For the rest of the day, Rob couldn’t get comfortable. He couldn’t rotate to look from side to side without being in excruciating pain. Sitting in a kayak was out of the question. He took some muscle relaxants and a dose of anti-inflammatory meds, and to his chagrin and disappointment, he was reduced to lying on his back on one of the rafts for the rest of the day.

He did manage to sit up to report, as we pulled in to camp that evening, that a ten-foot-long crocodile was entering the water, slithering away from the exact spot we intended to set up camp. “That should make you want to hit your roll, Big E,” he said weakly.

I liked hearing him joke around, but it was torture to see Rob so reduced. He had been hands down the toughest guy I knew, unbreakable, indestructible, like a superhero. He’d led me up many spectacular rock and ice climbs, patiently taught me to kayak, and rescued me in rivers and dragged me to shore countless times, and here he was, now as imperfect as the rest of us, like Superman having just encountered kryptonite.

That night at camp, everyone pushed Rocky for more stories. The Gypsies, who were on their first big river trip and new to white water, wanted to know if he’d ever had any close calls.

“Well, I’ve lost my boat while kayaking a couple of times, and I don’t recommend that,” he said. He went on to tell us about that happening to him once on a remote river in Peru when he had no choice but to try to go through a river-wide hole. He was tossed from his kayak and had to be rescued by his paddling partner who was in the kayak behind him. They were able to recover his boat the following day.

Rob urged Rocky to tell us about the Kern in California and a rapid called the Royal Flush, which is a legit class V/VI that about 99 percent of paddlers will not even attempt to go through. They get out of the water and carry their boats past it. But because Rocky had run it a few times before, he decided to go one more time. But this time, his boat drifted far left and hit a large wall that flipped him over and he had to pull the skirt.