We launched at the canoe put in off er road.
We had to line the boats down a side channel to reach the main stem.

Once we headed to big water we ran into trouble almost immediately when the more inexperienced person in the group ran into a sweeper.

This was unexpected based on her previous assertions of experience in Whitewater

As the group leader ( or at least the person in the group who had the most experience ) I have often thought in retrospect, what mistakes were made and how this person ended up in the water clinging to a sweeper.

In retrospect it was my mistake in assuming that the representations that this person had made about her experience was adequate to evaluate her ability to navigate the river in an unfamiliar inflatable kayak

In our experience there are a couple Takeaway lessons :
the first thing was familiarity with a body of water that you have paddled before .. it is possible in the circumstances to overlook the inherent risks through the comfort of familiarity.
The second takeaway is the group dynamic of allowing people who had a strong opinion about their own ability, and yet unproven, to govern how they are going to travel
Typically if I had a inexperience padfler I would follow them closely and monitor their efforts .. providing instructions if appropriate.

In this particular case this individual had asserted previous experience and so I assumed that she had the ability to navigate a otherwise easy float
So familiarity and peer pressure prevented me from understanding that there was a risk factor here that I haven’t given appropriate wait to
Fortunately this event ended well although with great drama as we rescued our inexperience paddling partner from a sweeper in Eagle River in retrospect this could’ve ended so badly in a very dramatic kind of way and this event had been yet another statistic in Alaska is dangerous waters

There is an important lesson here for everyone I think to learn in that managing group dynamics is critical.

And perhaps the other lesson is as the most experienced person in a group, although organized informally, you may be the group leader and not recognize your role .. in that activity and therefore it’s important for people, to before they launch, understand each other’s abilities and who is the de facto leader in a small group.
This is particularly difficult when everyone in the group is acquainted through other circumstances and within which the context of the relationship is different

I think back on this day many times. And how I almost watched a good friend drowned and I ask myself where did this go so terribly wrong and I understand that it was not asserting myself and compounded by not understanding that ieven if you know your river it is still dangerous to an experienced paddler … May not understand that her skill set is not up to the challenge of this river