My son wrapped our Bandit inflatable kayak on a small tree in the middle of a rapid and was washed down the rapid. A kayaker was able to eddy out behind the boat. I threw him a line and he tied it on, but two of us were not able to pull the IK off. We tried several angles and pulling from both sides of the river. Eventually the d-ring that the rope was tied to pulled off. I waded out into the swift current using a stick for balance, but was not able to get to the IK in the current. Finally I jumped across to the boat and held on. I could not budge it and finally got into the eddy behind it balancing on a wobbly rock (that eventually rolled away). I could not pull the boat free, so I decided to unclip the dry bags that were in it, which were catching the current. After I unclipped one of the dry bags, the boat lifted up. I held the boat while I freed the paddle, which was also stuck in the tree under the water. Finally I let go with boat and paddle, swam the rapid, and flipped the boat and reboarded after the rapid. A couple of people brought my boat from the other side of the river. I got water in my dry pants, but was not cold at all during the boat recovery operation. In fact, I was warm afterward from the exertion.

Farther down we got to where some people were picnicking by the creek. The decision was made for the canoeists to stop there and the rest of us went on without them. We were running out of daylight, and went on as fast as we could. We paddled through some round culverts under a road, portaged another road (the culverts were too full to paddle through), which involved crossing some car bodies that had been used to support the road (we should have made a longer portage and avoided the car bodies that had some sharp edges), and finally made it to the Verde. Even at the high flow, there was a long pool to cross behind a dam made from broken concrete, waste bricks, and other waste materials, mixed in with dirt and held together with vegetation. It did not look good, but some paddlers ran the garbage dam successfully. Some of us portaged, which turned out to be a fairly long slog.

Next time I run Beaver Creek, I would probably take out at the first road that we came to, where we went through the culverts. An added benefit would have been that we would not have had to carry or drag the boats up the hill at White Bridge. I was able to reach the canoeists on the phone from White Bridge. They hiked part way to Middle Verde Road (Montezuma’s Castle Highway), and we spotted them from the car as we drove by. We took them to the put-in, transferred gear between vehicles, and then went back for the canoe. We had just enough light to get the canoe loaded before dark. We ate Burger King in the car and were to my house in Central Phoenix by 9:00 pm. We had left my house at 7:45 am.