For those suggesting using an upstream angle to ferry yourself across: dream on. Michael Phelps in 50+ degree water, maybe. Average person, no. In serious water, you're either swimming hard for the nearest shore, or trying to survive obstacles. If you try to maintain an upstream ferry angle, all you accomplish is to slow your cross-river speed. Your few miles an hour of upstream velocity are negated by far by the speed of the water carrying you downstream. The loss of cross-river speed from trying to maintain a ferry angle means the force of the current pushing you back toward the center of the river will overwhelm you. You'll be swimming as hard as you can upstream, and all you're accomplishing is wearing yourself out. Ferrying works much better for boats than it does for swimmers.
For reasons only partially understood, I decided to briefly cruise the net for booms and swiftwater rescue. I found the use of inflated, nearly rigid fire-hose-type devices being hyped.
There were not a lot of written details but pictures and diagrams clearly showed lengths of inflated fire hose being fed straight out to victims in still water, and being fed upstream to drift down to victims in moving water, among others. One diagram even shows tethering the hose upstream to a tree and using what they call the pendulum effect and guide ropes on a mechanical truck boom over the water to let the current take the hose to a victim.
I did not find any river-crossing mentions, nor the idea of having a rescuer ride the end of the inflated fire hose as the current pendulumed it out.
Sounds a bit like a high-tech "pole" to me.
You all need to take a Swiftwtare Rescue Class before discussing things you really do not understand or take snippets from things you read on the web and try to theorize how you would implement them in armchair scenarios. Even if attending such classes are not feasible, try contacting your local Swiftwater Rescue Team and see if you could watch them train. They might even be willing to try a few of your ideas under controlled conditions.
Our team brainstorms all of the time and we do try various new ideas and techniques for rescue situations all of the time, but we have the basic background in water hydraulics, rescue training, equipment and sufficient safety factors to mitigate most of the risk. Before all training activities, we do a risk/benefit analysis and if we feel we will lean something from taking minimal risk, we will try it out. Our experiences have been that most of tested methodologies still are the best, but are willing to examine new ideas.
Pete
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