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A Throw Bag
1 Carabiner
A raft
A rapid to practice in
Proper lining technique
Saving your energy through a portage
Lining in teams down river
What to expect when you line a raft
Safety Techniques when lining a boat
In this lesson, Trevor is joined by Lexie and Lulu as they work through a portage scenario in which they have decided to line the raft. Lining is a fantastic option available to inflatable boaters that can make portages quicker and easier on your crew. In this lesson we will be discussing the proper technique of lining, how to control your boat, avoiding brush, and safety when you are lining.
Portaging up and over rocks can be an extremely time consuming and physically taxing way to avoid running a rapid. If you decide that you do not wish to run a rapid, however there are a lot of obstacles on the shore to get your raft over the option of lining the boat becomes a good possibility. When you are deciding to line or portage there are a few important features you want to look for:
Wrap rocks
Undercuts
Logs
Eddy locations
Good footing
All of these factors play a significant role in understanding if you should line or carry. Wrap rocks and logs in particular are major hazards in a rapid and lines can get caught in those obstacles easily. Similarly rocks with high wrap potential, Logs, and undercuts can all cause wraps or rips in a rapid that you already decided you don’t want to run. Wraps and boat damage can turn a potentially dangerous situation into a prolonged ordeal and an actually dangerous situation. You also need to evaluate eddy locations and your footing as you are lining since smooth rocks can cause you to slide off the portage route, while lack of eddies can make lining almost impossible due to the force the boat experiences in the current.
If however the rapid is largely free of obstacles or there is a path for the raft to travel which is free of obstacles then lining can be a safer and faster option while being less taxing to the participants.
When you begin to set up for lining your boat you need to evaluate where you need to start lining and how far down you want to line. Are you only lining one feature that you feel that you cannot safely pass through? Do you need to make an extended lining operation through multiple features? Understanding how far you are going will help you set yourself up for success by making the operation more efficient.
The first thing you need to do is scout the eddies you are planning to hop from and to. Evaluate your starting point and the length of the line you are working with. Most throw bags are between 50 and 70 feet in length and you always want to have a little extra rope past your hands incase the line gets pulled and the rope slips through your hands. A good general rule is about 6 feet of rope.
Next, you want to decide who is holding the line (Line Operator) and who is pushing and catching the raft (Boat Assistant). The person holding the line will be downstream and operating the line as the boat moves through the rapid. This person will need to have a good footing so they don’t get pulled in the river. The person pushing and catching should also make sure that they are carrying any loose equipment downstream to facilitate faster progress. If you have a larger crew of folks this can be assigned to other people not involved in the operation, however in a 2-person boat crew the line operator’s only job is to get the raft through safely while the other person does separate operations.
Then, you want evaluate how many obstacles or brush might snag the line on the shore. If you do identify these spots, it may be a good idea to get on top of them in the case of a rock, or if it is unavoidable brush that might catch the line, simply drag to boat over that area, or have a person assigned to manage the line in that area passing it up and over the obstacle.
Finally, you will need to have some way of attaching the line to the raft. This can be a load releasing hitch, a carabiner and a simple knot, or even a flip line for very short moves past a single feature. If you need some practice with knots the work for this purpose; you can learn more here.
The simplest and most basic lining technique is called walking the dog. When you get pinned and need to exit the raft to do a partial portage of the rapid, one of the easiest techniques can be to attach a flip line to the raft to maintain control of the boat and simply pull it over the offending obstacle. If you flip line is long enough and you need to move the boat into another position downstream you can keep this leash attached to the raft as you walk down the shore and move the boat from small eddy to small eddy.
In longer line scenarios you may find that you have a long segment of eddy to get past or just several fingers of rock that you need to get the boat down past. You can push the boat out into the current, pull on the line, pull the boat into the next eddy, then walk down to the raft. This technique can help expedite some parts of the portage; however, it is not without its inherent risks though.
If the shore has poor footing or there is a long stretch of current to deal with then this can easily pull you off balance and potentially into the river. If you have a long line, you can also end up walking over the line or getting the line tangled in brush if you are not careful with your line management. Walking the dog emphasizes speed, and if you choose to employ this technique you need to be more intensely focused on your footwork and line management.
The leap frog technique is the more classic lining technique that places a higher emphasis on safety over speed to accomplish the lining mission. In this technique, you will have the boat assistant staged at the top of the rapid ready to push the boat into the current. This person will tie the knot and attach the line to the boat while the line operator walks downstream to the end of the rope to find a good spot to set up. When both parties are ready the Boat Assistant will push the boat out while the line operator keeps the boat moving smoothly through the rapid into the next eddy below. The line operator will need to pull in or let out slack as need be to avoid obstacles and strong hydraulic jumps that may flip the raft.
Once the boat has made its way into the final eddy either the Boat Assistant or another person can catch and hold onto the raft while everyone makes their way downstream. At this point the crew can either pack up and continue on rafting or reset for another feature if the rapid is significantly tough and long enough. The advantage to this system is that you can efficiently move downstream in 100-to-140-foot sections of river centered on the line operator. The biggest benefit here as an inflatable boater to understanding this skill is that there are only in extremely rare circumstances rapids that you will not be able to line or portage in some way, where as kayakers can get locked into running bad features due to the portage route being more dangerous than actually running the rapid.
Lining can be just as hazardous if not more hazardous than simply portaging. You are exposing yourself to risks of swims, wraps, rips, all the while having rope floating around the water. Due to this increased hazard, here are a few safety tips to consider:
Clear the area downstream of the line – Make sure no one is standing downstream of the incoming line. To do this make sure anyone standing downstream is farther away from the shore than the line operator.
Always maintain a solid footing on some sort of horn of rock or other highly stable object – Maintaining a good footing also requires that your body position has your weight shifted back away from the river so that you will not become over extended and get drug into the water.
If there are extra people standing around have someone back up the line operator by holding the lapels of their PFD with a good footing. This adds an extra layer of protection to the line operator to prevent them from flying into the water.
Flake the rope out downstream of your body – If you are not familiar with flaking a rope, this is when you toss the rope onto the rock in a manner that will not allow it to easily knot up. Flaking prevents the rope from binding up when you need to let some slack out, but it also keeps the rope from getting wrapped around arms or legs as you are working the raft downstream.
Keep the rope away from your legs and always be aware of where the rope is located in relation to your body.
Always maintain positive control of the line and the boat. Letting a line go can cause you to lose the raft, but it can also put a line into an already dangerous rapid or into the next rapid downstream. This further compounds the whole reason you opted to line in the first place, however it can have the cascading effect of creating a new hazard for other boaters who may have been inclined to runt he rapid.
