Pulling the Trigger

The other day I was reminded of my first trip to the Nantahala Cascades in 2001. The water was a little high and a large crowd had gathered at the first drop and was watching the boaters go over the waterfall. I watched my friends make two or three runs and then I decided that I wanted to give it a try. I had brought my gear up to the put-in and borrowed a boat (which I’d never paddled), but was unsure if I had the skills to navigate this section of whitewater. Finally, as it was getting dark, I worked up the nerve to give it a try and yelled to one of my friends to wait for me as he was about to put on for the last run. I’ll never forget his response – “No, Jeremy, you will die”. And then he got in his boat and paddled off. Very rarely are you confronted with such honesty.


Thankfully, stories like this aren’t that common. Very rarely are you told whether or not you’re ready to run a rapid. Most of the time you have to make that decision for yourself. This is one of the great aspects of kayaking, but also the most frustrating. How do you know if you’re ready to pull the trigger when you’ve never run that rapid before? Because no two rapids are identical it’s difficult to even compare one rapid to another. Just because you can navigate one class three rapid successfully, doesn’t necessarily mean you could navigate another one of entirely different character. If you find yourself struggling with indecision about running a rapid try thinking of the who, what, where, when, and why.

Who: Who are you paddling with? Are these people you trust, and do they have good safety/decision making abilities? Or are these people you just met at the put-in or are maybe lesser paddlers than yourself? You will certainly be more relaxed if you have confidence in your fellow paddlers to either show you a good line, or help you out if you blow the line.

What: What are the moves required of me in this rapid? Can you execute the moves required to run the rapid successfully? Are those moves in your wheelhouse? I have run very difficult class five rapids because the moves required were strengths of mine. I have also walked class four rapids because the moves required did not play to my strengths.

Where: Where are you? Are you on an unfamiliar river? Are you near civilization? The risks you might take on a rapid on a roadside run may not be the same risks you should take on a rapid in a remote canyon. This where could also apply to where you are on the actual river. For instance, the last rapid of the Middle Cullasaja is certainly a fun one. It ends in a small, but nice pool. Unfortunately there’s a two-hundred foot waterfall on the other end of that pool. That adds something to the equation. (A similar example might be Corkscrew into Crack in the Rock on the Chattooga.)

When: When is the right time to run this rapid? Do I feel good? Is my energy level high? Do I have butterflies or am I really nervous? Does today seem like the right time or should I wait for another time? In my example above at the Cascades, I was nervous, I was using a borrowed boat, and it was almost dark. It was not the right time - I would have failed the when criteria three times over.

Why: Why do you want to run this rapid? There is only one answer to this question – “It looks fun, I like the challenge, and I feel confident making the moves”. My friends and I often talk about a fun-factor to a rapid. If the rapid doesn’t look fun we won’t run it even if we know we can make the moves. (This is pretty subjective. Sometimes what looks like fun to someone, doesn’t look like fun to another.) You should never run a rapid because everybody else is doing it and you don’t want to lose face. You should never run a rapid to impress a girl (or boy). You should never run a rapid because someone is holding a camera. You should never run a rapid because you don’t feel like walking it. (I have proof from the Transylvania Community Hospital that laziness is not a good reason to run a rapid.)

I’m not saying that you have to answer in the positive to all these questions to run a rapid. Some, such as the what, may be more important than others, for example, the where. Making the decision to run a rapid is a lot like making a decision in any other aspect of life – you take a bunch of imperfect information and try and combine it to make the most well-informed choice.



Lastly, in this day and age of paddling videos, guidebooks, and the internet, chances are you know what rapids you’re going to encounter on a run. Don’t make up your mind about running a rapid beforehand. For instance, everybody knows that Bull Sluice is at the end of section three of the Chattooga. Don’t make up your mind whether to run it or not in the Food Mart parking lot in Clayton. Don’t make up your mind until you get to the rapid. This will allow you to enjoy the rest of the river relatively worry-free instead of worrying all day about one rapid at the end of the run.

In closing, if you’re looking at a rapid and you can’t decide whether to run it or not, don’t – chances are there’s a reason you feel so indecisive, even if you can’t articulate why.

Bad hydraulics are like bad relationships

Have you ever noticed that holes are never placed in a very fortuitous position in a rapid? Very rarely are they situated up against the bank on the opposite side of the river, safely isolated from where you’re trying to navigate and cordoned off with yellow police tape. No, most of the time they’re positioned somewhere in your direct line of travel, transforming a relatively easy line into some sort obstacle course, which by the time you’ve safely completed, leaves you with a feeling of vertigo as you’ve just utilized fourteen strokes to turn eight times in a rapid that’s only twenty yards long - all for the sake of avoiding holes.

It is my contention that of all the hazards one may find on a river, it is a hole which gives the common paddler the greatest concern. In scouting a rapid we might see an undercut, a pin rock, a strainer, a hole, and al-Qaeda on the bank (scary rapid indeed) – yet it is the hole that we will focus on the most. The reason for this is that most paddlers have experience with the unpleasantries of holes, and very little experience with the other aforementioned hazards. We know exactly what will happen if we get stuck in that hole, because it has happened before – we flip, we struggle to roll, we get windowshaded again, we pop the skirt, get recirculated a bit, and end up swimming through the rest of the shallow, crummy rapid while everything inside of our boat becomes flotsam in the froth. It is our brain’s evolutionary duty to remind us of these past experiences, in hopes of persuading us to not make the same life-threatening mistake again. We are therefore victims of past experience.

In this aspect, bad kayaking experiences are similar to bad relationship experiences. Kayak carnage stories share all the same themes of relationship carnage stories – you didn’t see it coming, you were taking it all for granted, not paying attention, couldn’t find the surface, were fighting for your life, and left the encounter with fewer positions than you started with. In both kayaking and relationships, sometimes you just need to pull the skirt and swim for it. The problem is that after a bad experience in a hole or in a relationship we become gun-shy and don’t want to have anything to do with either for a long time. And while we may be able to avoid dating for a while, we certainly can’t avoid holes for any extended length of time, unless we want to give up boating all together.

I could tell you to get back on the horse but that’s a dumb analogy. There’s a reason you just got your lunch handed to you in that hole – it was mean, it was tough, and it didn’t like you. Don’t go back in that same hole right away. Seek out smaller holes in safe areas of the river, preferably with some flat water behind them. Try sidesurfing. Try flipping. Try rolling very slowly and relaxed. Try only paddling on the downstream side. Try to fix your vision on a downstream point. Try leaning forward, engaging the abs and obliques to hold the boat on edge instead of your paddle (you need that to dig your way out).

This last point is something you can practice without a hole. Put the boat on edge and lean all the way forward until your head touches the deck. Without using your paddle slowly sit up. Where does it feel like you have the most control of the edge? Where can you hold the boat on edge without it wobbling? (It’s probably half-way between all the way forward and sitting up straight. This is the position you should be in when in a hole. It’s also a position conducive to shoulder safety.)

Why is it that we feel perfectly comfortable executing a forward stroke but not swimming out of holes? Is it because we practice one but not the other? Probably. Practice swimming out of mild holes. The Devil’s Dip is a popular play spot on the Tuck. On my last ride of the day I’ll always flip and swim intentionally in the hole to practice such things as tucking, “balling up”, holding on to my paddle, and swimming my gear to shore. We are quick to tell beginners the importance of learning to wet-exit and swim in whitewater, yet we often forget to apply that lesson to ourselves.

The bottom line is that if you want to be more comfortable in holes you’ve got to spend more time in them – both in and out of your boat. Yes, this is scary. But it is also extremely rewarding as you come to the realization that the majority of holes (unlike my first girlfriend) aren’t man-eaters and you don’t need to fixate on them or always avoid them.

Part 1 of 2. Next week: How to punch through holes.

The Slow Roll

Rolling is undoubtedly the most difficult skill for the novice kayaker to master – and also the one they invariably want to master the most. Consequently, the roll is the second hard-skill attempted (after the wet-exit) for many beginner boaters. They hop in a kayak, do a couple of wet-exits and then proceed immediately into learning the roll, often with mixed results. Learning to roll is not something that can be rushed, or forced, and it is our opinion that it is much easier to learn to roll if you spend some time (a day or two) learning the other fundamentals and hard skills before attempting it.


People will often say that the most important part of the roll is the hip-snap, or keeping the head down, or arching or sweeping properly. While certainly these are important factors to success they are not the most important factor to success. The determining factor to achieving success in rolling is comfort in the boat, and under water. Rolling is not an aggressive maneuver built off brute-strength – it is a fluid maneuver built off relaxed, slow, and coordinated movements.


So many people though when learning to roll are not completely comfortable hanging upside down in the water and hence, they tense their muscles, they rush their steps, they have difficulty concentrating on more than one process, they do not feel how the boat reacts to their movements – all because they are on some level still nervous about getting out of the boat, running out of oxygen, hitting their head on rocks, etc.

We actually see quite a few intermediate paddlers in our instructional clinics who suffer from this fear and either have not admitted it to themselves are, or as is more often the case, are unaware that this fear is even present. When this fear is present, even if it is buried within the subconscious, it has an adverse effect on rolling because the paddler is not as relaxed as he/she should be. Because they are tense they often pull too aggressively on the paddle, engage both knees against the thigh hooks, don’t come fully out of the tuck, and have a difficult time relaxing their body into the arch/sweep position.

There are various methods to help alleviate this fear and become more comfortable in the inverted, under-water roll position. You can practice wet-exits, try to swim upside down while still in the boat, or just test the possible ranges of motion upside down by stretching forward, backwards, and side-to-side, and then either wet-exiting or having someone give you a bow-rescue. Often when we see someone struggling with a roll and we suspect it is because they are too tense/nervous we will ask them to take their air bags out, fill their boat completely with water, and then put their sprayskirt back on. If you’ve never done this I highly recommend it the next time you’re at the lake or pool. If you do this and feel nervous than to some extent you are probably still anxious about being upside down in the boat which adversely affects your roll.


The interesting thing is that it is far, far easier to roll your boat full of water than it is empty as normal. The roll unfolds much slower which gives you time to relax and focus on one step at a time. Because it is slower you will also be able to self-diagnose the weaker parts of your roll. For example, when you hipsnapped, did your upper body stay in the water, allowing the boat to re-right itself first, or did your upper body come up first? Is your paddle diving into the water by your knees, or is it sweeping across the surface towards the stern of the boat? The advantage to practicing a roll with water in the boat is that you can actually feel the mechanics of the roll and how your body moves in relationship to the boat.


If you’re struggling to learn the back deck roll, off-side roll, or a hand roll, filling the boat with water is also a valuable tool. Relax and feel how the boat slowly responds to your mechanics and body position. Regardless what roll you’re learning, once you’ve played around with a full boat, empty it out again and try a normal roll. I bet it feels much stronger and more confident.

On Fear Management

Let me start out by saying that Laura hates this picture and I thank her for letting me use it in this post. The one thing this picture illustrates really well is that special blend of fear and euphoria that comes with whitewater paddling. Mitigating fear is a skill, and like any other skill it can be learned and managed. No matter your skill level, there are practical tools that will help increase your enjoyment and success in the sport of whitewater kayaking.

Novice paddlers are aided tremendously by exposure to the basics of kayaking in very controlled environments. The skills that usually generate the most anxiety for beginners are flipping and swimming. Once they are practiced in the lake and river they become a lot less anxious about them. Novice kayakers can also address some of their imagined fears about kayaking with a basic understanding of the principals of paddling and knowledge of river hazards and features. Beginners learn quickly that the reality is often a lot less scary then what they once believed.

For Intermediate paddlers one way to reduce fear is by building on small successes. One example of this is to challenge your skills by finding the hardest or most complex route through a rapid that you are already comfortable in. The Falls on the Nantahala are a great example: being able to catch eight eddies through the Falls takes a lot more skill than just paddling through them. This practice of catching eddies through rapids not only builds self confidence but also teaches a critical river running strategy that helps alleviate the stress of running unfamiliar rapids. Breaking down rapids this way and taking it "one move at a time" is one of the best ways to control anxiety while paddling a rapid.

Advanced paddlers often develop personal routines that help them manage anxiety before running difficult drops. My personal mantra is PREP, short for Posture, Rotation, Vision and Positive Mental attitude. This simple acronym is my way of reminding myself of the very basics of paddling and revving the engine so to speak. Reciting my mantra takes just a second but it is key in helping me focus on the here and now and creates a positive mental environment that allows for optimum performance. In the upper levels of paddling, deciding whether or not to run a rapid is less about fear management and more about risk assessment than anything else. Underlying that risk assessment takes experience and knowledge about whitewater factored with the personal skills and limitations of the individual paddler. One more important aspect regarding fear is its affect within a group. It is important to realize that within the confines of a group, fear is contagious. If several members of your paddling group are nervous about a rapid that you are thinking about running, there seems to be a tendency for your personal tension to increase. It also can work the other way around with the group being very confident and the individual paddler feeling pressure to run a rapid he or she would otherwise walk.

Ultimately it takes courage to kayak, but courage is not defined as the absence of fear - it is defined as the ability to act in spite of fear. Acting in spite of fear is an integral part of kayaking and whatever skills you use to deal with it, being able to focus that energy in a positive, productive and fun direction is liberating.

All photos courtesy of Jon Clark

Here is a link to another great article about fear written by Chris Joose, click here.