I don't think you remember me but my name is Jesse. I'm the guy that pulled you out of chaos.  First of all, it's great to hear that you are doing all right, you had us all pretty scared.  I wanted to let you know what happened.  

I was in the group ahead of yours and we had just finished the portage when your group got to Spirit.  The only reason that I crossed to the river right side is because I haven't run Spirit much higher than 3.0 ft and I wanted to see how hard the move  above chaos is at that level and how low that the log is.  The first member of your group ran the falls ok but the ferry above chaos did look a little tougher than at lower levels.  You penciled into the boil at the base of spirit and then dissappeared under the overhang on the river left for quite a while.  At this point, no one could see where you were or knew what had happened to you.  My group was at the bottom of the portage on the river left.  All of your group was still at the top of the falls watching and beginning to portage (no safety), and I was the only person on the river right.  This is when the really bad things started to happen.  

I had worked my way upstream of chaos as far as I could to try to see where you were behind the veil of the side falls.  The whole area above chaos is very steep and hard to move around.  You came hand paddling from behind the veil and I immediatly began to move along the wall to a position downstream of chaos so I could throw you a rope if you where stuck in the hole, so I didn't actually see you going into chaos.  By the time that I had gotten into position downstream of chaos (maybe 10 sec)you were in the hole and were able to do several hand rolls but it is a violent nasty hole that due to the shape of the surrounding walls it feeds back into it's self so you weren't able to get out.  So now I'm set up downstream waiting for you to get out of your boat so I can get a rope to you, but your boat is upsidedown and you are not coming out.  At this point I am still the only person on the river right.  

After a few seconds I realized that for some reason, you are not able to get out of your boat.  I moved along the wall back upstream to the fixed rope and used this to descend to river level.  There is a very small shelf of rock about 4 inches under water at the base of the rope (this is about a paddle distance to the actual hole).  I still could only see the bottom of your boat and didn't know if you were still in there or not.  I was able to reach and grab the stern grabloop of your boat on one of the recirculations and I could see that you were still in the boat but either unconscious or dead.  The boat is still in the hole and you were under water, flat against the front of your cockpit due to the current pulling toward the hole.  I was in a very precarious position so I slowly pulled the boat toward me, but was having a hard time reaching you because the water was pulling your body away from me and your head is still under water.  Eventually I was able to pull your boat close enough so I could reach you.  I had hold of both you and your boat until I could get a relativly secure grip on you and pop the skirt.  The boat was immediatly sucked back into the hole where it continued to circulate.  So now I finally had your head out of the water and stable but most of the rest of your body was still in the river.  You were unresponsive and not breathing but it was all I could do to keep you from being sucked back into the hole.  Another member of my group (Ryan) did a superman leap and swim across the river and was able to move along the wall until he was above us.  Together we were able secure you a little better but we still couldn't really move you any where stable until 3 more guys made it across.  We had to muscle you up the wall to where it flattened a little.  You still weren't breathing.  Just as we were about to begin CPR you coughed and started taking very shallow breathes.  Your breathing continued to get stronger until you eventually came to.  We moved you along the wall until we found a spot where your buddies could walk you out to the road.

Dave, I don't mean to be harsh but you are very lucky to be alive.  It was only chance that I decided to cross to the river right to watch your run.  Please consider consequences in the future.  I don't fault you for deciding to run Spirit, only for not doing adequate scouting or setting up safety.  If you had taken those precautions this wouldn't have happened.

Thanks to everyone in both groups for all the help and teamwork, this was almost much worse.

Jesse Bierman