Chilly swimmer rescued from river island

[+Right Wing Wacko]

Geocacher rescued from Island in Spokane River

 

Including the story since the URL will probably change

 

Chilly swimmer rescued from river island

Staff and wire reports

April 14, 2008

 

Sure it was a sunny day. But it isn't summer.

 

And that's now apparent to 23-year-old Bruce Benson, who was stranded Sunday evening on a Spokane River island at the T.J. Meenach Bridge. Benson had apparently been participating in the GPS-aided activity known as geocaching and believed there was a cache on the island under the bridge, Batallion Chief Mike Inman said.

 

'"He swam out there when the air was warm," even though the water temperature was a bitter 45 degrees, Inman said.

 

At dusk, when the air temperature dropped, Benson -- wearing nothing but a wet swimsuit -- got cold. He worried that he wouldn't make it back to the mainland.

 

Benson's friend called authorities and they arrived at the bridge about 8 p.m. and set up floodlights on the bridge. They used a boat to pick up the castaway about 8:20 p.m.

 

Inman said it is "absolutely not" a good time of year for swimming the river, and noted that local ordinances require that swimmers in moving water must wear a life jacket.

 

- Thomas Clouse

[+hydnsek]

I remember that cache! MarcusArelius and I did it last summer to get one of the D/T combos for the Well-Rounded Washington Cacher Challenge. We waded the shallow arm of the river to the island on Aug. 1, when the water was probably warmer and only to our knees.

 

The cache is "." (GCQ9TB). The incident is covered in logs on the cache page - he found the cache!

Edited April 27, 2008 by hydnsek

[+MaplessInSeattle]

The incident is covered in logs on the cache page - he found the cache!

That would have been a bummer of a DNF

[+Prying Pandora]

Yikes! I did that cache at the end of September and it was already chilly then.