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Aire Waves
Leeds Canoe Club Blog. We paddle... lots!
Airewaves used to be Leeds Canoe Club's magazine letting people know what the club was upto. Its quite hard work pulling together a publication letting people know what the club is doing and publishing dates in advance is always hard as things tend to change. Step forth the blog.. Push button publishing for the masses. So here is the idea a few people in the club take it in turns to write up trips and talk about things in the club.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007The gap between swims seems to have gotten a little shorter
Salmon leap falls (AKA Dog leg falls) (AKA The S bends) Sunday 4th March 2007
I provided a little safety for a number of paddlers, at the top end of the rapid, this was for very selfish reasons, as it was to allow me to look at the entry into the feature and work out what I was going to do. My turn eventually came. I set off, ready for this, armed with the knowledge.
I'd seen numerous paddlers, take an array of different lines. The drop in, run far left a 3 foot drop puts you into the flow without the need to react to the change of direction later down the flow. The slide in, run far right which requires quite a big physical change in direction, and the near right, which seems to be the better line for me, longer slide, edge on and paddle.
I chose the latter, the near right slide. Positioned myself at the top of the rapid perfectly, hit the slope exactly where I wanted to be, slid the slide, edge on. My boat spun over with such speed that I don't remember which way, or how I ended up upside down. I had obviously hit a time line, a line where time is distorted. Not only had the spin over been so fast that I hadn't had time to see what I did wrong or where my paddle had gone, but now I'm under water I seem to be in slow motion.
I reach forward to grab my deck, whack helmet takes the first of many blows, I was laid over my back deck, with water too shallow to straighten up without hitting rocks, I try again, Whack, Whack. Its definitely too shallow to get forward enough to reach my deck. One more go for luck, Whaccccck. This isn't working. Time stops and I think that maybe its time to learn how to hand roll, I think I'll ask some one about this on Thursday, maybe take this huge boat of mine, even though it might be a bit of a bind to clean in the showers.
I decide that in the light of my lack of a hand rolling skill from my kayaking repertoire, I decide to contort my body, into the shape of a corkscrew, a mean feat for some one of my size. This doesn't work, maybe I just needed to do a left hand thread, being right handed I'd scuppered myself.
Where was I, upside down, unable to straighten, unable to roll (no paddle), unable to hand roll (no ability), contorted. It was time to do something, other than try and dig a furrow with my helmet. One thing that you're taught to do as a kayaker is to dislocate the lower half of your body from the top, not like worms, just for balance purposes, it helps if the bottom half of your body becomes boat and the top half of your body becomes the kayaker. I decided to take back my legs, to reattach them and kick like mad. This resulted in the breaking of my knee grip and the ejecting of the now semi-frantic paddler. I had travelled down the rapid a distance of about 10 feet.
I emerged just in time to spot the first drop. (At this point I should stop the description process, and hand over to Bobs video footage, which might hit the website one day, just after they invent internet telekinesis, and the footage puts its self there).
Needless to say, I survived, I thought that I'd broken my ankle, but after the chocolate on a high shelf jump test, this seems not to have been the case.
Don't let this put you off, this is one of the best thrills I have as a kayaker, plus there is always sympathy chocolate at the end. Todays river snack was the Mars bar.
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