Trip Coordinator Name(s): Les Horvath
Date of Trip: June 11, 2023
River Reach: Longview to Hogg Park
River Difficulty Level: Intermediate
Water Level: Low
# of Adults: 10
# of Minors:
# of Guests:
Rescues(aka Swims)?:
Events,Observations,Comments:
Trip Report Highwood River Longview to Hogg Park June 11, 2023
Trip Coordinator: Les Horvath
Difficulty: Intermediate, 12.6 cms flow
The day held nice weather with 21 degrees for the high and 12.6 cms water flow. There were ten people: 4 tandems, 2 kayaks. The meet up location was at the log cabin next to the Esso station but was not on time. The shuttle left at 10:10 to the takeout and returned to the put in with two vehicles carrying the drivers back.
Trip started at 11:20 and discussed Safety and river features etc. we had nice wave trains, surfing, eddies and a couple of ledges to have fun on.
Stopped for lunch at noon and back on the river at 12:30, scouted the broken ledge just below the lunch spot and seven people ran the ledge with one near miss incident but stayed afloat and no injury to be reported, three people lined down on river right. We see many deer in the river and on cliff sides and eagles along the way and spent time surfing and rock dodging. All had a great fun time and got off the river at 4:00 p.m. I loaded one kayak on my Jeep and drove one person back to the put in at 5:10 p.m. One other member drove one person back to the put in as well.
I allowed one tandem team at the put in to participate on the trip since it would be their first time on this reach only because it was low water at 12.6 cms. The issue was that they did not inform the Trip Coordinator by replying to his group email that asked for full floatation in the canoe, I only learned this after the shuttle at the put-in. They did not have an airbag other than two small bow and stern molded float pockets which are minimally effective at best. The stern throw bag attachment to the deck did not exist and the throw bag did not have a grab loop on its end to grab in case of a swim and self-rescue. The throw bag was actually a hazard since it would fall out of an overturned canoe and the rope would deploy itself from the bag and become an entanglement hazard. We could not make an attachment of the throw bag to the stern deck. To try to prevent rope deploying we tied a figure eight knot on the rope and stuffed it back into the bag and choked the bag opening enough to allow the knot to deploy itself if it had to be used.
As Trip Coordinator I paid special attention to them stopping before rapids that needed to be highlighted and discussed them for their benefit in route options and navigation.
Another concern on this reach is at the lunch stop location; the landowner has built a beautiful outhouse on higher land and some members are using it. I don’t believe that this outhouse was built for anyone’s use other than their own! The club membership needs to be informed formally that this is on private property and the landowners may eventually tell the BWCC we have no more rights to be on their land. Where we have lunch, we are above the high-water mark and sit on their property, we were once approached by them on another trip when they happened to be out camping in their campers and they told us this area was their land. I told them that we are the BWCC and we have respectfully used this location for years and always have left it clean and undamaged when we leave. They seemed fine with that, but things can change if we take advantage of the outhouse.
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