Stuart Reeve posted on November 02, 2009 04:46
The Dart Loop is often one of the first white water rivers that an intermediate paddler will do and is quite often used by paddlers of all levels at the beginning of the white water season to dust out the old cob webs.
Starting at New Bridge you will come across such rapids as the Washing Machine, Triple Steps and Lover’s Leap amongst the multitude of wave trains before you finally exit by Holne Bridge.
There is enough on the Dart Loop to keep all levels entertained though Croydon Active Paddlers has experienced one or two epics on the loop at higher water levels. See below for a write up about one of the epic days.
“Everything looked like it would be washed out so the only logical stop was to head for the Dart loop. All boaters in the area seemed to have had the same idea. Apparently the light rain we had heard over night had resulted in three inches of rain falling on Dartmoor in an hour during the night. The loop was off the scale. Big, bouncy fun was what we were expecting.
The first play wave, normally a modest 15 foot wide was now a monster 50 foot wide. Loads of boaters were queuing up for rare treat surfing a huge river wave. We had a quick ride then carried on down. Everything was big and racing and bank to bank through the trees. We turned a corner to be confronted by a tree which covered the middle third of the river making negotiating it very tricky. The two thirds either side of this section had a natural fence formed by the trees and we were effectively floating on what would normally have been the path on river left of the river.
Darren decided to ferry across the river through a gap in the trees to a get a better look at the tree blocking our way on river right. He then signalled for the both of us to come over to him. Stuart ferried across, missed the gap in the trees he needed to get through, hit a tree, capsized, rolled up, hit another tree capsized and rolled up. I’m watching all of this with my eyes on stalks as he is getting closer and closer to the tree blocking the river. Too late !! SMACK !!
Stuart hit the fallen tree dead centre flipping him over and pinning him underneath it !!! My mind was now racing imagining the worst. A small island was at one end of the tree. I see Darren racing off in his boat I manage to get to the island what seemed like ages after. Another paddler is stranded on it and he tells me that Stu swam and his boat went after him but he managed to lob his paddle. I pick up the paddle and start walking down the bank.
Eventually a bedraggled Stuart comes walking back up towards me. He is alive and all in one piece thank god. The adventure hadn’t ended there. Darren had chased after Stuart, got him on the front of his boat, but eventually had to tell him to ‘GET OFF!!’ before he bulldozed him into a tree. Stuart ended up getting a foot caught in the fork of a branch and nearly got pinned again. Fortunately some nifty foot work with his other foot got him out of trouble again and he finally dragged himself onto the bank.
Darren then had an epic rescuing the boat, finally pulling it out a mile after Holne Bridge. I caught up with him at the Dart Country Park looking totally knackered having chased the boat for the best part of an hour and then having to drag two boats along a narrow path through thick woods for two kms. So all in all one, of the more eventful weekends. Fortunately everyone came back in piece. No one got into serious trouble that day, but they so easily could have done. All food for thought.”