The River is Changing - Sarah Sandeman

Hi! My name is Sarah Sandeman, I'm 17 years old and I live in Ottawa. This is my second year at Keeners but last year I was in sessions 2 and 3. This session has been very different than my sessions last year. Firstly because I have improved a lot in my kayaking and secondly because the river is very different. When I was here last year the water was at a steady level of about minus 2. When I arrived here last Sunday, the river was at 10 and 3/4! That is so much higher than last year! This means that the first day we ran the middle channel, a channel I had only run once, at minus 2. The level stayed at 10 and 3/4 on Tuesday and Wednesday but then it started dropping fast. Over night it dropped about a foot to 9 and 3/4. Thursday was the first time I ran the main channel this year and boy was it different than what I remembered, probably because the water was so much higher. Friday was our competition day and we saw the river change so much that day. When we got on the water the level was 9 and 1/4 so we headed over to McCoy's to play in 7/8 hole. The hole was getting progressively stickier and stickier and downstream a wave started to form. This was because the water was dropping quickly. When we started paddling downstream we found out that the level was at 6 and 1/4. The water had dropped about 3 feet in 4 hours! This meant that the rapids on the main channel had changed quite a bit, especially the waves on Coliseum. They had massive foam piles that would flip you and surf you for a few seconds, even though you could have punched through them just fine the day before. Yesterday and today I really saw how much the water had dropped because I was safety boating on the middle channel, which I hadn't run since Wednesday. I noticed that rocks that were underwater last time I had been there were about 2 feet out of the water now! Personally, I hope the water keeps dropping to about minus 1 or minus 2 because then Garb, Pushbutton, Baby Face and Cornerwave will be in and we will have some more awesome play spots!