. . . . and still I have managed to flood them more than once. If you are working in the surf, nothing short of waders will keep you dry.
This reminded me of a funny story. One autumn a friend and colleague, Lon, and I were working, shooting video of black bears fishing for salmon in the creeks of the islands in southeast Alaska near Prince of Wales Island. We would boat up to the mouth of a creek, tie up the boat, and then walk upstream to find a likely spot to set up. If you arrive at low tide, you pull the boat up as far on the bank as you can. If you arrive at high tide, you tie up the boat with a long rope, have the anchor balance on the gunwales, push the boat out as far as you can and jerk the tether to drop the anchor. It works pretty well most of the time. Often we would arrive near low tide and would leave with the tide much higher. Some of the rocky stream-beds are pretty slick. Really, really slick. Since black bears have such good sense of smell, we would wear waders and wade up stream to our position. If you've ever been to southeast Alaska, it rains, . . . a lot, . . . and often, so we also wore rain gear most of the time. On day in question we had waded up stream, parked ourselves on the root knot of a washed out tree and waited. We had one very brief bear encounter that day, a yearling bear that couldn't get away from us fast enough. This was late August or early September. When we decided to head back to the boat, the tide had caused the stream to rise pretty significantly. Still it was not over the tops of my hip waders. I'm bringing up the rear as we wade downstream. Lon wades faster than I do. About halfway back, I'm hurrying and I lose my footing on a large slick rock and tip over backwards. I was carrying a small backpack, but had the video camera in my hands in case of a bear encounter. As I fall over backwards, I hold the camera up as high as I can. I ship water in my waders and get quite a bit of water up my back under my rain gear. It is cold water as you can imagine. I open my mouth to let Lon know I fallen, but all that comes out is AAaaaauugh. Did I mention the water was cold? Lon turns around and says, "Is the camera okay?" I've kidded him often about that since. His response is always that he knew I was wearing merino wool clothes and would be fine, but the camera was another story. So, . . . since then if I think I might wade anywhere near the tops of my hippers, I wear chest wader and carry a wading staff.
