Bow River Float 01

Nearly four and a half decades have passed since I last rode an inflatable watercraft down the Bow River in Calgary, Alberta. I think it was the summer I was eleven years old. I used a tire tube I, erm, borrowed from behind a tire shop in Bowness. Hey, the price was right!

I nearly made it from Bowness Park to Prince’s Island Park in downtown Calgary before the CFD (Calgary Fire Department) boat fished me out of the water and gave me waggy finger. I had no life jacket, no paddle, no safety rope, no whistle and apparently no common sense. I sure got an earful. It was still totally worth it.

A previous attempt was more frustrating. I had one of those inflatable pool rafts that I thought would be good for going down the river. Nope, it had a slow leak. I pumped it up at home and it was half flat by the time we reached Bowness Park. I was not joining my friends on that trip. Still I have lots of good memories around the Bow River, so I was excited to share them with my daughter.

Getting to float the Bow River together with my kid and having an opportunity to share one of the better parts of my own childhood with her is going to be one of my best memories of this summer, for sure.

Credit for organizing the outing goes to Jen E. at right above. I joined a local Facebook group run by her to help locals socialize. She had a post asking who else was into SUP so I put up my paddle, er, hand and went yoooooooooooo. Next thing I knew she had the kidlet and I signed up to float the North Bow from Bowness Park to Prince’s Island that weekend. I am very grateful to have met her and for her to have gotten Ash and I going on this. It means a lot to me.

There were twelve of us on the float, including me. I am behind the camera and don’t appear in the shots, which is how I like it. In case you didn’t look closely at the above photos and missed the standout member of our crew, let me put him front and center.

His name is Michael and yes, he’s flamboyent, but he is one of those people who doesn’t take himself seriously and can get everyone else around him to chillax and have fun as well. He’s great to have at a function even thought the first impression can be a bit, well, OMG.

Ash and I looked at each other and went, “George of the Jungle?” George/Michael (see what I did there?) is from Edmonton and he was touring waterways in Southern Alberta. I do hope I bump into him again for a future outing as he is a hella nice guy and a blast to float a river with.

Everyone met up at Calgary Parking Authority (CPA) Lot 59 just off Memorial Drive, which is across from Prince’s Island Park. We left Ashlyn’s car there and rolled on to Bowness Park, arriving just after 9:30 am before the crowd arrived in earnest. We were the first to get there and the Ubers carrying the rest showed up about twenty minutes later. I think we were all inflated and ready to go by about 11:00 am. The delay was from the poor peeps who hand pumped their boards instead of using motorized pumps. Save Hell for after you die, folks. We grabbed our group shot once everyone had boards ready to go and hit the river.

Groups would sort of form to chat and then drift apart during the several hours we were on the river. I think it took us about two and a half hours to make float from Bowness Park to Prince’s Island Park. That’s about 15.6 km according to my camera’s built-in GPS.

Most of the float was calm and I would say fairly sedate. We would look for the occasional barely submerged rock or shallow spot, but you really just had to watch those ahead of you and follow where they were going to avoid the bad patches.

There were two main hazards to worry about. Choppy water felt a bit dodgy to me at first as it was my first time dealing with it on a paddle board. I kept a death grip on my paddle each time we hit some. The videos don’t show the worst of it as I had to use my paddle to keep pointed straight ahead.

It’s a bit of a challenge to try and steer a paddle board and do hand held video at the same time, I’ll tell you that. Maybe I’ll come up with something better for next year. The other issue was bridges..

Smacking into a bridge pillar support while moving at a good clip is both dangerous and painful (as I discovered at age eleven – tubes are hard to steer). It can damage a well built-watercraft and deflate a cheap inflatable one. Not something you want to have happen to you. It’s important to center yourself before going under a bridge. I was stressed over this on this first outing.

The Bowness Trestle at lower left is somewhat notorious for killing off young males in Bowness. I had some close calls there as well. Anyhow, that’s how it looks from below when there is no train coming at you.

It felt like we arrived at Downtown Calgary way too soon and we knew once it drifted into sight that the ride was coming to an end within half an hour. Once the Peace Bridge (where Ashlyn is ahead of me) appears, your ten minutes away from disembarking the river.

Disembarking itself at Harry’s Hand Launch was a bit scary. The river is racing a long at a good clip at the edge and it is deeper than one would like with large rocks. My craft turned sideways as I was approaching the shore and I could not straighten it out. I was worried my tail fin would catch a rock and flip me, but it didn’t. I think it was close.

At that point it was just a case of hoofing my board from the launch across the Bow River Memorial Pathway Bridge to where Ashlyn’s car was parked (green X marks the spot. I measured the distance and the yellow track shows it to be just about 0.3 km. It’s not far unless you’re carrying a heavy paddle board under one arm and a cooler half filled with drinks under the other. Ooooooof. That was a moment when I regretted my tendancy to overdo everything.

Several pauses later, we made it to the CPA 59 lot and deflated our boards. Jennifer, Ash, and myself headed to Bowness Park to pick up my car and then head out for a burger. Oh my goodness was Bowness Park nuts by around 3:00 in the afternoon. There were literally cars jousting over the occasional empty parking spot and I was treated to the amusing spectacle of two cars trying to wedge into the space I vacated at the same time.

It was a good afternoon of meeting new people and making great memories. I need more days like this in my life. If there is one thing I could change, it would be having my wife along as well. I am hoping to make this run again next year, but with both her and the kid. That would be perfect.

Images courtesy of my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra smart phone and my OM System (formerly Olympus) Tough TG-7 point and shoot camera. The videos are from the TG-7 and I am not thrilled with them.