It may be called the Sheep, but it’s far from sheepish.
Okotoks Fire Chief Ken Thevenot said users of the Sheep River, which flows through Okotoks, shouldn’t be swept off their feet with thoughts of it being a soft, gentle float down the stream.
Just a casual glance of the Sheep River, from across from the Mountainview greenspace before going on the S-curve on Secondary Highway 549, there is a log sticking out of the water as well as overhanging branches and rapids that would be harder to interpret than The Brothers Karamazov.
“We’ve had a couple of reports concerning trees that have fallen creating some hazards in this area,” Thevenot said while standing on the Sheep River bank. “I imagine it’s throughout this whole area where people like tube down.”
The location is one of the measuring points that Thevenot uses to determine during heavy rainfall or during high-stream advisories.
Thevenot points to a log sticking out of the water in a small channel. It’s something to be avoided — even if it means getting off the tube or the dinghy to do so.
“It’s like when you are riding or dirt-biking – you have to be able to read where you want to go,” Thevenot said. “Unless you stop at a high point there (west of the log), get out of the raft and walk it down, you are going to drive right into that.”
One of the issues is the log may be attached to a whole lot more underneath the water.
Trees, branches, debris underneath the surface of the water — a strainer — can be deadly.
Approximately five years ago just east of the Laurie Boyd Bridge the fire department had to respond to a man who was pinned again a submerged tree.
“There was a guy with his kid on a raft and fortunately he was able to throw his kid to the side,” Thevenot said. “The man gets caught in a strainer. Every time we try to pull him in, he gets pulled under because he was caught up in this tree.
“By the time we pulled him out, the force was so great it had pulled his shorts right off him.
“People don’t think it’s forceful in here but Mother Nature… There’s a lot of force down there.”
Just east of the Mountainview greenspace, as the as the river starts to bend, there’s a small speedy channel with trees hanging over like something out of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
“You see along the embankment where it is eroded and the tree starts to fall over?”
“That’s where the water is being driven into, and that can create a real problem,” Thevenot said.
The overhanging branches, referred to as sweepers, can knock an individual off their raft, tube or others causing a dangerous situation in fast waters.
Thevenot added the Sheep River is chameleon-like, it is forever changing.
The fire department does have a rescue-boat that can get up the river quickly. However, it’s a valuable piece of equipment the department would much rather use in practice than for the real thing.
“The reality is you don’t have much time,” he said. “Things happen in seconds and the outcome usually isn’t great.”
Adding to the frustration is it’s rare when someone going down the Sheep is wearing a lifejacket.
Anyone with any questions concerning going down the river can call Thevenot at the Okotoks Fire Station.
“If I don’t know the answer I will find it out for them,” he said. “Our call volumes are down and I want to keep it like that. I don’t want to come to any incidences on the river.”
