Elora Gorge Tubing

    Ontario must be proud of the recent commercialization of Elora Gorge tubing, since I see it on Ontario ads they show before movies start nowadays.  Elora Gorge itself is fantastic.  It's a strange world.  Very close to Guelph the City I live in, but at the same time it's rather alien with it's striking scenery.  It's a canyon cut deeply into the local limestone geology which the beginnings of the Grand River flowing through it, on it's way to Lake Erie.  It's walls are almost vertical and you do feel insignificant when you are standing inside the gorge.  There's many caves to explore lining the walls of the gorge.  The water is quite shallow most times of the year, and the flow through the gorge is mainly controlled by the Grand River Conservation Area Shand Dam just upstream of it.
     You can hike along it's perimeter making for a decent day hike, camp at the Elora Gorge Conservation Area, or go tubing through the gorge along the Grand River, which also flows through the conservation area.  I found out today that the commercialization of the tubing part has kinda ruined something that was pretty cool I had experienced in the past. 
     My first encounter with Elora Gorge was 20 years ago.  I myself was in University in Waterloo about a 40 minute drive away, and my friend was going to University of Guelph and invited me out for the weekend as he wanted to go to Elora Gorge.  I had never heard of it before, much less know where it was.  Elora is a 15 minute drive from Guelph.  We got there mid morning and had to go to a local truck tire mounting shop.  We 'purchased' an inflated inner tube for around 20 bucks and I think they gave us something like $10 back at the end of the day of returned the tube to them.   You walked down to the gorge and got to the water through a crack in the cliffs.  From there, you floated down the river alternating between short stretches of class 2-3 rapids and lazy river type of flow where you slowly drift downstream.  To be honest, the tubing is a little overrated, it's fun, something to do, but not super amazing.  Depending on the time of year flow can be a little low and you scraped your butt on some spots.  There is one place where the rapids are pretty gnarly, and you could get out and walk back up past them to run them another time.  Noone wore helmets or PFDs.  Oh and the best part - people brought beer with them down the river.  Some people made their own mini inner tub/cooler just for the beer.  Yeah, pretty awesome.  And noone from the Conservation area gave a crap what you did in the gorge.  The whole affair took an hour or so.   Then you got out and walked back to town carrying the tube, or rolling it along the ground.

     But times have changed, and not for the better, in my opinion.  Today I wanted to go tubing.  It was 27 degrees out.  So me and a couple friends headed out to Elora and got to the Conservation Area.  I've read a bit online how you now are supposed to register with the conservation area to go tubing.  Well, we got to the area at about 2pm and the sign read 'Tubing Equipment Sold Out'.  After researching online, it is common for the tubing equipment to be gone by 10:30 and tough titties, they have no more, you can't go tubing.  And by equipment, they mean you are required to sign a waiver, wear a helmet and a PFD.  And now they also require you to pay for Conservation Area day pass fees, and on top of that, pay for tubing registration fees which they give you a wristband for proof of purchase.  This whole deal now costs $5.50 for entrance fees, $3.00 for tubing fee, plus it's a $25 rental for the tube, helmet and pfd, if you don't own these things.  That amounts to $37.86 after tax each person, way expensive. Just a huge money grab because the conservation area happens to be situated along a good stretch of the gorge to do some tubing. And sorry, it's an absolutely blatant ripoff, period.  It's not worth that much.  There's no arguing about that.  The maintenance of the gorge itself is zilch other than the ridiculous Disneyland style infrastructure they have created a massive galvanized staircase for access to the water which wasn't needed before. The equipment is very cheap.  I'm not sure a helmet is necessary, but a PFD is a good idea to have. I am not sure if it is legal to control access to the waterway and tell you what equipment you need to wear due to the of the Navigable Waterways Act.  And there's also the commercialization and promotion of it.  This means there's huge crowds of people, and people that shouldn't be on the river in the first place are participating in it like kids that are too young, people that can't swim, etc.  It's for teenagers and young adults mainly who have decent swimming skills.  That's really the only kind of person who used to use it.
     So, today I was glad that they had no more equipment left.  Instead, we just walked up the Irvine River.  The Grand River and the Irvine Creek merge at Elora, but both have canyons.  Up that way, there were no people at all.  It was nice and peaceful, we found a slightly deeper swimming hole area to chill out in the water and just hang out, enjoying the beautiful scenery.  And it didn't cost anything.  Sad to say it, but Elora is another place that commercialization and development has ruined a previously cool activity.