21-й – 30-й тесты. Английский язык. ЕГЭ, 2024. На базе материалов ФИПИ

Stewart decided that to even pretend he knew what he was doing would be pure suicide. From then on, he followed more experienced paddlers through the thundering waters and relied on his Eskimo roll for emergencies. Up until now, even after his injury, Stewart had dominated just about every competition he entered. Here in the canyon, he realized, he might have met his match.

The Colorado can be a brutal adversary. It flows at the rate of anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 cubic feet every second. It has roughly 100 named, or significant, rapids and a dozen smaller ones, all more than capable of trashing Stewart and his little plastic boat.

And then there is the cold. Water temperature seldom gets above the high 40s. Some stretches are so chilly that boaters are warned not to swim in them at all. The shock of immersion can cause muscle exhaustion and drowning, even a heart attack.

After about a week and a half, Stewart had made it 90 miles. «I couldn’t believe I was still alive,» he admits. «It was pure luck.

» His luck was about to change.

He had been dreading the huge rapids called Crystal. Rapids in the Grand Canyon are rated one to ten in degree of difficulty, ten being the meanest. Stewart began his attack by dodging an enormous whirlpool. Paddling frantically, he slipped past a wall of waves powerful enough to flip a boat twice the size of his, and skirted what one guide called a «raft-ripping rock.»

But he still wasn’t finished. There was a second half to navigate, a treacherous, boulder-strewn run euphemistically called the Rock Garden.

To Stewart’s relief, he wove through it all without getting tipped over once.

Shortly afterward, the river took a sharp left turn where he had to negotiate a little set of white water, coincidentally called Willies Necktie. The danger here is the way the current drives boats into the crook of the turn on the right side. The way to avoid it is to stay on the left. Stewart knew that, but he dropped his guard, making a deadly mistake.

He drifted right.

Before he could make the correction, his boat slammed into a boulder and flipped. Tons of rushing water pinned him against the canyon wall. He tried to do his Eskimo roll, but his right arm – the one he always used to pull himself up – was jammed against the rock. Somehow he had to get himself vertical using his prosthesis.

Stewart fought hard, pushing up again and again, each time getting a few gasps of air before being submerged.