Grand River Canoe & Kayak Rentals

I can’t ever remember seeing so many people on the river this early in April.

With the lack of snow this winter and the very warm weather earlier this spring the water is already close to its summer levels. This means a lot of people have already been out for a paddle. But you need to remember that even though the weather has been unseasonably warm, the water temperature is still a concern. An unplanned dunking still runs the risk of hypothermia. Make sure you take a change of clothes in a waterproof bag, along with a cell phone. 

While guiding a trip from Glen Morris to Paris on the Easter weekend, we met a group of canoeists who had the misfortune of capsizing about an hour upstream from the the Paris dam. Half the group decided to hike out, leaving 3 people to solo the canoes the rest of the way. On any other day, this may not have been an issue, but the forecast was calling for the chance of isolated thunderstorms and the water temperature was still only 10 degrees Celsius. This group was totally unprepared, their denim jeans and cotton t-shirts were still soaking wet from their unintentional swim, none of them had a cell phone with them, and because of the approaching storm the headwind was preventing these soloists from making any distance. To make matters worse, it was almost 5:00pm and the temperature was starting to drop. 

We suggested that they would make much better progress if they tandem in one canoe and tow the other one behind, but they didn't even have a rope. It seems the outfitter that they rented from hadn't even supplied them with painters. We suggested that they call their outfitter to inform him of their situation, but since there was no place the outfitter could extract them they planned to paddle the rest of the way. We gave them some rope so they could at least tandem and tow the boats now. 

In risk management assessments, we call this juggling lemons. As more lemons are tossed in, it gets harder to keep them all in the air. For this group, what started out as a great day paddling the Grand River could have quickly turned into a serious situation if they had been tossed another lemon or two.

Canoeing the Grand River is one of the most enjoyable pastimes I can think of, and I hope everyone has the opportunity to enjoy it, but please make sure you are well prepared if you are going out this early in the season.