Video: How to Carry a Canoe Solo

White water canoes can weigh between 40 and 80 pounds (or more if wet), so if you're carrying a canoe by yourself it's important to make sure you protect your back and lift from your legs. Learn how to carry a white water canoe solo in this free online instructional video.

Video Transcript

So if you’re going to be paddling solo, you’re obviously going to have to learn how to carry your boat by yourself and while these boats are fairly light as they go, they do weight between about forty and eighty pounds and so it can be a bit of a task to carry them. So you want to make sure that you carry them in a way that protects your back and uses your legs and stronger muscles of your body as much as possible. A good way to do that is to turn the boat up on its ends like this, kind of rest it on your knees or thighs, you can actually pull it up a little bit like this, now just kind of use the weight of your body to lean back against it. Then if you reach across to the far gunnels and in one motion kind of throw your hips forward and throw the gunnel up on your shoulder and you have a pretty comfortable way to carry the boat. Some people actually even put pads in their lifejackets on the shoulders in order to make it easier and more comfortable to carry a boat on their shoulders for long periods of time, but this method works pretty well for a long way, and it’s probably the easiest way to carry a solo boat. You can also, if you want, put it all the way up on your head and often these boats rest pretty well on your head if you put your head on top of the pedestal because that’s about the best balance point of the boat and you can just walk that way.

How to Carry a Canoe Solo

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