Whitewater Freestyle

How many carabiners do you carry with you while you are on the river? Enough to get you out of a tight spot? I bet not.

Many of the people I paddle with, in addition to myself, have trouble carrying enough safety gear with them on the river. There are a number of reasons for this, among them:

• Safety gear is heavy
• You use it once in a blue moon
• It’s often expensive
• “How do I make a Z-Drag again?”

When boaters are creeking, it often involves hiking with kayaks to someplace exotic and far away. Sometimes there is more hiking that boating done; however, that is part of the territory. Therein lies why we skimp on gear that we should have: We simply don’t want to carry it.

The truth is that, with the right knowledge, training, and the right gear, you can safely cut down on the amount of gear you need to take to the river without sacrificing safety.

4 Safety Things You Should Know:

1. Know how to tie a prusik (if you do, you also know how to ascend a fixed rope, you just put two prussiks on a rope, attach one to yourself [harness] and up you go).
2. Know how to set up a Z-Drag in under 2 minutes (Rope to boat, to anchor, to prusik; 2 carabiners, 1 stuck object, 2 prusiks, 1 throw rope, 1 rock or tree).
3. Safety hardware can be vulnurable to imact damage (dropping it, chucking it to a friend below a drop, etc). Baby it.
4. Hard and Soft safety gear (eg: carabiners and prusiks) are generally not friends with water. Try to keep them dry (or, at least, try to keep the soft gear dry). It’ll give you peace of mind when you are hanging off a cliff from your prusik and not wondering “Oh boy, I should have replaced this thing a long long time ago…” Old nalgene bottles are great for this.

So, how many carabiners should you have with you while boating?

That depends on your rescue knowlege; however, a safe number would be at least 5 (2 of those should be locking ‘biners). I can hear what you’re saying, “Five?!? That is a lot. I surely don’t need that many ‘biners…” The truth is, you likely will.

The Scenario:

Let’s say you are trying to exit a gorge and there is some moderate climbing involved. You are likely going to need 2-3 biners for the anchor (1-2 lockers if you are doing a correct top-rope setup), a biner for your belay device (locking), and a biner or two for your friends down below (guess what, they don’t have enough carabiners for themselves. Whodathunkit?). There are 4-5 carabiners at the drop of a hat. We’re not even thinking of hauling up boats or any other miscellaneous s&(# that needs carabiners. This scenario could be reversed for descending into a canyon.

Buy more carabiners:

In any rescue situation, carabiners seem to be in need more than anything else. If you are looking for some cheap, well-made, light carabiners, check out these Omega Wire Gate carabiners. At the time of this writing (March 2010), they were a mere $4 each. Not bad. Update: Those carabiners are currently out of stock, but a quick Google Product search reveals similar results.

I hope that helps some people and maybe encourages you to pick up a few extra carabiners at the very least. Remember to inspect your safety gear regularly. Lord knows that kayakers treat that stuff like garbage. Get on it! You could be putting your life in its hands soon.

What do I carry?

When creeking, I have (at a minimum) gear to rappel, gear to ascend (2 locking biners, 4 regular biners, 1 prusik to make a harness with, one 4′ prusik, and one 2′ prusik), a small med kit, and 1-2 more random prusiks, two safety blankets, matches, a lighter, and a throw bag. When not boating familiar rivers, I will usually bring a breakdown paddle. Note that if you don’t know how to tie a munter hitch to belay with, a belay/rappel device would be a recommended addition to this list.

That’s it for this post. Got your own safety tip? Post it in the comments section below.

Cheers,

-Adam Johnson