Safety Minute
IT ISN’T THE SAME RIVER
We’ve received reports recently about two sad events where experienced and expert paddlers went down rivers they had ample experience with, and ended up dead.
Either things had changed in the particular rapids, and they were confronted by a situation they were not expecting, or in the heat of the moment, they zigged when they should have zagged, and were caught in a sieve they had always been able to avoid previously.
Or both. It could have been both.
What we tend to forget, is that truism that Heraclitus voiced in 550 BC – “No man can step into the same river twice, for it isn’t the same river, and he is not the same man.”
We know this is a dangerous sport. We’ve come home from trips banged up and bleeding and sore. We’ve ended up in the hospital or emergency rooms more than once after a trip. Often with infections. Sometimes missing body parts. (Thankfully these have been minor, like fingernails or toenails.) (but still,)
As a river rushes down to the sea, it carries sand, gravel, rocks and boulders and trees down with it, more or less constantly. While the general course of the river mostly tends to stay the same, the shape of the riverbanks changes every day. During a flood, of course, Katie, Bar the Door! EVERYTHING CAN CHANGE.
Tom Douglas, in his June presentation to the club meeting as to why all the bayous in the Houston area flow from west to east, made a clear argument that over the past millions of years, the Brazos has developed many channels that flowed toward the Trinity, and as they matured, and developed riverbank edges, that would later force bayous to follow the ridges, even as the Brazos itself would change course during a flood and head further south. This is clear historical geographic evidence that the Brazos once travelled through where Houston is now.
At one point in 1980s, some businessmen came upon a record of a steamboat, Arabia, that was lost in the 1800s, while on the Missouri River, but its location was unknown. After several years of searching, they found it, buried in a field several miles from the current location of the Missouri river. 45 feet deep in a farmer’s field.
In the past several years of paddling the San Marcos, the changes have been striking. Old dams have slowly been being dismantled, and major trees that have been completely across the river have disappeared. Boulders that used to be off to the side, have moved to the center of the flow. It is a completely different river than when I first started paddling it. They are always changing.
Even a benign, well known creek, like Spring Creek, is always changing. I’ve watched a riverbank on Spring Creek collapse into the water while I was watching, and I’ve watched 30 yards of the Spring Creek bike trail fall off and disappear into the creek during a flood. They are continually having to re-route the Spring Creek bike trail because the creek eats into the bank where the bike trail is. Each of those changes the course of the creek, and often topples trees into the water, creating strainers.
We get used to thinking that the rivers we know tend to stay the same, but they don’t.
IT IS NEVER THE SAME RIVER!
Be safe out there!
See you On The Water!
Harmon