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The river was in flood. Once again, I had sucked more gymnasts into joining us. They had taken the classes and were pumped! Not necessarily able to roll but pumped anyways. The newbies were:
The one year veterans were:
There was much discussion about what we should do. The river was running much bigger than usual (the dam was getting close to overflowing, so they had all gates wide open 24 hours a day). The problem was finding a place for the beginners to get their feet (and probably much more) wet. We eventually decided to put in a the end of the technical course, and take out down by the highway. It would have been tough to stop the beginners from being washed downstream, and this eliminated that particular problem. The Saskatoon group formed a sub-group.
Kelly, Chris, Doug, Warren, ?, Paul, ?, ?, Kevin (I need NAMES!) Day 1: Part 1: Everyone including beginners Five minutes later, Paul was swimming and Kevin had rolled! Both were a long way down stream. We joined them, dragged Paul to shore and carried on. Some while later, the river forks. We chose to go down river right. It was a good choice. We leaned later that river left had a whole bunch of strainers, created by the banks being washed away, trees falling in and then jamming against something. Strainers are BAD. I have never been near one and don't plan on it. Life was good, was bounced on down the boulder gardens. Then we came to where the river rejoined itself. And there was several trees which had fallen into the water, creating strainers on our side of the river. Ok, no problem, all we had to do was ferry across to the other side. On second thought, small problem, Paul had yet to actually eddy in with tipping... Nothing to really do but go for it, so we did. I kept close to Paul, but he needed no help, and was well on his way on his own. So I turned around to watch Kevin... uh oh... not so good. He chose this time to tip while eddying in. Wait... wait, he should roll soon... No? There is his helmet, he didn't even try to roll. Not even one feeble missed attempt. I didn't understand. He had already had lots of practice today and was doing fine, making most of his rolls back up. At this point, there wasn't anything to do but watch. Kevin knew he was being swept right towards the strainers, with no chance to avoid them. The current was such that if you managed to avoid the first one, then the second one would get you, if not that, then the third and so on. He was on the wrong side of the river, and the whole river went through these strainers. The first tree trunk was about a foot above the water and he grabbed it with both hands, armpits, whatever was available. Then thought "Whew". Then the current grabbed the rest of his body and legs and gave a huge tug. Alarmed and stunned at the force of the current, he was almost pulled off the tree. He started to panic, then remembered "Hey, I'm a gymnast" and just whooshed himself up onto the tree, then got to shore. We waved, and signalled for him to start walking down stream, where we would (hopefully) find his kayak and paddle and ferry them on over to him in a less dangerous spot. Which we did. And then made it to the takeout, 5 minutes away. Day 1: Part 2: Beginners After lunch, and stories about near death encounters, we decided to split into 2 groups. Our beginners would join the other beginner group. and go with Dick Cram for another run down to the highway. The others were going to go up and put in at WidowMaker. For their second run, the beginners had an even more exciting time than Kevin had so thoughfully provided for us. The fact that the whitewater raft guides were going down stream, sawing off the strainers was both a good and bad thing. Yes, there were fewer strainers, but instead, logs were cruising downstream. They also chose to go down the river left channel, and encountered many more strainers than we had in the right one. And of course, one of the beginners got caught in one and pinned. His head would have been under water, except Dick was able to get a paddle to him such that he was able to pull himself up a bit and breath. Meanwhile, the other beginners were herded in various eddies where they could keep themselves out of trouble while the pinned kayaker was freed. The rest of the paddle was much more subdued. Day 1: Part 2: The Advanced Group (and I use the term loosely!) We really didn't know how much the river might have changed, given that it was running a twice normal flow. But, at this point it looked pretty much the same as always. A bunch of us put in above WidowMaker and ran it. The rest put in below and we toodled on down to Good Humour and played. Note the colour of the water in the following photos. Lots of mud being washed downstream.
Trashed in Good Humour. At this point, I think I can still save it... Wrong
Up again, none the worse for wear. We then bounced on down the boulder garden where Chris provided me, and himself with a brilliant example of how stong the current was. The river was flowing over the little islands in the boulder garden. Most of these little island were covered in little saplings, with a trunk diameter of up to 3" or so. Somehow, Chris managed to zip when he should have zagged or something, and ended up pinned up against the saplings on what had once been an island, and was now a foot under water. I saw him just in time, and managed to swing in behind the clump of saplings about 30 feet downstream of Chris. I paddled up into them, and then tied my kayak to one, and went in search of Chris. Found him easily, still stuck. The water had blown his skirt, and the kayak wasn't going anywhere. Chris got out, mumbling and muttering. There hadn't been much real danger with only a foot of water but it was still sobering. The two of us pushed and pulled and strained and failed to move the kayak at all. I rigged up a little pulley system with my tow rope, making sure that when the kayak came free, it would still be attached to a tree. It worked, we manouevered the kayak to an appropriate place, dumped it out and carried on downstream. We continued on down the river. I don't remember if Chris was interested in running the technical section by this point. I did, and it was pretty much the same, not really affected by the water level.
It was THIS big! Another successful trip, with the river showing us something new and different. |
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Click on images with a border for a bigger photo! Please send all comments to warren.long@shaw.ca |
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