Doing a Short Throw Bag Throw for Kayak River Rescues

Video Transcript

"A lot of the time when you're setting up throw bag safety, you've walked downstream and you've scouted a drop and it's a pre-emptive strike with the throw bag and if you're paddling small low volume on narrow rivers it's often not necessary to deploy the whole bag, which may be up to seventy feet of rope into the river. A lot of the time with these smaller types of creeks you can be right next to the place that someone's gonna be in trouble. So what you can do is separate your bag a little bit, put the bag on the floor and coil a small amount of the rope into your hand so that then you've maybe got ten to fifteen feet of rope in your hand. And, what you can then do with this, is standing next to the drop, when you make eye contact with the person that you're going to be throwing to you can do a short throw right out to them. This ensures that there isn't too much rope in the river and you're not going to get in trouble by anything going off further down stream. And, if it's tight and constricted water then that potential of the rope getting snagged around something else is going to be increased. The nice thing about this situation as well is if this throw misses you don't have to repack the bag or recoil. You can reach down, get this, and out it goes, for that second, if necessary, throw."