The highlight of this week by far was paddling on the Leven again. This
was on the 28th November 2013. After heavy rain a few days before, the river
was very high at 1.3m, too high for the intended UCUM -v- UCLAN Boater X. This
race event was planned to be a social competition between my University of
Cumbria (UCUM) paddling club and the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN)
paddling club. However due to many people dropping out the night before numbers
to the event slowly dwindled and by the time we met at the river Leven there
were a grand total of seven people from both unis. Clearly only the elite could
manage boating on this day. Luckily I knew everyone that turned up and their
paddling ability so making the decision to bench the race for another day was
easy and we decided to paddle the whole river rather then just the top easier
section. After a slow start the day went well. The group stopped to inspect
each rapid before proceeding picking the best line suited to each individuals
ability. We had two swimmers throughout the day, myself on Backbarrow Bridge
rapid and Mike on a the last rapid of the day.
Backbarrow Bridge is a notorious spot in the Lake District for paddlers as the
rapid is big, not easily inspected and intimidating due to the fact that there
is a large stopper under the bridge that you can always see is there but you
can't judge how large it really is. Due to this fact, only three of seven
participants on the day paddled this rapid. In their larger boats Matt and Jack
successfully managed to punch through the make or break stopper under the
bridge however, I was not so lucky. The Boof stroke I put in on my right side
was too weak to get the nose of my kayak over the foam pile of the stopper to
then allow me to make progress through the stopper. Therefore the nose of my
boat was taken by the water and I was flipped over, capsized. Feeling the water
rush around my face I tucked up to protect it, something I had failed to do
quick enough the time I broke my nose. Holding my breath still in my boat, I waited being thrown about by the
water. I was waiting to be flushed out of the stopper into the large pool below
where I knew I could roll up but I wasn't getting flushed. With this thought in
my head, I held on one more moment hoping to feel the surface of the water with
my paddle to then roll up, however, running out of breath I pulled my spray
deck off to get out of my kayak and try swimming out of this sticky situation.
Luckily by this point I had been flushed out and was on the edge of the
stoppers grasp. As soon as I came up I took a large breath of air grateful to
have made it out. I then started swimming to shore aided by my pal Tom. My boat
unfortunately didn't get out of the grasp of the stopper and was thrown around before
coming out and being rescued by the rest of the crew who also retrieved my
blades (paddles), all before reaching 30m down river the looming Backbarrow
Death Weir that is "unrunable" in a kayak. Looking back at the
footage from Tom’s head cam I'm gutted I hadn't held on a little longer as when
I came out my boat I would have been able to make that roll and paddle away in
anger rather than swim away in shock. On the other hand, I feel it was a step
that needed to be met at one point to make me less intimidated by these rapids
and to allow me to focus on what needs to be done to conquer them.
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