A day that started unseasonably hot and sunny turned cloudy, cold and windy on my recent Red Deer River float trip with Dwayne Schafers.
We hoped that we were not going to have a repeat of our encounter on a late-summer float last year with five seriously hypothermic rafters-tubers, all of them wet, two of them in bikinis.
But it was a near thing this year, as a rubber raft-tube that looked like a water bed mattress just ahead of us was swept by swift currents toward a bank lined with the sharp snags of “sweeper trees.” Just in time, a female leg shot out and pushed the ungainly raft away, avoiding punctures, rips and a long, hard trek by wet and cold young people.
The next day I learned that, the day before Dwayne and I floated, four rafters had not been so lucky. They were found by members of Red Deer County fire department and Red Deer Search and Rescue, in bathing suits, wet and cold, slogging along the shore, after being marooned because their “raft was no longer working,” presumably meaning punctured, torn, flat, and probably abandoned.
At least they had a cell phone and were lucky enough to be in one of the rare spots on the river where they could get a signal and call for help.
Alcohol was judged to be not a factor in this incident, but too frequently it is.
A reader who often boats the river from the dam down to Trenville Park says this in an outraged email: “What really surprises me is the amount of garbage, dead rafts and ‘floaty’ things and hundreds and hundreds of empty beer bottles and cans that litter the bottom … something has to be done about this, and soon, before the fish are spawning in Molson bottles.”
But the other most frequent factor contributed to the recent near-tragedy of deaths by hypothermia. These young folks, all in their mid-20s, launched about 2 p.m. from the ramp at the County of Red Deer A – Soo – Wuh – Um day-use area just upstream of the Penhold Bridge.
Obviously they had no idea how far it is to their intended destination, Heritage Ranch, (20 km) or how long it would take to get there on a low, slow river in a clumsy craft, a dime store “rubber ducky,” possibly, that doesn’t really paddle or row all that well, nor is it intended to.
Six and a half hours later, after their raft-tube stopped “working,” they still were trying to get to Heritage Ranch and obviously had not yet even reached Fort Normandeau where there is a launch-land ramp.
Obviously, too, they had not stuffed some warm, windproof clothing into a dry bag or two, as insurance against just the kind of stranding they got.
A day later, at 2 p.m., we launched at the Hwy 54 Bridge in Dwayne’s drift boat, a nimble craft designed to be rowed on rivers.
At 7 p.m. we landed 10 km. downriver, at that county ramp above the Penhold Bridge, having dallied over fishing and dinner, warm and dry in the jackets we put on when an afternoon that started too hot turned windy and cold.
Lest I once again be accused by some readers of forgetting what it is like to be young, I’ll accept that Albertans of all ages will just go on being carefree, careless, even stupid on the subject of rafting-tubing our rivers.
Our governments should accept that too, and do something practical about it, other than mounting search and rescue operations.
There are disgracefully few safe, public watercraft launching and landing sites on most of Alberta’s floatable rivers.
For example, there is no such site on the Red Deer all the way from Dickson Dam down to the County’s A – Soo – Wah – Um site just above the Penhold Bridge, a total of 33 km.
From there it is 16 km to the next public ramp at Fort Normandeau.
Rafters-tubers and boaters in the know do use the informal rocky beach on the west bank at the Hwy 54 Bridge and you can occasionally launch in a pinch, and land, if you are quick, at an unmarked, mucky backwater at Range Road 20, 10 km downstream of the dam … if the river is not too low, as it is now.
At least three more public sites are urgently needed between Dickson Dam and Fort Normandeau to shorten the distances people try to raft-tube and provide safe landings when they get in trouble, or just have had enough.
There are hundreds of public fishing access site signs on Montana highways, many with fine, safe boat landing-launching ramps. It can’t be all that expensive; certainly Montana does not have Alberta’s disposable income.
The lack of such safe facilities for boaters and rafter-floaters on Alberta’s rivers is tragedy lurking in the wings.
Bob Scammell is an award-winning outdoors writer living in Red Deer.