to the surface
| RajT88 wrote:
| A similarly mad plan would be draining it. Create a bypass and
| then pump out the water from the deep pockets and see what's in
| there.
|
| I imagine there's some political challenges to that, but from
| an engineering perspective it's old hat. High likelihood of
| being sued and shut down by the local government, but low
| likelihood of anyone dying.
| mint2 wrote:
| The one tiny issue with that plan is that if they are an
| experienced scuba diver and were given that request then they'd
| they'd nope the hell out of the vicinity faster than a human
| can blink. By definition any scuba diver attempting that is
| either the most inexperienced one in existence or suicidal.
| stubish wrote:
| Try a drone first. And after that gets smashed against the rock
| walls, try a different plan.
| trustingtrust wrote:
| I thought the water itself was so impure that if you drink it
| then the mortality rate is 100%. That's what the title suggested
| to me. But turns out it's the river thats dangerous.
| muzani wrote:
| Rarely is the article more interesting than the title hints.
| dizzant wrote:
| The appearance of this article on HN strikes an uncanny valley
| for me. I independently recalled and told a friend about this
| river just a few hours ago, having not thought of it or done any
| digital interactions with the idea in probably more than a year.
| I searched it on DDG to show a picture. Now, suddenly, it's #3 on
| HN.
|
| Am I going mad? Is the surveillance state so deep in my
| subconscious that I fail to notice it's observations? This
| article isn't even tech related, why is it here?
| shredprez wrote:
| Either we're all living in your dream (not terribly likely from
| my perspective) or you've stumbled upon one of life's great
| joys: the so-called "delusion of reference", a fun trick our
| minds like to play on us sometimes. Congrats on your unsettling
| coincidence :)
| jschveibinz wrote:
| You are not going mad.
|
| Now, just relax. The HN interface to your brain waves is a
| little noisy right now, and it works better when you are
| relaxed... /s
| onethought wrote:
| Or your friend is the OP?
| sbierwagen wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_phenome...
| tmpz22 wrote:
| There's a popular video heavily recommended on YouTube right
| now which has likely bounced around link aggregators like
| Reddit, HN, and other blogs etc. Odds are you saw some
| derivative of that.
|
| This is just the regurgitation of the internet causing a deja
| vu effect
| ciphol wrote:
| No, there are thousands of us here, and by chance one of us
| will have thought of the idea recently, and this time it's you.
| poisonarena wrote:
| is that what uncanny valley means?
| poisonborz wrote:
| No, that relates to human aesthetics.
| syzygyhack wrote:
| Just the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon at work! Or perhaps a
| synchronicity, if you are inclined to believe in such things.
|
| A similar thing happened to me the last time the Strid popped
| up on Reddit and HN. It was only a day after I had just
| returned from a popular walking route which passes alongside it
| and the Abbey.
| GistNoesis wrote:
| Some youtuber tried to sonar it to get the depth and also tried
| throwing some video camera in it but it's muddy and turbulent so
| it's hard to get the big picture of how it works.
|
| What would really be cool would be to have the 3d geometry of the
| river, and run it through water simulation software ; put a rag-
| doll in and see how the current would pull you down.
|
| Constructing the 3d geometry is probably an interesting
| engineering challenge. Although there exists some off the shelf
| underwater lidar solutions
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YevvMcc6Zu4 and underwater
| drones, it's likely to be too turbulent (and with air bubble) for
| them to stay in place at a known position to work properly out of
| the box (but maybe not because it seems to be possible to scuba
| dive the strid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUamSryCUK4).
| madaxe_again wrote:
| With the way things are going, the easiest route will likely be
| to wait for summer in a few years time, and to do it whilst
| it's dry. It has dropped to record low levels several times in
| the last few years, revealing much of the absolutely tortured
| pothole-ridden geology beneath, and the drainage which feeds it
| is failing to get replenished year on year.
| TylerE wrote:
| Temporary dam/diversion?
| koheripbal wrote:
| This is what I was thinking. Divert and I bet it would be a
| treasure trove of archeological findings.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
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