Ken Smith/Turnagain Times
Portage Creek can be deceptively dangerous as Girdwood residents Ben and Kimberly Robbins found out a couple of weeks ago when their canoe capsized, and they nearly drowned.
By Ken Smith
Turnagain Times
When Ben and Kimberly Robbins arrived at Portage Creek, Friday, Sept. 4, the sun was shining and the married couple was looking forward to a day on the water hanging out at their favorite fishing hole.
It’s a trip Ben had done 100 times before in both a kayak and a canoe.
Typically he puts in at the same spot on the creek a short hike from milepost 2 on Portage Road.
When they reached their spot, they positioned the canoe by the edge of the bank, put in their two backpacks and his fly fishing rod and pushed off from shore.
Kimberly, 37, was in the front of the canoe and Ben, 36, was in the back.
They floated about five feet from shore and Ben started paddling on the leeward side to face the canoe into the current. His wife began paddling on the upstream side.
Ben recognized that she should be paddling on the opposite side as they floated into an eddy, which started pushing the canoe upstream.
The canoe unexpectedly went sideways into the current.
Ben yelled, “High side, high side!” But it was too late. The canoe flipped over.
The two gripped the canoe from either end. Ben was having a hard time seeing Kimberly on the other side; she was struggling to hold onto the tip of the canoe, as the current carried them swiftly out toward the middle of the creek.
“As soon as we fell in we were in deep water and couldn’t touch bottom,” said Ben as he recounted the incident a week later. “The water started taking us.”
Neither of them had life vests on and Kimberly was wearing chest waders, which quickly filled with water as she struggled to keep her head above the surface.
Ben yelled out to her to stay with the boat. He saw her head go under. It was mere seconds, but it seemed like an eternity to Ben.
He saw her head pop back up and then she went under again. A few more seconds passed and she burst to the surface, struggling to breathe as she spit water out of her mouth, hanging onto the boat with all her strength.
“When you see your wife’s head go under, and I’m on the opposite side of the canoe…” Ben’s voice trailed off as he shook his head.
It was at that moment Ben knew they had to make a difficult choice, one that contradicted logic.
“I made the decision that we had to leave the boat or we might die out there,” he said. “You’re never supposed to leave your boat because it’s floating. But I didn’t think she’d last in the cold and the water, and I noticed the canoe was starting to trail off at the port side. I thought the best chance we had was to get to a gravel bar not too far away.”
Ben yelled to Kimberly to let go. The canoe floated away, and he quickly swam to catch his wife.
He grabbed her waders with one arm and used the other to swim backwards towards the gravel bar.
“When I felt my feet touch the gravel, I was so happy,” he said. “I don’t remember getting her onto that gravel bar, but we caught the very tip of it. She couldn’t bring her feet down to stand, and I was yelling for her to get her feet down, and I was starting to float away from the shore.”
Ben grabbed her arm with his free hand and used his other arm to swim against the current. He exerted every last bit of energy he had to get her ashore.
“She couldn’t move because of the weight of the water in her waders,” he said. “It must have weighed around 200 pounds.”
Kimberly laid on the gravel bar, her arm hanging awkwardly down. She started shaking and told Ben her shoulder was dislocated—she’s a nurse with Providence Regional Hospital and knew right away that her shoulder was dislocated.
Ben was afraid she was going into shock and started quickly gathering driftwood on the gravel bar. He broke the wood into small pieces and pulled a metal lighter out of his Carhart pockets. He flipped the lid open and flicked the lighter. One try and a flame shot out.
“That’s it,” he said holding up a silver Jack Daniels lighter. “I couldn’t believe it worked.”
As the fire grew and Kimberly sat by it, trying to keep warm, Ben starting walking up the gravel bar yelling for help. But nobody was around.
He returned to Kimberly. Her arm was becoming discolored. He tried to reset it back into the socket, but couldn’t.
And they waited.
About two hours passed when Ben saw two girls walking along the beach across the creek.
“We started yelling at them to please help us but they kept walking,” he said, still in disbelief. “I could not believe those girls could not hear us.”
He said a couple of low-flying planes also flew overhead, but didn’t notice them waving for help.
“I couldn’t believe that nobody else was on the creek that day,” he said.
Fours hours later, clouds were moving in and the air was growing colder.
Ben knew they couldn’t wait any longer.
He decided he would swim to the other side of the creek. He took off all of his clothes, save for his boxers, and kissed his wife before he plunged into the frigid water.
There was one bare spot on the bank on the other side of the creek that he could try to reach, otherwise it was all overhanging brush.
He aimed upstream about 20 yards from the bare spot, figuring the current should carry him right into it.
He took one last look at his wife and jumped in and began swimming as fast as he could. Less than 15 seconds later he was across the creek and hit his mark.
“I timed it pretty good,” he said smiling, “and the current carried me to the spot.”
Ben got out of the water and told Kimberly that he was going to get help and to keep the fire going.
Cold and shaking, he ran for about one-and-a-half miles to a cabin owned by John Bridges.
“His uncle was out on the deck smoking a cigarette and he sees this dude walking up in boxers,” Ben said. “He said, ‘is that you that was yelling upstream, I thought I heard something.’”
Ben said he needed a boat, and the man responded, “First let’s get you some clothing.”
He found a wool flannel shirt, and they went to the boat and tried to start it, but it wouldn’t kick over. They got a generator to charge the battery, but that didn’t work. Ben was becoming exasperated. Every minute that went by was time his wife was suffering.
Another man showed up, who was familiar with the boat, and after a little tinkering with the motor, got it started.
They jumped in and headed upstream. When they reached Kimberly, there were two men with Alpacka rafts, and they were about to ferry her across.
They all returned to the other side of the creek and started walking back to the Robbins’ car. About 40 yards down the trail they bumped into a group of firefighters from the Girdwood Fire Department and state Troopers who were walking the shoreline.
Earlier in the day, some fishermen found the canoe and backpacks floating by Portage Creek Bridge on the Seward Highway and telephoned for help.
“They called the Troopers and the Troopers said that they might just be looking for bodies,” Ben said. “I’m really happy they weren’t.”
Ben was impressed by the response, which when they returned to their car included two fire trucks and an ambulance.
And also impressive, he said, was that all their gear was returned, even his fly fishing rod.
Looking back, Ben realizes that despite his wealth of experience on Portage Creek, he forgot the most important thing.
“I had respect for it before,” he said. “I think I lost some respect because I’d been down it so many times before. Tides and currents can be very deceptive. It’s not Six-mile Creek, but it will kill you just like any river.”
He also learned one more thing–love for his wife of 15 years.
“I really love that woman,” he said. “I love her more than anything in the world, and I don’t know what I would do if I lost her that day.”
