How I Nearly Died On A Poorly Planned Kayaking Trip

Kayak camping is something that I inexplicably enjoy. Seriously, five years ago, if someone had told me that I would enjoy stuffing extremely lightweight hiking gear into a long, thin bit of plastic and disappearing into the forest for days at a time, I would have called them a liar and said, sorry but I can literally not picture myself enjoying anything that doesn’t feature a well-stocked cocktail bar. 

Despite that, it is now something that I genuinely enjoy doing a lot. I mean, just look at this. 

 

 

However, as the title of the article implies, things don’t always go according to plan.

Fail To Plan, Plan To Be Blair Witched 

In 2023, three friends and I decided to go on another kayaking trip. We would drive the cars up into a nearby mountain range, put the kayaks in the river, and kayak down the river for three days. We would then be given a lift to pick up the cars, pack them up, and head home. We thought it was a good plan. 

We had enough food and water and had set ourselves nice, achievable targets for how much paddling we needed to do each day. We drove to the spot, carried the boats and our mountain of gear down to the water, packed everything, and then set off. 

 

The first hour of the trip was perfect. Flat water, blue skies, Goannas, Eastern Water Dragons sunning themselves on logs, and ducks with ducklings swimming around. It was the sort of morning that made a 4 am Saturday wake-up worth it.

That's when it started: shallow sections in the river, sections of smooth, slippery, unstable ankle-snapping rocks that were too shallow to paddle through. We'd been in this river before, but we had never been this far upstream, but we had thought there would be enough water. We thought there might be one or two times we needed to get out and carry the kayaks at the beginning of the trip. Still, we were optimistic it would open up into the deep, lovely river we knew and loved in no time. 

We were wrong; we spent hour after hour slogging our way down that river. If we were lucky, we'd get to kayak on our kayaking trip for five, maybe ten minutes at a time before we'd have to get back out and carry/drag our kayaks across the rocks, over islands and down dry waterfalls. Both carrying and dragging were as bad as each other. If we had to drag the kayaks, we'd need to bend double and drag this heavy thing at about knee height in a way that seemed scientifically designed to be horrible for your back. When we reached really dry sections of the "river", we would have to carry the kayaks. The kayaks were so heavy, with three days' worth of food, water, and gear, that it took all four of us to carry a single kayak. 

It was hot, painfully, back-breaking work. 

 

 

We were passing very odd little things in the trees the whole time. Like a mattress lodged in a tree ten metres off the ground, people's clothes and odd little prayer flag-looking things dangling ripped and torn from overhanging branches. And gone too were the fish, the lizards, the birds, everything; the only sign that anything had ever lived in that section of the river was the rotting corpse of some small mammal underneath another set of odd, tattered pieces of cloth. Now, I'm not a spiritual gal, but that seemed like some sort of dark omen to me. 

Everyone tripped and fell multiple times. It was a minor miracle that no one broke an ankle. At one point, we were walking through shin-deep water when my friend in front of me took a step forward and instantly disappeared under the water. She had stepped into a hole in the riverbed that was several metres deep. Luckily, she was okay and reemerged a moment later, looking like a cat that had just been surprised with a bath, murderous and ridiculous. 

At one point, my back was so sore from dragging the kayak that I started standing behind it and pushing it to make it slide through the ankle-deep water. Then, I'd walk up to it, push it again, and repeat the process. After doing this for about ten minutes and having just given the kayak another push forward, I heard a massive crack from overhead. I looked up in time to see a tree branch thicker than my thigh fall from a tree and slam into the water just to the side of my kayak. Some of the smaller branches still attached to it scratched the side of my kayak. If my kayak had been a foot to the left, it would have suddenly become a lot less watertight. If I had been standing beside it and pulling it along, I'd have suddenly become a lot less blood and organ-tight.

At this, I distinctly remember saying, "Oh, good. Now the trees are trying to kill us, too." 

Five minutes later, my friend dragged his kayak under a low-hanging tree, at which point a wolf spider dropped all of its babies onto my friend and his kayak. So he and everything he owned were full of spiders for the rest of the weekend. The trees were definitely trying to kill us. 

In a shocking twist, he unknowingly took a photo of the tree that would cover him in spiders just moments later. 

 

 

It’s basically impossible to see, but the little dark patch in front of the arrow is the spider. 

Our initial plan was to paddle about 20 km on the first day, which should have taken us three to five hours, depending on the pace. Instead, after an entire day, we had only covered 3 km. We only stopped when it got too dark to stay on the river. That night, we all had very odd nightmares and were woken up by nearby crashing around in the bush.  

The Aftermath

I don’t believe in supernatural things, but that trip went so poorly; it was honestly like we were being Blair Witched. We spent the first half of day two dragging the kayaks down the river until we reached a bridge where we could get out. We called a lift to help us get the cars, and we went home after only covering 4.5 km in a day and a half. 

Every single kayak was damaged, from scratches to a broken rudder, to a leak inside a bulkhead. One person, thanks to a rolled ankle, had to go to the physio for months afterwards, and another is now legally classified as a spider habitat.

4 Things That We Should Have Done Differently

Clear and thorough planning, scouting and preparation would have made all the difference. Now we're all fine, but given how hot it was, how remote we were, and how spotty reception was, I honestly think the only thing that came between me telling a funny, quirky story here and a much darker one is luck, and that's not good enough. We need to do better. 

So, let’s look at the four things we did wrong that we should do differently next time so you don’t make the same mistakes as us. 

1. Plan better

We should have planned better, researched better, and talked to more locals who knew the area to get a clearer idea of the conditions we were going to be facing. 

2. Scout The Location 

We should have scouted the location first. We should have gone out, put a boat in the water, and checked out conditions the week before just to double-check that there was water in the river. In fact, we should have done that in a few spots, as only the first three km of the river was perfect, and the rest of the river was a haunted green hell.  

3. Prepare for emergencies

We were really unprepared for what would happen if things went wrong. If that bridge hadn't been there or had simply been another few kilometres downstream, we'd have been in real trouble. We didn't have a plan for that, and we didn't have a sat phone or emergency beacon. We didn’t even have each other’s In Case of Emergency Details. 

4. Inform Others Where You’re Going 

It’s basically outdoor rule number one to always inform someone where you’re going, how long you will be gone, and what route you're taking. However, we assumed we’d be fine like all the times before and skipped important and crucial safety steps. Which would have really come back to bite us if we hadn’t managed to crawl out of that river bed by ourselves.   

A significant percentage of hiking and outdoor activity fatalities and rescues involve really experienced people who get overconfident and skip basic safety steps. So learn from us, and please don’t skip the basic safety stuff. 

What Next? 

Well, that’s about all I have for you today, but if you want to hear first-hand how the Member Jungle system can work for a properly organised outdoor club rather than just my silly friends and me, check out  Customer Story - The Northern Rivers Bushwalkers Club.