Ah what a fun day this was! The Tatshenshini River is a Class 3+ (sort of) local run that starts out on the Blanchard River and pours into the Tatshenshini. Tatshenshini Expediting, runs a day trip on this river taking clients in rafts and I was grateful they were there on this day. We were taking some new paddlers down the river for the first time. It consisted of mainly kayaks and one inflatable kayak. We met down at the river and had our group discussion talking about how we were going to run the river, who was lead who was follow, what river signals we would use and did everyone have the proper safety gear. throw bags? check! warm clothes, pogies? check! first aid kit? Check! Lifejacket and helmet? Check! Float bags? Check! lunch? Check! Spare paddles? Well, we should only need one of those so I will leave mine behind. And away we go.
We all take off and we are making our way down the river and we get approximately 3 minutes down stream and eddy out above this wall called fishermans eddy. we see the rest of the group come and we wait until they get closer and then we eddy out and eddy back in just around the corner. after waiting in our boats for a couple of minutes no one has come around the bend so we get out to see whats going on. When we get around the corner we see everybody standing around that rock and I thought we have a boat pin! Nope I can see everybodies boats on shore and this is when I realize that they must have lost a paddle, what are the chances! so they poked around for a good 5 minutes and I went to get the spare paddle out of my boat, now thinking that maybe we should have brought that other paddle, because we no longer have a spare and its at the very beginning of the trip. Anyway by the time I got back to them they had found the paddle it was chockered between two rocks on the bottom of the river. packed up my paddle and away we went.
So We paddle for another 10 minutes and we have our first swimmer. Raoul* flipped over on a particularily rocky section of the river that had a good little gradient drop in it and he neded up pulling his deck. problem was his boat was recovered on one side of the river and he was on the other. after much shouting over the river trying to explain how we were going to reunite him with his boat we got it all figured out and away we went.
After a quick stop for lunch we took off ahead of the raft group and preceeded to do the rock gardens, Big C and Twin holes. These are the bigger rapids on the river and are a lot of fun. Everyone styled it and we didnt have to do any rescues so we continued on down the river. We were a little more ways down the river and Raula* started paddling funny and her boat was starting to list. She had ripped a tube. I told her to paddle to shore I booked ahead and got the group to stop and we sent two paddlers to catch up to the raft group and ask for them to wait for us. Remeber that check list that we did at the beginning of the day? It was then that we realized that the group didnt have a patch kit for the inflatable. Ok, no prob I was walking up thinking Raula could take my boat and I would paddle her boat straddling the one inflated tube and catch up to the raft group where she could hop in. when I got up she had already deflated the boat for easier transport. No prob we’ll just reinflate it. Remember that checklist? It was then that we realized we didnt have a pump either. This created a problem as there was now way we would catch up to the rafts on foot and it would be a hellacious walk out. We sent Raoul* and Raoul* down to ask the rafts to wait for us so Raoula could catch a ride. But how do we get Raula there? This is where Raoul* stepped up and offered Raula his boat to paddle to the rafts. Raoul swam holding onto my boat for the flats sections and going to shore and walking the rapids until we caught up to the rafts, where Raula hopped in ( thanks Tat Exp!).
- not his real name
- *not her real name