Aire Waves: The Onde of my paddles

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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.

Friday, July 13, 2007
The Onde of my paddles

A few of you have suggested that perhaps I had lost my paddles in a bar in the Alps, this is not true, the paddles were left inadvertently in a river in the Alps.

I think it was called the river of death, or the Onde, one of those two.

Our second day in the Alps, the instructor thought that we were better than we were, so he took us to the Onde, 3Km a 20 minute paddle, if your good enough, I wasn't.

Imagine the Washburn, then tilt it to about 30 degrees. Apparently you can hear the rocks being rolled down the river by the force of the water. I wasn't on it long enough to appreciate this phenomenon. Of the 3km I was in my boat for less than 100m, I then swam the next 300m and refused to get back on, on grounds that I might die. So I walked 6km with my boat instead (this figure increases as the time goes on, as does the size and severity of the bruises).

We set off as we were told to, very quickly after each other, as the speed of the river would spread us out, if we didn't try to get the seal launch right. Don't mess about, keep close, keep tight. We did this too well, all setting off at the same time, all on the hundred mile an hour river along side each other, quickly we organized ourselves, changing the order to get every one in line, fantastic.

The guide hits a rock (apparently on purpose so that he can get a brief look at the group to see that we are all on the water safely), as he turns to look, I'm on top of him with the others ploughing down towards me. I produced some panicked moves to avoid the river leader, success, but there was a bigger rock in front of me now, which for some reason I decide to go over head first, still in my boat at this stage, but not for long. I start the self rescue, get on my back, feet first, get to the side, I spot my paddle, which I grasp and struggle to the side with, to find that it wasn't my paddle at all, but some one else's that had come to the same fate as I had.

My paddle is probably in the same slot awaiting the failure of another paddler on another day. My boat was rescued further down the river, and I began the walk to the get out at the bottom of the river. This proved to be impossible as the path had collapsed. The guide, who for some reason was on the footpath looking for the rest of the group, advised me to take a second path.

The second path was more over grown but had a slight worn path up the middle of it, turned out it led up to the top of the mountain, then back down again and ended at the get in, 3km away from where I was expected to be. i suspect that the path had been worn by goats, possibly just two very fit goats who walked it once then refused to ever take that path again, then climbed a tree instead. I walked a long way with some one else's paddle and carrying / moaning about / dragging my boat.

When I finally found the group again, several hours had past, and still I had to wait longer as another incident had happened in my wake, which resulted in a trapped boat and a long and event filled boat recovery.

Two days two swims, a third by the end of the week. Though this is the only one that mattered, we can forget about the others, they were just incidental.

The Onde

# posted by MT @ Friday, July 13, 2007

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