Paddling across a mini fall

The weather has been fantastic recently, not too cold and not too hot. So I thought I should take the opportunity to get into the kayak and do as much paddling as possible before it gets too cold and I get too wimpy. Today was one of those nice weather days and its such a relief to be able to go to the canoe club after a day of insane data crunching at uni.

Now the water level has been a bit low which makes it difficult to paddle down stream because there are certain parts of the river where the paddle almost hits the ground (or river bed). Also, there is this part of the river in front of the Fairfield Park Boathouse and under the Fairfield Pipe Bridge, where the river bed has a slight drop and it is only becomes obvious when water levels are low and the rocks become exposed creating sort of a mini fall (its hard to describe how small it is but its small).

View of the Pipe Bridge from the Boathouse (photo from here)

View from Google maps

Anyway I would usually go upstream instead to avoid that mini fall because I run the risk of running the club's kayak over the rocks, but for some reason I decided to go ahead this time. The trip downstream was actually fine and I managed to avoid hitting any rocks as I simply allowed the flow of the river to carry me across that mini fall. After that I continued to paddle happily till I reached the 3.5km mark where I turned back.

My 7km paddle route

It was all good until I came back to the mini fall and this time I had to go against the flow of the river and up the mini fall. Coincidentally, there was another guy on a kayak in front of me. He looked like an older and more experienced paddler. What he did was he decided not to go against the mini fall and instead he just got off his kayak at the side of the river and did a portage. In my mind I was thinking: "it can't be that hard to paddle up that tiny little fall". I went ahead and attempted to go across. I failed. My paddle was hitting the rocks and I couldn't get enough momentum to overcome the faster flow across that mini fall. But I was really not keen on doing a portage as I would have to jump into the river and who knows what slimy creepy stuff lies on the bed of the river. So I made a second attempt to cross the mini fall and this time I didn't even come close to it. As the sky slowly turned darker, I knew I had to do the portage or I would be stuck there. I went to the exact same spot where the guy got off his kayak and thank God there were some rocks that I could stand on and managed to get off my kayak without having to step into the river bed. It took me a while to get back into the river because I could not find a easy spot to launch the kayak. If only I had followed that guy (who is obviously more experienced) when he did his portage, it would have saved me some grieve. Oh well, guess sometimes I just learn things the hard way.

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 16:18 (NIV)