Basic River Safety: Whitewater Canoeing Video

Learn basic whitewater canoeing safety tips and river reading strategies in this free online instructional video series on canoeing and kayaking.

About this Author

Bruce Lessels is president and co-founder of Zoar Outdoor, a full-service outdoor center in western Massachusetts offering whitewater rafting, kayaking, rock climbing, biking, fly fishing, camping and lodging. Bruce has been pursuing his interests in the outdoors for over 30 years and was a member of the US Whitewater Team in the 1980s. Zoar Outdoor was established in 1989 as the first outdoor center on the Deerfield River in Massachusetts. Since 1989, Zoar Outdoor has offered the best in New England white water rafting trips, kayaking clinics, canoeing instruction, rock climbing classes, fly fishing and bike rentals for adventurers of all abilities, from beginners to experts.

Before you go Whitewater Canoing for the first time, you want to know and understand a certain amount about the rivers you are going to go on. Rivers are constantly changing and that is the great thing about them and that is also the potential danger they pose for us. Since their water levels are changing, rocks are moving, trees are falling in, there could be all sorts of different hazards there from one day to the next. As a result, rivers are constantly presenting a different face to a paddler. What you want to do is make sure you go with people who know the river well the first couple of times, who know paddling well and who have developed a good sense of river judgment. That river sense or river judgment is something you develop over a long period of time from running lots of different rivers, from seeing rivers change, from being involved in hopefully minor incidents on rivers and understanding how the power of the river is so strong, it can often be insidious, hard to notice, hard to understand, hard to comprehend and sometimes it exerts itself in ways that it is really hard to forecast ahead of time. So for instance a boat pinned on a rock may be pinned in very calm current and yet it might have a ton or more of pressure on it and be very difficult to pull off. So make sure you go with more experienced people at first until you develop your own sense of river judgment and then you can go out on your own and really get to know the rivers you are on and enjoy them and also respect them.

Basic River Safety: Whitewater Canoeing Video

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