Another great day working on the Kan. We had 30 signed in today, but I think that we missed about 10 people that showed up late and just went to work without us knowing they were there.
We started working in the morning at Widowmaker putin clearing out some of the wood that had clogged up the stairs. A crew of rafters and kayakers then proceeded downriver cleaning up flood debris and making a safety inspection of the features and river. They stopped and worked on the far shore of the race course for quite a while before heading down to Seebe.
Another team walked down the trail from Widowmaker to Canoe Meadows checking on the trail and clearing it up as they went.
And the final crew worked at Canoe Meadows clearing debris off the trails and cleaning up any twine and cable that remained on the shore. All of the access trails have been rehabilitated and although rough they are serviceable at this time.
A very successful day.
At the end of the day,, our assessment is that the river run from Widowmaker to Seebe is safe and ready to go. There are no visible hazards even on the race course. However there is a concern that there still could be steel cables and pull strings that are submerged in the river, perhaps in the eddies or in the rock piles. We won’t know that for sure until the water goes down. We are hoping that TransAlta might give us a 2-3 hour window to turn off the water, so we can walk the riverbed and cleanup any remaining debris from the slalom race course. But from what we have looked out, everything has been cleaned out and all the wire and string that could have posed a safety hazard has been removed.
I have talked with Dave Hanna at K Country about all this and told him that we are ready to resume activities on the Kananaskis River, with the recommendation that it be for advanced boaters and commercial rafting companies until a more complete assessment of the river can be made. The river is still running very high at 85 cms, three times the normal flow. So it is quite fast and quite powerful and the river is substantially different than it would be at normal flows. Also as a result of the flood many of the features have been altered and new features have appeared in different places.
We will be delayed 2 more days to get the ban on river activity lifted until the safety boom at Horseshoe Dam has been re-installed by TransAlta. Please respect this river closure while we work through getting the proper authorization to open the river again for public use. Be patient with us and our government officials as they want to get us back in the water as soon as possible too.
A big thank you to all the people who came out in the last two days on short notice to get our whitewater river park open again. We had great cooperation from the rafting companies, the kayak shops, the slalom racers, the freestyle paddlers and our recreational kayakers to get the river open as soon as possible.
Chuck Lee
Executive Director - AWA
