Dive, Jump, Sake, Slide, Fall, Skid
From the Summer 2024 Issue
What not to do with kids
KIDS BRAVING THE ROCK SLIDES AT LIONHEAD IN PRIEST LAKE. PHOTO BY FIONA HICKS
LEAPING FROM THE PILINGS IS THRILLING, BUT DANGEROUS… AND ALSO ILLEGAL. PHOTO BY LESLIE KIEBERT.
I was an over-eager parent, anxious for my daughter to experience the wonders and thrills of the great outdoors. Sometimes that urge put my only child’s life and limbs in jeopardy.
I’m not alone. Many parents need to check their zeal to avoid close calls, or worse, while enjoying the natural wonders of North Idaho.
Consider the Lionhead natural waterslide in the Selkirk Mountains. A corridor of black plastic garbage bags line the trail. Perhaps intended as a kind gesture from other visitors, the plastic bags make you slide faster. But this is no backyard Slip ‘N Slide.
When we reached the sloping slab of granite bedrock, with Lion Creek washing down it, I was oblivious to the potential danger. Yet many serious accidents have occurred here.
I plopped my 6-year-old down on a garbage bag and sent her down the slippery slope to her fate. She shot down, fell backwards, and whacked her head on the hard granite bedrock. She whirled down toward a pool at the bottom and a jumble of tree trunks and branches just beyond it. Would she stop? Was she concussed?
She came to a stop in a pool just before a widow-maker log pile, surviving relatively unscathed. But I’ve borne the scars of parental guilt ever since.
Bonner General’s emergency department is witness to many outdoor-related emergencies each summer, such as a toddler who applied bear spray to herself when it was left within easy reach. They catalog the most common injuries each season artistically on a dry erase board with hash marks. Leading mishaps involve fireworks and bonfires, bike and ATV accidents (remember the helmets!), insect stings, water sports, and dehydration. Most are preventable with some extra awareness of your surroundings, said ER nurse Lori Garza.
BONNER GENERAL HEALTH’S EMERGENCY ROOM ‘COLLECTION OF ACCIDENTS’ BOARD COMPILED THE SUMMER OF 2023.
“If you’re going camping, scout out a little bit,” she said—keeping an eye out for dangerous terrain, and wasp’s nests both in trees and hiding in the ground. And stay hydrated. “You can dehydrate really fast, even when it’s not hot,” she said.
Both Garza and Sheriff’s Marine Lt. Doug McGeachy warn boaters to not drink and drive to reduce careless boating activities—such as towing too many kids on a tube, or under a bridge where a random wave could smash them against the pilings.
McGeachy is haunted by a case on Priest Lake when two children nearly perished from carbon monoxide poisoning from hanging off the back of a slow-moving boat. Riding on the transom, or swim step, of a boat is illegal because “you could be overtaken by fumes,” he explained.
The two young girls lost their grip on the boat as it was headed back to shore. One was found floating face down, unconscious and not breathing. The family rushed the girls to a resort, where a doctor and two nurses sitting on the deck recognized the emergency and were able to take over CPR. A Life Flight helicopter happened to be in the area, which flew the children to a hospital.
“Had all those resources not fallen into place as they did, that probably would have been a different outcome,” McGeachy said.
Another life-threatening risk—one that has claimed at least one life since McGeachy joined the force in 2019—are summer storms that kick up monster waves on Lake Pend Oreille.
Former rafting guide Courtney Sanborn developed respect for the whitewater of Lake Pend Oreille the hard way when she and her 12-year-old daughter Logan took the family powerboat to camp with friends at Green Bay about 10 years ago.
Sanborn moored the boat to a buoy offshore. Overnight, the winds picked up and branches rained down on the campground. By morning the boat was clearly starting to sink as waves kept breaking over it, and they had to swim to the boat. “It was a helluva swim out there,” Sanborn said. “We both got banged up just getting in the boat.” That turned out to be the easy part.
They headed far enough into the open lake so the waves wouldn’t smash them against the rocks and cliffs onshore.
THE LAKE IN A STORM. PHOTO NOT BY KEVIN DAVIS.
“The waves were huge,” she said. “We were getting tossed,” and as they turned the corner into Garfield Bay, “we literally high-sided in the power boat.” They were slammed around the interior. “I thought, ‘Great, I am going to flip a power boat’.”
The boat landed upright and made it into Garfield Bay. When they arrived, “I was bawling,” she recalled. “I was very grateful for the fact that we walked away with just bumps and bruises and minor cuts.”
That close call may have helped prevent others. That “Thank-God-I-didn’t-kill-my-kid moment” was on her mind when, as safety coordinator for the Long Bridge Swim, Sanborn—with other race officials—made the call to cancel the annual long-distance swim in 2017 due to high winds.
Don’t let these stories keep you and your kids indoors, however. The benefit of exploring the outdoors is worth the risk, and a little common sense can generally ensure your adventures will result in cherished family memories.
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