Forward motion, headfirst & horizontal to gravity!

Swiftwater Safety & Rescue

I spent the last weekend in, and on the banks of, one of our local rivers. I was one of 12 people enrolled in a two-day Swiftwater Safety and Rescue course presented by Andrew Kellett (a well-known South African Kayaker) and you guessed it, I was the only Riverboarder… in the image below you can just see my Riverboard peaking out next to the furthermost kayak on the right.

Our Classroom.

Must say, I really learnt a bunch of stuff and it was sobering to face the responsibility one takes on when inviting Newbies along, and how I had often in the past done this without really giving them too much instruction and also not even having the correct safety equipment.

Forthwith all that will change though and I’ve already made plans with some of the guys who attended the course with me to get together soon and practice some of the rescue techniques we’ve learnt.

Learning the ropes...

The course dealt, amongst other stuff, with the following:

 Swiftwater Features & Hazards

 Reading the river and picking the best line

 Wading techniques

 Rope work and throw bagging

 Pulley systems – uses and setups

Rescue in strainers.

If you have not done so yet, I strongly recommend that you find an Accredited Operator (I’m sure Ice can recommend some in the States) and get yourself trained in Swiftwater Safety and Rescue. If you’re anywhere around South Africa, be sure to contact Andrew via http://www.gravity.co.za/

The simple premise is that your first priority is to be safe in the water and if you can do that you wont need to Rescue anyone…. but if the need arises for a rescue, then you need to have the right resources and skills to do the rescue.

Something else I learnt from our Instructor is the opportunity offered by each river you run, especially a river that might only be a class 2-3 and not challenging, and even more so at low-water (which is what we had… but ideal for the kind of rescue exercises we had to do in the water).

Me, going for a tight eddy.

At one point the Instructor said we should follow him eddy-hopping through rapids. Basically what he did was lead the way and try get into the most difficult eddy’s in difficult parts of the river and we’d have to follow him each in turn, snaking our way through the river. At this point our group had been split in 2 so there were 6 of us following him. Many of the eddy’s were so small that only one person could get in at a time, so you had to work together well to ensure that everyone kept moving and there was no overlap.

So, the reason I’m telling you all this…?

Firstly, I want to encourage you to also do some Whitewater Safety & Rescue Training, I waited really long until finally doing it which is actually pretty bad, it is really IMPORTANT.

Secondly, I learnt that you can still have lots of fun running a river, which you may usually not be that keen on running, if you work at finding lines and eddy’s you’d usually just pass by and in so doing you can hone your river-running skills, improve your technical ability in reading water and most of all have fun on a day that you may otherwise not even have bothered running a river.

NOTE: All Images taken by Andrew Kellett and the property of Gravity Adventure Group

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Comment by Josh Galt on June 23, 2009 at 2:56pm: Great post, Charl. It is definitely important to have a high "river IQ" and to know all potential hazards as well as potential methods for rescue in various situations.

For rescue training in the USA, go to www.SierraRescue.com, as they are Face Level's swiftwater rescue training partner. Sierra is run by Julie Munger, who was the first woman to riverboard the Grand Canyon (leading a self-supported trip of other women riverboarders), and she and the rest of Sierra's instructors are the best of the best.

The timing of this is great, as Julie and I talked this past weekend about various ways to integrate competitions and rescue training, and we are looking at having a swiftwater rescue instruction element at every riverboarding event in 2010, which should be fun and make for a lot of very safety-conscious and intelligent riverboarders!

Comment by Rochelle Parry on June 23, 2009 at 8:43pm: I'm definitely going to take a course w/ Sierra, probably next year - it would be really cool to combine training with a comp, although, Yosemite looks awfully fun... bet that one sells out first!

Comment by The River Boarding Co. on June 23, 2009 at 11:20pm: Awesome post. For those that take newbies with them, I think this is the best post on facelevel.
I have had a swift water rescue trainer on staff for about 3 years now, and his experience is invaluable. Unfortunately as any river user knows, this does not stop accidents happening, but is no excuse for not knowing it in the first place.
Last November all commercial operators around NZ got together for what we believe to be the worlds first river boarding specific white water safety workshop. This incorporated facilitators from the rafting and kayaking communities as well as river boarders.
It is now an annual thing, and we also co operate with the rafting workshop as well, learning new techniques from them, and teaching them swimming rescue as well.
If anyone is ever planning on coming to this neck of the woods, I would recommend checking course dates, and seeing if you can co-incide with a course.

Comment by Docta P on June 24, 2009 at 6:54am: Nice work Charl - that pic of you catching that "eddy" (if you can even call it that - it's TINY in the picture) is really sweet too. Josh and I had taken a swiftwater safety course in a year prior to Sierra Rescue coming onboard (no pun), and had enough knowledge to be dangerous. Abi (Julie's partner) taught us a TON and really honed our skills. Frankly, for those of us leading trips, we've believed for years that it's imperative to have the best available gear AND a solid working knowledge of swiftwater rescue in addition to riverboarding skills, and brushing up on those skills annually is vital. We play like we practice, and when it's life that's in the balance, we better practice well.

P

Comment by Charl van Rensburg on June 24, 2009 at 7:02am: Thanks for the comments and feedback everyone. I've also had a comment from Nicolas Milot who is Swiss & regarded by many as probably the best Hydrospeeder in the World. He asked me to post his email in here. See below.

Hello Charles,

I have great pleasure in seeing your pictures and your text. I also made the training Rescues 3 at the end of May 2009. So at the same time as you. I had a great instructor, DAVID Alemann it work on Dora in Italy.

http://www.rescue3international.com/instructors_biography.php?id=info@RiverRescue.eu
http://www.RiverRescue.eu

30 training hours over 3 days. Indeed, I learned so much things that I wonder why this training is not mandatory!! What fun, I must say that my work which I paid training, me and 2 other colleagues. We were mixed with raft guides, military ...
I advice you like Charles, to follow such training, we see things differently ...

Greetings

Nicolas

PS: You can post this email on your blog, I can not do it. thank you.