Reading and Understanding the River
Learn how to judge the difficulty of rivers and rapids, understand features, read from your kayak and structure your scouting.
A great day on the river involves planning and choosing the right river for your team, picking good lines down rapids, understanding different river features and the impact they can have on our kayak, safe read and run techniques and when to get out and scout. Our new reading the river course gives you all these skills and more.
What are the differences between grade 3 and 4 sections? What does the water do in a stopper? How do we pick a line down a rapid? These and many other principals, skills and techniques are explained in detail. As with all our courses, ask any questions in the comments boxes.
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Course Modules
Course Introduction
- Overview of the Course
- Safety Lesson
Features
- Introduction to Features
- Stoppers
- Waves
- Rocks
- Strainers, undercuts and syphons
Judging Difficulty
- Considerations
- The Grading System
- Grades 1-3
- Grades 4-6
- Resources
Reading From The Kayak
- Strategies
- Using Eddies
- When to Scout
- Recognising Features (coming soon)
Scouting Rapids
- Scouting Introduction
- WORMS - Water
- WORMS - Obstacles
- WORMS - Route
- WORMS - Markers
- WORMS - Safety
- Heuristics
- Visualisation
- Bringing it All Together
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Anja, Norway
Great videos that really shows all the aspects of different strokes and skills. would recommend it for both novice kayakers as well as experienced paddlers. Lots of useful tips for me as a coach too.
Kevin, UK
This course is brilliant - very well put together with high definition footage and easy to understand descriptions of techniques. I have used much of the course material on the water and in theory and it is faultless. I just keep going over and over and it never gets old. Great job guys - I thoroughly recommend to beginner, intermediate and enthusiasts alike - great stuff
Lee, USA
Videos are brilliantly shot, simple to follow. Love the use of multiple angles, really helps to understand the full picture of a movement. Great resource, amazing!
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