Conwy Falls has been an infamous site for kayakers for many years. The waterfall itself has had a handful of successful descents but upstream of the falls lies a nasty rapid, which in recent years has been the scene of an increasing number of incidents. You see the nasty rapid I talk about lies just around the corner from the take out of the classic Middle Conwy, under Penmachno Bridge. The incidents occur when paddlers miss their intended take-out eddy: if you notice your mistake fast enough you may be able to get yourself to safety, however if not you will most likely end up stuck down here:
The problem with ending up sat on one of those inviting rocks or in the eddy behind it is that you are unable to get out due to the sheer sided river banks. It is at this point that Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue, the fire services or another suitably skilled and equipped rescue team has to be called out. In the last of these incidents, a member of Ogwen Valley MR was seriously injured.
So why is it that so many people end up here? Well, I think there are several factors: if the river is high the takeout eddy is the middle of a fun and bouncy rapid; the large Penmachno bridge that some people presume they will see is actually virtually impossible to see from the river; some people do not walk down to see what the take out looks like from the river so do not recognise it when they get there; and occasionally there will be further circumstances such as a swim in the rapid above. Many guides to the river make note of warning makers (wooden posts at 200m, 100m and one at the take out eddy) – but over time these old posts, which were originally painted bright white, have become faded, dull and hard to spot.
There has been much discussion about what could be done to help reduce the number of incidents and often that discussion ends up focusing on the moral issues of whether something should be done at all. Here at FlowFree, we felt it was time that talk was turned into action. We respect that the river is a natural environment and paddlers should be responsible their own safety, and the safety of those they are paddling with – but we also could not sit back and watch more paddlers getting into trouble on our local river.
Rather than putting up new warning signs, we decided that the best course of action would be the make the existing warning markers brighter and easier to spot. Here’s some photos of our work:
We left the 200m and 100m writing on.
200 metres to go!
100 metres to go!
TAKE OUT!!
Please note that although we hope that this will help people to spot the markers more easily, it is should not replace the need for all groups to be familiar with where the take out is, especially on a river where it is so critical. If you plan to paddle this section of the Conwy, please take the time to walk down to the take out eddy (from Conwy Falls Cafe, walk over Penmachno Bridge and turn left onto a well-worn path then follow the path down to the river and then walk upstream of the yellow mark a bit to familiarise yourself with the view of the eddy from upstream). The section has two harder rapids, usually graded as Vs: immediately after the second of these, there is a grade III+ (fairly chunky in high water) which eases to grade III – stay alert and start looking for the markers and your take out eddy as early as possible in this rapid . If you are not familiar with the river, you may consider hiring one of our local river guides to ease the worry of missing the take out and let you relax and enjoy the river.
We hope this helps to prevent further accidents on this fantastic section of river.
An unfortunate sheep takes a closer look of a syphon under Penmachno Bridge
