Basic River Safety for Whitewater Canoeing

Series Summary

The canoe has been used for thousands of years to explore and trade upon waterways and seas. Though motorboats have, for the most part, replaced the canoe for commercial trade, canoes and kayaks are very popular as recreational water craft. There are still many places that cannot be explored without a small maneuverable canoe. Whitewater cannot be conquered in a motorized watercraft. Traveling by canoe or by kayak can be quieter and more tranquil than a boat with a loud gas or diesel engine which polluted and destroys our natural resources. A canoe or kayak can be used by two or more persons depending on the size of the vessel. It is easy, fun, and sometimes comical to learn canoeing and kayaking, but it is important to learn basic whitewater safety and how to read a river before getting into the water.

In this series of free instructional videos you'll get expert advice on whitewater canoeing from a true professional in the field. Bruce Lessels offers tips on basic river safety, how to organize a canoeing party by size, paddle signals and essential safety gear. You'll learn about the various types of rapids, common features of rivers, how to use certain obstacles to your advantage and how to avoid others, as well as how to exit a canoe. Bruce also gives you tips on swimming in whitewater if you do turn over, and how to rescue a capsized canoeist as well. Don't get caught upstream without these essential canoeing safety tips.

Video Transcript

"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. "