Sunday ended up being a beautiful day so we decided to do a little kayaking at the old Klondike Dam. The Klondike dam was an old mill dam south of Sioux Falls, North of Canton and east of Harrisburg/Lake Alvin. It used to be a 100 year old dam but was damaged a few years back. 2012 Iowa decided it was cheaper to destroy the dam and replace it with a rock arch rapids. The reason they just didn't tear it down was because of the water levels. There are two wells close by that use the water levels made by the dam. If the dam was removed without rapids or some sort of structure the water level would be too low. Iowa and South Dakota worked together to get this project complete around 2012. With the recent rains a few weeks back it has made the Big Sioux River go up to flood levels. We decided it was a good level to kayak it on 6-29-14 since the river has gone down quite a bit. We have kayaked this section before at about 925 CFS and 1150 CFS. Today we decided to portage on the Iowa side (east bank) since some of the west bank was washed out. It actually worked out a lot better since we were able to paddle up the eddy on the east side about a third of the way up the river. Then we were able to portage on a flat rocky surface the rest of the way which is way easier than the west bank that took about 15 minutes to portage compared to 5 minutes on the Iowa side. We messed around in the eddy practicing edging, rolls, and bracing. We also ran the rapids about four times. Here are some videos that were taken of the day.
The group was made up of Josh Dragstra, Dan Buys, Mitchell Joldersma, Helen Harvey, and Stephan Bruggeman.
Mitchell Joldersma
Stephan Bruggeman
Dan Buys
Josh Dragstra
Mitchell Joldersma
Josh Dragstra
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