Reading River Features for Whitewater Canoeing: Part 2

Video Transcript

"Another common feature on a river is a hole, the hole across the way here is formed by the river running over the rock that is just visible under water and the water runs over that rock and then reverses on itself and forms that white section. That white section is what puts the white in white water. The holes can be harmless; the one across the way from us is pretty harmless. It’s small, it doesn’t have a powerful backwash. Um, holes can also get big and they can be kind of, can have powerful backwashes. So depending on what kind of rapid you’re on, what kind of hole you’re dealing with, they can either be friendly features or they can be features to be concerned about and to steer clear of. Holes are also formed below low-head dams, dams that are man-made, that form, that can form very serious holes and those holes are very regular and very consistently coming back upstream and toward you. Another feature on a rapid that you want to be concerned about a hazard is a tree down or a strainer and there’s a strainer across the river here, a log that’s fallen into the river and it’s just under the water. If you swim toward that log, that log can trap you because a strainer is just like a, a spaghetti strainer, it will trap solid objects but allow the water to go through and they can be a major hazard. With strainers, the, the main strategy is to avoid them, you don’t go anywhere near them. So you want to identify them and get away from them. A final feature on the river is a pillow and a pillow is formed by a rock, this rock has a little bit of a pillow upstream of it. A pillow is where the water comes down and tries to hit the rock, and then rebounds upstream. Um, pillows can keep you from hitting the rock, they can sort of soften rocks for you and they can also be features that reject you, kind of keep you away the rock on one side or the other. So those are the basic river features, get to know them, get to know what they look like and identify them on rapids so you can run the rapids with grace and finesse. "