How to Choose a Rock for Freestyle Kayaking

Video Transcript

"After you've mastered your eddy turns, peel outs, and fairies, you can start using rocks in the river to really get a big benefit out of your playing. Class 2 rapids are a great spot to start with that. If you look at the rock behind me here, it has a nice gentle upstream face to it, a nice low angle. Those are the best rocks to start on because you can paddle up nice and high on them, and either just slide off to the side or try and rock spin on them, but they're nice and solid. What you're looking for with a good rock is that it has pillar of water that forms on the upstream side. After the current comes in, it pillars up on this upstream side and then goes around each side. If you don't see that pillar, you want to be careful with those rocks. Another rock that we want to look at is a rock that has a much steeper upstream face. A rock with a really steep upstream face is going to be good to splat vertically against, but it's going to be much harder to cartwheels on. Good for a lot of just harder splat moves, harder to pull your bow up, so you have to be a more aggressive paddlers to use a rock with a steep face. Then one rock that we want to really avoid are the undercut rocks, which is just upstream of us here. Those rocks will have kind of a cave look to them. They won't have that pillar of water on the upstream side, and the current and the eddy behind the rock will tend to bubble up more and just look funky and weird. You want to avoid those."