How To Recover Equipment While Creeking

Video Transcript

"Just before you've thrown a rope to your swimmer, you sort of have to think to yourself whether they're going to swim into a spot that you pendulum into that's safe or rocky. This area right here is kind of rugged; there's lots of rocks. If I was a little bit upstream and I had a swimmer on the end of my rope and I pendulumed them into this part of the river, they might hit these rocks. It might be difficult for them to get to the side of the river. If I was further downstream in this situation. If I was right here and I threw the rope out, down below me there's a nice calmer area and I can pull them to shore safely without other rocks getting into the way. The same goes for your equipment. If you can reach your equipment, if you're swimming in the water and you can get it by yourself, that is great because then you don't have to depend on other people to get it. Typically, in creeks the water's moving very fast. As soon as you're out of your boat, it could go twice as fast as you can or twice as slow as you are upstream or downstream of you. You want to make sure that as soon as you come out of your boat for whatever reason, you try to grab on to your paddle and your boat and then swim to a safe spot on shore. Whenever you're swimming with your kayak and with your boat, try to grab them in the same hand so the grab loop on the back of the boat fit the paddle in there and swim upstream of you kayak with your free arm and kicking your legs to whichever side of shore looks the safest. This way the boat is downstream of you and you won't get pinched between it and a rock."