What We Forgot: How to Recover After Leaving River Gear Behind

A couple of years ago, my husband and I planned a weekend overnight rafting trip with a bunch of our friends. The trip had two rafts and a bunch of duckies and paddleboards, so our raft was a major part of the plan to haul gear down the river.

We had arrived at the put-in and were inflating boats and rigging loads, when we made a horrible discovery: We’d forgotten the blades for our oars.

Raft with oar and oar blade — *An oar blade features prominently in this shot from a different Gunnison trip*

Without blades, it’s impossible to row a raft. Our friend with the other raft only had one spare oar, and we’d forgotten all three of our blades.

I did the only thing we could have done: I drove back out to the highway to get cell service and started calling nearby outfitters. Fortunately, we were on a pretty accessible stretch of river (the Gunnison through Escalante-Dominguez in western Colorado) and a nearby outfitter, Rimrock Adventures in Fruita, was open.

The first thing the manager asked me when I walked in was where my oar shafts were—and I had to admit that I’d left them at the put-in in my haste to get to the outfitter. Since our oars (Sawyer Polecats) were a different brand from the ones they rented out (Carlisle), we weren’t sure if the blades would fit in our shafts.

To make matters worse, my husband and I use oar locks on our raft frame, while the outfitter only had pinned oars left. We eventually worked out that I could rent oars (with blades) and a set of oar towers that would fit in my frame.

Raft rowed with oars using oarlocks — *Our setup, with oarlocks*

Two hours after I’d set off, I arrived back at the put-in, where it turned out that Carlisle blades will indeed fit in Sawyer shafts. We hadn’t needed the rented oar towers after all. We were eventually able to have a great trip with our friends.

When Checking the River Gear List Isn’t Enough

When we got home, I was thinking about the trip and what we could have done differently to avoid all the drama and driving around we’d done. Forgetting gear is a major bummer, and I wondered: How did this happen? We’d been checking our list obsessively while packing, but still managed to forget a vital piece of gear.

I fished out the list and saw that we’d checked off oars on our list several times. However, there was no separate line item for blades. When we made our list, we assumed we’d have the blades and oars attached at all times, but we’d taken the blades off to fit the oars in the back of the truck.

With this debacle fresh in my mind, here are a few pointers that might save you from a left-behind gear disaster.

1. List individual river gear components separately

This leads to my main tip for not forgetting important gear: when making your list, list each individual component of gear separately. For example, even though our bow line is usually tied to our boat, my master list includes the bow line and boat as separate items, in case we ever take the bow line off to dry it out or to clean the boat.

There are a lot of sample river gear lists that you can use to start yours off, and ours is available here.

2. Adapt your gear list for different types of river trips

The most important thing about your list, though, is to make sure it is comprehensive and that it can easily be adapted for different types of trips. You want to have separate sections for each activity you might do on a trip.

Car camping before river trip launch — *If you’re car camping before the river trip launches, you’ll need to pack gear accordingly*

For example, my main list has a section for rafting that applies whether we’re day-tripping or overnighting, and a separate section for camping that applies for car camping and river overnights. Each activity has its own collection of gear, so it’s easy to mark off sections that don’t apply to the particular trip we’re planning.

Main-River-Gear-List Download

3. Have a back-up plan for essential (but forgotten) gear

No matter how comprehensive your list, though, if you do enough trips you’ll eventually forget something important. That’s where the ability to salvage a trip comes in.

It’s a good idea to have the name and number of the nearest outfitter to the put-in on hand, and know how far you’ll need to drive to get there, so you can make informed decisions about whether to send someone out for gear or proceed without it.

If you’re already running a shuttle and the outfitter is nearby, you might as well stop in and grab that extra carabiner clip for someone’s water bottle. On the other hand, if it’s going to be a mile hike up to the canyon rim and then you’ll have to hitchhike back to the highway because the shuttle company has already taken your vehicles, you’d better be missing an absolutely crucial piece of gear to make that trek worthwhile.

If it’s required for your permit, essential safety gear, or necessary to move the boat around, you may as well just resign yourself to launching several hours after you’d planned.

Portable outdoor toilet groover for river trip — *Forgot the groover? You’ll need to come up with a Plan B before you launch*

4. Have cash on hand

In addition to having a sense of where the nearest outfitter is, it’s a good idea to have a little bit of cash on hand. You can use it to thank the person you end up hitching a ride from, to tip the guy at the outfitter who jury-rigs a replacement for your forgotten oar blades, or to buy lunch for the fellow boater who helped you out. We keep about $40 in with our repair kit.

Stay Nimble When Your Gear List Fails

Forgetting gear is inevitable, but you can minimize the likelihood of forgetting something super important by making and using a comprehensive list.

Then, when you realize that despite all your efforts you’ve forgotten something, you can help salvage the situation by preparing beforehand. Knowing the nearest outfitter, having a bit of cash on hand, and thinking things through before rushing off will help ensure you can get your trip back on track.