Trail Cafe: Trip report - Canoeing with children and rapids

Summary:

Title: Canoeing with children and rapids
Trip type: article
Summary: An anecdotal capsize event, involving two young children
Author: Myrl Tanton

The canoe trip is on a grade “I+” section of the BOW river just West of Calgary AB Canada, this is a fairly fast flowing river on the edge of the foot hills of the Rocky Mountains. . It is a trip I’ve run several times, I remember a very cold swim from the first time on the section of river when I had a novice paddler with me that outweighed me by 40lbs, I’d like to blame him but I’m not sure that would be fair at all.

A few years later, I found myself planning to go on the same run with the local canoe club, I’m not sure who else is going, and I’m seriously considering taking my 4yr old along. I decide not to, a bit out of concern of a swim (I’d put at a fair bit less than 5% chance), but mostly out of concern that she’ll be bored. I doubt there will be other children there, as it is technically against club policy to take young children on rivers over grade I.

The day of the trip I find this is not the case, there are eight or so canoes on the trip, one includes a family of 4, with a 5yr old boy and a 3yr old girl. I’m slightly disappointed I did not bring my girl along; company with other children would have made it much more interesting for her.
This section of the river is running at a more or less normal level. There are sections of waves, and a few good eddy lines. There are two honest class II rapids. One of these, “Gas plant rapid” (I think that is the name) is a broken ledge, whose class can be higher at different water levels. It is at this same rapid I had my swim a few years earlier. The back of the canoe came down on the ledge/rock that was hidden in the waves. We stopped for a second, the wave below filled our canoe, we teetered and fell in.

This water is really cold in May (snow still on the banks is spots), and not much warmer in August. It is a glacier fed river, and this section not all that far from the source, with a deep lake just above it.

On this day, at this rapid that I have my first and so far only experience with young children swimming in a rapid, or for that matter accidently swimming after a canoe capsize. I was actually just ahead of the family canoe, and was chatting with them. I knew the rapid was coming up soon, and was suggesting that they should be on river right, where they can get out and take a look. However we were much closer than I thought, I made it clear they needed to get over ASAP. However they ran out of room.

As did I... I “choose” to hit the rapid in the center, which is to say I tried not to crowd the other canoe. Which meant I had enough time to straighten out the canoe so that I was not rolled over in the 3ft waves. I once again hit the ledge, possibly in the same spot as last time, but this time made it over without tipping. After the first few big waves, I was able to turn around in time to see the family hit the rapid sideways, and flip over.

Both parents very quickly got to a child each. No child was caught under the canoe or anything like that. The Mom had the older boy, and the dad had the younger girl. Each pair was on one side of the canoe, the mom and boy being more river center, with the canoe between them and the shore. I was closest boat on the river; several others were already pulled up on shore after the rapid, and one or two yet to come down.

I was able to turn the boat upstream and paddle back to get beside the mom. She as she was coming past me I told her to let go of the boy, she asked if I had him, I said yes, and was able to easily lift him into the canoe. She was obviously concerned, but clear minded. He was cold and somewhat scared. I asked him to sit on the bottom of the boat as we were still in the waves. Unfortunately I did not at the time have a grab loop on my canoe and mom drifted past. However she swam out easily enough without the added difficulty of holding the child.

I’m not exactly sure how the dad and the girl got to shore, but they too were okay

After dropping the boy on shore, I left my dry bag which had a towel, and some cloths he could make use of, and went to help another boat that was chasing the tipped canoe.

Initially after that the kids were not so keen, and understandably concerned as other waves approached. No doubt the largest part of their consternation was due to fear. However I suspect there was a bit of self consciousness involved as well. The mother told me after wards that their sprits picked up after two other canoes tipped when practicing in some eddy lines. By the time we had ice cream at the end of the trip they seemed more than willing to go canoeing again.

It was not the most sobering experience I had in a canoe, but one very close to me. I really want to get my daughter involved in canoeing and canoe/camping. I'm not nearly a cavalier about it as I once was.



Content Copyright Myrl Tanton 2008


Addition

I received the following feed back on the above, which makes the story much more complete. I'd like to to take the opportunity make it clear, I was not trying to blame the canoe club, or parents of the kids for unsafe behaviour. Just posting a story that would be interesting to someone like myself. Anyways here is the feedback I got:

I was the coordinator on this trip and had talked to the father before hand and he understood that they may swim. At our pre trip talk we made sure the kids knew that it was ok to go to anybody in the group (as they were all strangers). We also discussed with everyone in the group how we would deal with a swim (as we do on all our pre trip talks)when we got to the rapids the boat with the kids in it were to far to river left and were trying hard to get to the inside of the turn but didn't make it(they now know at some point you just have to go for it and point the bow down stream) we knew they were going to have problems so we had two boats ferrying just down stream of the rapids and as myrl says he took one child and me and my partner got the other one and took them to shore were they all changed cloths and paddled down to were we had got thier boat to shore and had a fire going. We all laughed and talked about ice cream later. The parents felt it was a very good experience as now they(the parents) wer'nt so nervous,as they knew what to do and how to handle this situation in the future. Our club policy is minimum 3 boats for saftey,and yes we don't normally let parents bring kids on more difficult trips but I was the coordinator and I talked to the parents and we felt it was a safe decision. I like to encourage all paddlers to test thier limits in a safe,controlled situation. After all if your not getting wet your not haveing fun.


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