Adirondack Life: Risky Business

May/June 2011: Risky Business

This spring one Hudson River outfitter faces charges of reckless endangerment. Are questions about white-water rafting safety tarnishing the image of an important Adirondack industry?

by Mary Thill

On the morning of Thursday, August 12, 2010, a Georgia resident named Robert Carson and his daughter Savannah intended to take a trip down the Indian and Hudson Rivers. They paid Hudson River Rafting Company about $80 each, expecting to be passengers in a guided raft. But according to a Hamilton County grand jury indictment, the outfitter booked more people than it could fit into rafts that day. At the river’s edge, company owner Pat Cunningham persuaded the Carsons to attempt the remote, 17-mile, intermittent Class II–III route themselves in an inflatable kayak, even though he knew that the pair had no white-water experience. They capsized their ducky in the second rapid and eventually caught a ride in an overloaded raft, which also flipped. The trip ended after only three miles.

In newspaper accounts Cunningham has disputed this characterization of events and pleaded not guilty to a charge of reckless endangerment. He was scheduled to go to trial in Hamilton County Court as this magazine was going to press.

Cunningham has also pleaded not guilty to a second count of reckless endangerment and three counts of endangering the welfare of a child for, two days earlier, launching a group of children and counselors from Camp Morasha, a Pennsylvania-based camp for Orthodox Jewish youth, in rafts with “an insufficient number of guides,” according to the indictment. A raft piloted by Cunningham reportedly fell behind the “bubble,” an hour-and-a-half cushion of water re­leased upstream from Lake Abanakee to make the Indian and Hudson navigable during otherwise low water. Having lost that push, the party’s boat dragged. Several campers got out and hiked to a road on a railroad bed, while three girls finished the last, slowest leg of the trip with Cunningham, “physically exhausted and after the defendant had failed to provide sufficient food or drink,” the indictment alleges.


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This sounds fishy to me. I know nothing about the specific event event, but I've rafted that stretch a number of times. All the rafting companies arrive about the same time in order to stay "on the bubble". They all know each other and seem relatively friendly. If Cunningham was a guide short that day it would seem that he could have found a place in someone elses raft.

tom

The story is frighteningly accurate.

TomCat wrote

This sounds fishy to me. I know nothing about the specific event event, but I've rafted that stretch a number of times. All the rafting companies arrive about the same time in order to stay "on the bubble". They all know each other and seem relatively friendly. If Cunningham was a guide short that day it would seem that he could have found a place in someone elses raft.

tom

Then I'll be sure to avoid using them for any future trips. 100% inexcusable.

tom