Standing Waves

As a canoeist, I was fascinated by the standing waves in the Whirlpool Rapids.  These are waves that develop in a river even when there are no rocks, and the water is very deep as it is here.  How many rivers do you know that are 40-50 feet deep?  The Whirlpool Rapids are Class 6 rapids, on a scale of 1-6, considered unrunnable.

The waves develop where the river channel is narrow enough that the water gets forced to speed up, and a wave, almost like a vibration in the water, gets set up.  You can see the waves developing at the start of the rapids on the left hand of this picture.

In this picture a little further down the channel, you can easily see three standing waves.  You may not be able to judge the scale easily, but the difference between the crest and the trough with these waves was up to 15 or 20 feet.  Here are a series of pictures I took just standing still and looking straight out at the river, all in less than two minutes.

Experienced whitewater canoeists I know can comfortably handle a Class 2 rapids, and will occasionally run a Class 3 if there are no dangerous rocks or logs.  But I've never heard of anyone trying higher levels without drowning!  The problem is not the crest of the wave, but the trough.  You rise up over the crest in your canoe, kayak or raft, and plunge down into the trough.  If it's too deep, you just keep on plunging!  There's also no recovery point here.  Kayakers like to play in Class 2 and 3 rapids for training, but they might have 100 yards of rapids, and then wash out into a calm pool of water.  Here you'd be likely to wash out into Lake Ontario, 10 miles downstream!

As you can tell, I was really impressed by the White Water Walk right down beside the river!