Carrick to Calgary

On Saturday night, the Mayor of Calgary of Calgary went on TV to warn all citizens to stay away from all riverbanks in the city, as the Bow and Elbow rivers were about to flood. Of course, to all males in the city, that was an invitation to go and have a look at something exciting, and Simon and I headed off into Bowness Park like an intrepid ITN news crew in a war zone to get some footage... (Paula and Sandy were much more sensible). This is what happened:

The Park was closed to traffic, but we parked nearby and walked down to the lagoon. There were quite a few nutcases who had brought their small kids down in oilskins and welly-boots to see that all the fuss was about.

The lagoon normally looks like this:



now it looked like this:



Normally there is a big stretch of ground on the left of the picture which has a bandstand and picnic tables / huts between the lagoon and the river, but this area was all underwater now and there was no division between the lagoon and the Bow. We had wanted to hire a canoe to go on the lagoon, but we could easily have rowed out on to the river from here...


'This Park is CLOSED'

The river had swollen a lot, and the normal banks were underwater:



The water was brown and filled with debris and bits of trees:



There were new rapids and the breakwaters where we had sat a fortnight ago were deep underwater:


Rapids


Gone

The river was spilling over onto the park along most of the bank and a lot of trees were underwater:





The little train which runs around the park was also out of service:



Many of the picnic huts and biffies were also flooded:


Then


Now


I think I can hang on until I go home...

While there were lots of people around the lagoon, the outer parts of the park were hard to reach as the water was quite deep in places and it was hard to navigate as most of the normal paths were underwater. It was only possible to get around by walking on the raised edges of the paths:





There were very few people around in the most flooded parts of the park, and it was a bit spooky being so close to the river with no-one else around.


Our roving ITN camera-man

The river was coming over most rapidly in the upper, northern reaches of the park close to the Stoney Trail bridge, and Simon eventually went ahead of me, rolling up his trousers to get as far into the flooded areas as he could:



It was lovely weather for ducks, of course, and we did spot one swimming with the current like he had an outboard engine attached. But when he turned around against the current, he had a harder time...



We eventually turned round after about an hour of taking stills and video, and escaped with our lives. Now if I can just figure out how to put video on the blog...

Reporting for ITN,

J (& cameraman Simon White)