What can happen when you don't tie in gear in rapids

[Glenn MacGrady]

This video illustrates a classic pin-then-wrap situation with unprepared and unpracticed canoeists. Some of their errors:

-- They decide to run rapids for which they probably didn't have requisite skills.

-- They run rapids with at least two giant sweeper logs across the entire river, which they should have been able to scout and see from the portage trail, which they had taken a few days prior.

-- They don't have painter lines on the ends of the canoe.

-- They don't have their packs tied in, so all the packs fall out on the pin and are difficult to locate and retrieve. They only get their food pack because the rapids shortly terminated in a lake. If the river had kept on going, their food pack would have been lost.

-- The canoe would not have wrapped as badly, or maybe not at all, had the big packs been tied in the middle where they could have deflected water away from scooping into the hull.

-- They don't seem to have basic canoe rescue skills to pull a pinned canoe off a rock while it is still fairly intact. So, in time, the canoe entirely wraps, crushes and is destroyed. Even without painters, the first thing the guy sitting on the river rock should have tried, if he had foot purchase, was to lift the canoe vertically from the submerged end. Next, try lifting vertically from the shore end. After that, some simple but prompt rope work such as a z-drag could have removed the canoe.

Keep in mind that this was not a particularly difficult pitch of rapids, nor wide, nor pushy water.

It's a valuable lesson video and I'm sure they all do have memories as the narrator says at the end.

 

[Alan Gage]

I've seen that video before. Interesting and entertaining. If I remember right, when reading the youtube comments (which were quite harsh), someone from the group clarified and said they did not intend running the rapids. Rather one of the canoes missed the portage landing and was unable to cope with the current as they tried to turn around and get back. Trying to turn around at that point, in what looks to be a less than maneuverable hull, probably wasn't a smart move either.

Alan

 

[Guest]

This video illustrates a classic pin-then-wrap situation with unprepared and unpracticed canoeists. Some of their errors:

Glenn, that was almost painful to watch. With some prompt action the canoe was probably savable.

Most painful was the narration “Where’s Mike….”Where’s Mike”. Seriously, keep filming and interviewing the survivors while asking if it is also a body recovery?

People accounted for first.

In that pin, with all of the gear floated free and one end of the canoe dang near on shore, four people working in coordination could probably have hauled that boat out by hand, without a drag, especially if it had painter lines.

There were four people available to coordinate a rescue. Well, three. And no one coordinated anything at first.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m pretty sure I would have snatched his camera and chucked it downstream long before he came to the observation that “As time goes by the canoe is becoming more and more crushed”.

Someone needed to take charge and coordinated a plan. They did finally use a rope and carabineer to recover the pack under the log, so they had that available for canoe recovery, set as a safety line across the log or at least stand by with as a coiled throw rope.

The indecision and lack of any cogent plan and progression was hard to watch.

I know stuff happens, and have been part of some ill advised decision making. I have been on at least three or four trips with a variety of pins, including a canoe that was pushed deep out of sight at the bottom of a strainer pile.

 

[memaquay]

Wow! Must have been their first trip or something. I have waded rapids a lot stronger than that. How to explain the lack of anything happening at all? As previous posters have said, that canoe could have been saved, even two people probably could have popped it up.

I have been involved in quite a few tippings, etc, with the school club. First thing we do is secure the paddlers in a safe place. Secondly grab canoe, third rescue packs. Orders are given and carried out by a variety of people. Most rescues are complete in under 5 minutes.

As to lashing packs, well, that's almost as contentious as putting your tarp inside or outside of your tent. I used to belong to the family of lashers. Everything was tied into my canoe at all times. Now I've gone a complete circle on that. Almost all of my gear and the gear for our club is carried in barrels or rubber dry packs, all of which float very buoyantly. The rivers we run are all pool and drop. The reason I stopped lashing is because a canoe over canoe rescue is impossible with a ton of gear lashed in. The theory is that anything that floats free will eddy out in the next pool. I have found this to be true.

However, there is another reality that surprised me. Most of our turnovers occur in obstacle clear rapids, where I am instructing students on C turns and S turns. Most rapids that we run are either straight chutes or only run by very experienced students and staff. So pins are uncommon, in fact last one I remember was 1998. However, white water enthusiasts will know that instructing students in downstream leans is often a complicated concept. So most of our ditches are straight flips, when students are attempting to execute a C turn out of an eddy, and instead of leaning away form the current, they lean into it. In these cases, 9 out of 10 times, almost everything stays in the canoes without lashing, except for occasionally shovels or axes.

This is perplexing, because canoe over canoe rescue is once again negated, it is far easier to drag the upside down hull to the shallows and dump it.

So, tie or not tie?

Around 1999, I had just finished a white water course and was feeling pretty cocky. There was a group of us cutting out an old route. We got to one set of rapids that were difficult to scout. I had run everything successfully to that point, so I said the heck with it. Eddied out just before a big drop at the end, had a look and ran it. Got pinned immediately. I had two sixty liter barrels tied into my cedar strip osprey. As the canoe began to broach ( I heard a crack), I shoved one end up, and there was enough floatation from the barrels to push it over the top of the rock and beyond. This was very big water, much bigger than the video of our friends. I have always credited those barrels with displacing enough water to allow me to shove that canoe over the rock.

So I'm still out on the tie down thing, there are quite a few arguments for and against, it usually boils down to laziness for me, I don't feel like retying after every port and untying at the beginning. If I'm going to run big stuff I haven't run before, I will usually tie down then.

 

[Guest]

I've seen that video before. Interesting and entertaining. If I remember right, when reading the youtube comments (which were quite harsh), someone from the group clarified and said they did not intend running the rapids. Rather one of the canoes missed the portage landing and was unable to cope with the current as they tried to turn around and get back. Trying to turn around at that point, in what looks to be a less than maneuverable hull, probably wasn't a smart move either.

I’m sure the YouTube responses were harsh, and that happenstance explanation makes sense.

The crux of the difficulties may simply lie with not having painter lines on the canoe. Even after the oops moment an opportunity for the upstream paddler in some micro eddy or shallow bank to grab a painter line might have prevented the whole ordeal.

I’ll have to watch it again now that I’m assured “Where’s Mike” came out OK.

OK, that was still painful. I think the canoe may have had painters though.

At one point early on the guy on river left with the canoe has what looks like a painter line in his hand, and towards the end when they are trying to “lasso” the end of the crushed canoe that line is back in play, along with a the lasso line. It appears that the canoe may have had at least one painter, and they had at least one other line available.

They paddled out the same day “after lunch” and even recovered their lost bag in a marsh eddy downstream, a feature they had passed on the way up, so it wasn’t really a gear survival situation. Once everyone is safe recover the canoe and then start looking for the packs. I think when the filming narrator mentions “Rowing across the river” there lies a clue.

As for the tie in or not question there are too many variables – solo or with companions, what kind of water, what are the opportunities for gear recovery?. And opportunities for what type of boat recovery?

In a boat-over-boat recovery tied in gear is somewhere between a nuisance and an impossibility depending on how it is secured/releasable. I have been stymied in finishing a well done boat over boat recovery of an otherwise empty canoe by a dang bailer dangling tied to a thwart.

 

[Guest]

So I'm still out on the tie down thing, there are quite a few arguments for and against, it usually boils down to laziness for me, I don't feel like retying after every port and untying at the beginning. If I'm going to run big stuff I haven't run before, I will usually tie down then.

Admittedly tying gear in as sometimes (maybe often) a question of laziness, even though my boats are outfitted with multiple tie points; D-rings on the floor and webbing loop points at the end of every machine screw and spaced along the inwales.

That laziness is often compounded by inaccessibility issues when launching from difficult sites. Sometimes even when I’d like to tie in the best I can do is drop the bags and gear in their approximate locations and find an easier landing ASAP to pull over, reorganize and secure.

Using spray covers does add some degree of gear security, but installing those at a difficult landing can be impossible, especially getting to the attachments on far side of the hull at a drop off or wave smack launch.

Ideally my tie down system would be one-handable. Well, my lash down system. Rather than have ropes, knots or hitches I’d like to have some strategic and easily secured webbing straps and release buckles.

I trust my D-ring anchor pad installation, and the webbing loops on the hardware ends are quite stout, but I’m unsure of what kind of quick release buckle would hold a heavy 30L barrel or pack in place without fail. I’d rather not stout up to 2 inch webbing and buckles. Any metal Fastex-type would have to be stainless, and I’ve not seen such

I may give that a try if I can find the appropriate quick release buckles. Clipping or unclipping one-handed at ledge landings or wave beaten shores, when I need a steadying hand for myself or the canoe, would be a boon.

 

[Holmes375]

Here's a few links for SS QR buckles:

http://www.lowyusa.com/rh190134-ss

http://www.divegearexpress.com/hardware/buckles.shtml

http://www.strapworks.com/Spring_Buckles_p/sssb.htm

 

[Philtrum]

I've seen that video before. Interesting and entertaining. If I remember right, when reading the youtube comments (which were quite harsh), someone from the group clarified and said they did not intend running the rapids.
Alan

Isn't there a comment at the beginning of the video about Uncle Mike saying they should go run some rapids after several days catching "lot of fish" from their base camp?

 

[Robin]

I never run big rapids, I would have walked the rapid in this video even without the tree across the river. When I do run an easy class 1 or even a 2, I don't tie my 2 Duluth Packs in, I do secure my spare paddle and fishing pole, but nothing else is loose, I'm in and out of the canoe for too many portages to take the time to tie the packs in, they float and I'm very comfortable with that system.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I limited this topic to tying-in in rapids or whitewater.

The issue is one of gear loss probability. If you dump, pin or wrap, is it more likely that you will lose your gear if it is tied in or left loose?

It's difficult for me, based on 20 years of intense whitewater paddling, to come up with scenarios where the gear loss probability is higher if the gear is tied in. It could happen if your canoe were pinned in the middle of a violent rapid in a large, swift river, and you just can't reach it. In that case you would have lost both boat and gear. However, I don't think many wilderness trippers would run such rapids alone, and I've never seen a pinned canoe that wasn't eventually reachable by one of the other skilled boaters in the group.

What I have seen many times is loose gear permanently lost down the river after a simple dump, usually paddles.

That brings the type of rapid and river into the probability equation. If you know the river and it's just one solitary rapid followed by a big pool, then there is little risk of loose packs getting permanently lost. If, on the other hand, you are boating miles of continuous rapids, as I usually was, loose gear was almost surely lost unless there are enough boaters in the group to have someone available go after the gear. But that's dangerous and unfair to such a boater; he has to boat alone through tough rapids to try to save someone else's gear. If he dumps, he has no one to rescue him. Bad karma. Bad mojo. Bad situation. If you don't know the river and don't know what's around the bend after the rapid, it's certainly better to be safe with your gear than sorry.

Clipping packs in takes five seconds if you have D-rings, gear loops or slotted inwales. With slotted inwales, all you need is a line or strap affixed to the inwales, which you snake through the straps on your Duluth pack or barrel. With a line, use a quick release loop knot. With a strap, use a quick release buckle.

I don't even use a line or strap through the slotted inwales on my SRT. I just jam my Duluth pack under a thwart and buckle the middle strap over the thwart. It takes no time, because I would have buckled it anyway. I leave the Duluth strap looped up, so I can quickly release it.

I have never seen a canoe-over-canoe rescue used or even tried in whitewater in more than 30 years of paddling with expert rescuers. You can't do that in the middle of a rapid and it's also quite difficult in swiftly moving water. Rescues of floating (unpinned) boats are made by getting them to shore. There are various techniques. Flipping them upright is usually the first step. If they have float bags or big gear bags tied in, flipping upright should be fairly easy and the bags then displace a lot of water from staying in the boat. The canoe can then be nudged or towed to shore. If you're not wearing a rescue vest or belt with a quick release line, the simplest way to tow is to grab the painter and put it under your knee, which you can lift up at any time to release the towed boat. You can also tow an overturned canoe, but it takes a lot more effort.

Once the boat is ashore, so is all the tied-in gear. If gear bags and barrels are all floating loose, the group then has to take more risks and rescues to get all those separate objects. Bad situation.

 

[memaquay]

I agree with most of what you say Glenn, except for canoe over canoe in moving water. I have done a fair amount of it, not in rapids, but in the pools below, where a fair current is still flowing. That's usually during training exercises when the canoes are empty to begin with. It's surprising how fast a canoe over canoe rescue can go if the participants have practiced. However, for the realities of tripping....well, I've never bothered attempting it with a fully loaded canoe. I think it is wise to tie down in rapids. There are some people who tie down every time they get on the water. I can't see any harm in it.

 

[yknpdlr]

For many years (count 26) I've been an instructor at the Adirondack campus of BSA National Camping School, High Adventure Trek Leader Guide section. It is an 8-day program to train and certify BSA camp employees (typically of college age) who plan to work summers at resident camps, leading scouts and their adult leaders on 5-day backpacking and canoe trips in the Adirondacks.

BSA requires trek leaders to perform canoe over canoe rescue as part of the training. After instructors first demonstrate along with verbal step by step descriptions to the larger class, each individual student has to demonstrate their ability later in the week when in smaller training crews while on trek. Significant whitewater is not something scouts would normally deal with when on approved treks in the Adirondacks.

Sometimes the water is calm during instructor demos, sometimes it is windy with waves. Wind, though more difficult, provides better overall instruction of likely conditions, but we are still in a relatively protected demo area. That is my cue to launch into my speech of how could the capsize have happened in the first place (know your trek paddler’s abilities and be aware of the conditions)? If the weather is bad on a large lake, how far did you lead from shore, and why go way out there? Just imagine trying to do a real canoe over canoe in high wind and waves. Maybe it would have been wiser to keep your trek near (or on) shore, and in the event of capsize, it might make more sense to just tow the overturned canoe with paddlers to shore. But you have to be fairly close to shore, as towing is not as easy as it sounds.

But stuff happens anyway. The question of to tie or not tie their gear in the canoe always comes up. Now imagine trying to do canoe over canoe in wind and waves with gear tied in. An impossible task if you can’t quickly untie and remove the gear from inside the canoe. I often hear “but my pack is heavy, it will sink”. At that point I throw my pack in the water. It sinks to a depth of maybe two inches. Sure, the wind will blow it away, but (we are not in a serious whitewater condition) the priority is to rescue the capsized paddlers and canoe first. Then, if it is safe, go retrieve the pack. If it makes you feel better, buckle your hip belt fastex clip around a thwart, but nothing more.

A separate issue is on rivers like the Yukon River, or even the St. Lawrence River. No whitewater, but significant fast current on a big water river. Especially on the Yukon, your gear is life. The water is very cold and loaded with silt that will fill and weight down your clothes. The river can be a mile or more wide and the current is fast and boilingly chaotic. You are not going to swim after your gear, and even after (or if) you empty your canoe of water to then go look for gear, by that time your gear could be long gone and permanently lost. We always tie everything in when paddling on the Yukon. No one is going to do a canoe over canoe rescue of a voyageur canoe anyway.

 

[Canotrouge]

We tie our gear most of the time other than on small lakes. The idea behind that is if you flip in a rapid, or even just swamp your canoe, if the gear is tied in it act as "flotation" and displace water, by occupying place/room/volume in the canoe, so less water in the canoe, that means your canoe float higher in the water, less chances of bottoming out and getting damage or hung up by submerge rock, and much easier to rescue than a canoe full of water, you canoe full of gear is at the most 500lbs, wile a canoe full of water is well over a 1000lbs.

Also as yknpdlr said, up here(Yukon) the water is cold all summer long, we wear drysuits most of the time we are doing whitewater/ play. and on remote trips, where there is long stretch of class II III. We don't bother with them on moving water like the Yukon river type rivers.

Cheers

 

[oldie moldy]

So far this discussion has been either-or, tie in or not. Without ever being put to the test, my system is to tie all my gear on one long line, but free of the canoe. My thinking is that in a long "daisy chain" of floating packs and stuff will be easier to find and much less prone to something getting lost.

Boy, I hope I'm never put to the test. Isn't that one of the iron rules of canoeing? To scout ahead and see what you're getting into? What with my ever diminishing physical abilities, I'm a big fan of avoiding problems.

Rob

 

[yellowcanoe]

well I will admit to being a klutz and doing stupid things.. Like misreading a map..and yes I wrapped the canoe. This was in Temagami miles from any access but fishermen do come to the area..More on that later.

Seems the rest of you are way better than I am which leaves me mighty skeptical considering I have Wooden Canoe issues with a beautifully written article re a lesson learned

Should this have happened? Nope. I underestimated a little one foot waterfall underllain by razor sharp basalt. the map said paddle through.. Hah.. By the time I realized that I was going to wrap the boat at low speed and jumped out to try to avoid damage.it was too late.

This was between Diamond and Lady Evelyn Lake. Nothing was tied in. This made chasing two heavy bags a bit of an issue as they stayed ahead of me in the eddy. I was embarrassed and grateful when a few minutes later fishermen in a motorboat appeared. They gathered the bags in a big net. Curiously I had almost a full roll of duct tape. I duct tape every fold.. Nothing leaked. I finished the trip three days later.

Should I learn? Yes. Will I do something dumb again? Yes.

BTW had I had pack tethers I am pretty sure I would have had snakes around my ankles.





I took the Merlin II to Charlie and he put considerable time into fixing it.. Without too much comment..ahem.. the alu gunwales were the b**

 

[Guest]

I have never seen a canoe-over-canoe rescue used or even tried in whitewater in more than 30 years of paddling with expert rescuers. You can't do that in the middle of a rapid and it's also quite difficult in swiftly moving water. Rescues of floating (unpinned) boats are made by getting them to shore.

I have done T-rescues several times. Never in anything I would term “whitewater” or in the middle of rapids, and never with a capsized canoe loaded with tied in gear. Those boat-over-boat recoveries have usually been on daytrips in a pool or slower water below the capsize spot and in situations where bulldozing the lost canoe to the bank would have presented more hazard to the rescuers than a quick and coordinated flip and drain.

If there is opportunity to simply bulldoze the capsized canoe into some shallow accessible bank or eddy that would be the obvious first choice, but sometimes that option is not available.

 

[red langford]

Interesting video, certainly did not seem like the ardent wilderness travellers you see on these boards. The narration and filming rather than helping was a bit of annoyance to me as well.

Clarification on how they ended up where they did. At the start the narrator did say they decided to run the rapids and when he asked the robust man after the pin he said they missed the strainer from what I could tell. Seemed they were afraid to get into the water. That one pack that was floating in the eddy and ended up under the tree was just laziness if you ask me.

If the comments were harsh on youtube when it was posted it seems to be deserved to a point. Harsh criticism is one thing, mean spirited bashing is another.

So my painters are always tied in, should they be loose? I would think loose ropes would create an incredible entanglement hazard. See the part of the video when the guy is sitting on the rock and attempts (and fails) to throw the pack out of the current, as he crawls onto the rock you can see what appears to be rope around his legs. This is what makes 3 feet of water deadly if your feet are tangled and being sucked downstream.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Without ever being put to the test, my system is to tie all my gear on one long line, but free of the canoe. My thinking is that in a long "daisy chain" of floating packs and stuff will be easier to find and much less prone to something getting lost.

The tether system can make sense on lakes, but violates one of the cardinal safety rules of running whitewater (which is the topic): Never let anything dangle or drag behind your canoe, not even your painter line. And don't ever knot the end of your painter line because this will increase the likelihood of a snag if the painter accidentally comes loose and starts to drag. This applies to both to canoes being paddled and to overturned canoes floating free. The reason is that the line or thing dangling behind or under the canoe can get wedged in rocks or logs, leaving the canoe stopped in mid-stream with no nearby rescue eddies.

This requires some knowledge and experience with mid-rapids rescues. If a boat pins on a rock, that rock is almost always eddy-out-able by a rescue boater. The rescue boat either comes down from upstream and eddies out behind the pinning rock or ferries to the rock from shore. He can then climb on the rock, especially from a tandem canoe, or at least grab the painter. He can then attach rescue ropes at strategic spots onto the pinned hull and ferry the rescue lines back to shore. If the pinning rock is big enough or close enough to shore, sometimes two or three guys can get out on the rocks and lift the canoe off without ropes. In the meantime, gear or float bags secured in the hull will help prevent a total wrap by reducing the amount of water scooping into the concave hull.

If a canoe is dangling on a wedged painter or gear tether in the middle of swift currents and standing waves with no rocks nearby, there may be no reasonable rope rescue strategy. No one can eddy out or in any way stop near the canoe. Nor can they usually stop at the wedging point because the entanglement is usually between underwater rocks.

I've seen one successful rescue in this situation. After re-portaging upstream several boaters tried to paddle by the dangling canoe while slashing at the wedged line with knives. That might have worked if they had machetes, but every attempt failed. Luckily we had a tandem team with a very athletic female bow paddler. They came downsteam as slowly as they could, and she then jumped out of her canoe onto the upturned hull of the dangling canoe. She then shimmied up to the nose, cut the line, hung onto the freed canoe for a short distance, and then jumped into the water. We had enough rescue boats to get her and the freed hull. She took a lot of personal risk and also had a lot of luck.

Here's a good video of a canoe "hung up" in midstream. It's not pinned on rock with an eddy behind it. The situation is more like the wedged dangling line situation I was just describing. I strongly suspect the "hang up" is caused by some loose gear or paddle (or Swedish boutique axe) that is hanging below the gunwales and wedging in the submerged rocks. You can see that the rescuers simply have no place to stop in the moving water downstream of the snagged canoe.

 

[madmike]

Wow, that would take 1 min to paddle up to the eddy, hop out, climb on that rock, (3" water?) grab that canoe empty it, and paddle it away. Also the bow paddler in the first attempt needs some coaching... Pick your side, and stay on it, power is your job, stop trying to rudder.

 

[Guest]

So my painters are always tied in, should they be loose? I would think loose ropes would create an incredible entanglement hazard. See the part of the video when the guy is sitting on the rock and attempts (and fails) to throw the pack out of the current, as he crawls onto the rock you can see what appears to be rope around his legs. This is what makes 3 feet of water deadly if your feet are tangled and being sucked downstream.

My painters are always secured, using one of three methods.

On my open canoes I have bungee on the deck plates bow and stern that hold the painters in place. On boats with large enough deck plates that bungee runs / \ on the top, with the painter stuff between the bungees. I prefer that method for two reasons; if I always put the painter line in place that way and extract it from the middle it doesn’t end up inadvertently pulling out from under a bungee.

The other reason is that the bungee is a single line that runs down the top, back forward underneath the deck plate and back down the top. That gives me a below deck plate bungee I can use to store the painter line when paddling some tight tree laden swamp run, making it less likely that a branch is going to snag my painter line.



The tubing handle on those painter lines provide the carry handle when the spray covers are in place.

With spray covers the painters are usually secured via the Velcro loops on the covers at the stems.



“Usually” because I sometimes find spray covered canoes (or decked boats) awkward to grab and manipulate in difficult landings. There isn’t much exposed gunwale or thwart to grab and control the hull while working my way up to a painter line, especially if I am trying to clamber up a bank or keep the waves from steamrollering me under the boat.

I occasionally run the bow painter back to an open cam cleat and coil the excess there. I recognize that the 5 feet of line across the bow presents an entanglement hazard, so I am selective in where I do that, but sometimes having a painter in hand the instant I exit the boat is a near necessity.