The Trip Report:
Kananaskis River
Dennis and Rachel in his inflateable
Me in the solo canoe
Russ in WW kayak
Wilf in his brand new WW kayak
Driving out with Dennis and Rachel, his 16yr old daughter, Dennis states that his kayak is untippable. In part I think to reassure his daughter who has only been out once before, but mostly as he thinks it is true.
Dennis has been down this stretch of grade 2+ river 53 or so times, once with his daughter, though not over the first feature called the widowmaker with her in the kayak.
Wilf has his new kayak, first time it is going to touch water, in fact it is the first time Wilf is in a white water kayak. Although he did check this one out on his kitchen floor.
The Kananaskis river is a combination of naturalnfeatures, and man made features. It has the local whitewater training course on it. It is "Rocky Mountain cold".
What could possibly go wrong?
Rounding out our group is Russ, an old hand at kayaking, both he and I familiar with this river.
Wilf declines a test float on the still waters of the lake at the Seebe takeout. Convinced his time in his old lake kayak, on horses and motor bikes gives him enough balance to run the river. Besides he is running only the second half of the run today, a reasonably easy class two run.
Given the rookie girl with us we talk a bit about safety, some basic stuff, and how cold the water is. I make sure Rachel (who is really small) has an extra pair of clothsclothes along in a dry bag, although it is a light set of clothsclothes. Later it becomes pretty clear we missed one pretty important bit in our saftey talk, about helping yourself get rescued.
With that we get setup at the put in. The thing about this section of the river is it starts at a river feature called the Widow maker. The Widow maker is a name that is a throwback to the logging days. When the logs getting floated down the river would jam up at the natural ledge some poor sap would have to go out on the log jam and get it unjammed and moving again. In that context I can iemagine the name is well earned.
For paddling it is a short and fun little drop/chute with a deep pool below and a churning boils and fairly strong Eddie line. The line always looks impressive to me for such a small drop. I once saw it tip Russ when he ran through it, a rare event when not playing in a feature, but for some reason I've never swam here. There is a fair bit of luck in that I'm sure. Russ told me he once saw a kayak hit it just as a whirl pool opened up, and it pull the kayaker and kayak right under for a few seconds... But that was the extreame end. Another kayak friend has swam through it, on purpose and found it very unsetteling, it put her off for the whole day. She was held under for 20s or so.
You can easily put in below or above it, there are stairs down to the put in and everything, but on this day every one puts in above, it will be Rachel’s first time. There is no warm up.
Wilf is not running this section so he is happy to take pictures of us running the drop. Russ and I go first; I set up on the far side hoping to get a good picture of Dennis and Rachel.
Well a number of things aligned. Dennis' kayak was under inflated a bit, no warm up, the line ran put them right into the side of the Eddie line, and the not so effective air brace. Well turns out the untippable kayak was not quite so untipable after all. We were right about the water being really cold though.
Now there is a big Eddy below the Widowmaker, and it has a strong current that pulls into the base of the ledge forming the drop and right into the churn of the eddy line. The ledge that frames the chute that is the Widowmaker angles up and out from the water at a fairly high angle.
With the upside-down kayak between Rachel and the shore, and the strong Eddy current she was quickly pulled towards the ledge and the Eddie line.
Russ was able to quickly get to Rachel and Dennis, he tried to pull Dennis, the kayak and Rachel out of harmsharm’s way. But the back current was too strong. Of course Rachel was on the wrong side of the upside down kayak right on the eddy line.
After I crossing the current and I got Dennis to a large rock out in the Eddie about 6-8 feet from the eddy line, which allowed him to stand in waste deep in the water. Meanwhile Russ had been supporting Rachel as best he could in the current and boils. But even so she was briefly pulled under once or twice.
She was shocked by the cold, and panicing as the trubulent water tried to pull her back into the main current and under again.
The hero of the day is Wilf who was able reach down the sloping ledge, past the over hang, and Grab Rachel's hand. But his position just above the eddy Widow maker was precarious as he was leaning forward and down, on downwards sloping ground, and he did not have a life jacket on. He could not get the leverage to pull Rachel out. But he did stabilize her position.
Once the inflatable kayak was out of the way, Rachel was not keen to let go of that hand, to have Russ try to pull her out.
After getting Dennis stable I went to shore to untie my throw bag and get it out to russ/rachel to pull them in. Dennis, who was only a few meters from Rachel, and clearly ready to swim out to her if she lost her grip, was directly in my way. It takes a fair bit to convince a dad to move back to shore in such a case.
Once I did convince him to get to shore, I realized what we failed to discuss earlier at the safety talk, how to allow yourself to be pulled into shore by a throw rope. The correct way is to hold the rope on your chest, and float on your back. This helps keep you at the surface. Try to come to shore with it under you , and in this case for sure you'd go under for a bit. Not a good thing for our damsile in distress.
So with that I took the rope to Wilf, tied a loop, passed it down to Rachel. I told asked if she’d be able to hang on? She said, ‘there was no way in hell she was going to let go!’ (or something like that). Wilf and I were then able to lift her straight up and out of harms way.
That was enough excitement for Rachel she was pretty cold, and slightly tramatized. She decided she was not going to run the rest of the upper section. So Wilf would have some company. Wilf (who by the way is a SaRTech, a search and rescue technician) had blankets, and a good set of warm clothsclothes in his truck.
So Russ, Dennis and I ran down through the upper section and the white water race course. The same-old-same-old run. Although the untippable kayak was caught being upside-down again at point break.
At that point Dennis' confidence was totally crushed. He'd gone from thinking he wanted a more challenging run during the drive up, to being some what humbled.
At the takeout after the race course, Wilf was ready to join us for the easier second half of the run. Rachel decided she'd stay in Wilfs nice warm truck and read her book.
Now although the river is easier on the second stretch, it is still quite fast, and the first 200m or so are definitely not flat. It is a class II rapid.
Wilf quickly discovers that this small kayak is not like his lake kayak, and even less like a horse or motor cycle. Within 10m he is upside-down, and he gets the first hand experience of how shockingly cold the water is. But at least he had a wet suit on (Unlike Rachel). It is clear that he panicked a bit; he did not pull his sprey skirt, just kicked his way out. Another attempt and he makes it to the end of the rapid, to 40-boat eddy. But tips and swims again, and makes it to shore with Russ supporting him. After this point the river smooths out a bit, but it is also becomes more difficult to get back to the road. Wilf decides it is a bit over his skill level, and calls it a day. Being upside-down for the first time in a kayak, is probably best experienced on flat water that is more than a couple of degrees above freezing.
For Russ, Dennis and I, we take the rest of the mostly easy float down the rest of the way. It is still class two though, so not for a group of novices.
