Where have all the whitewater canoes gone?

I did a couple of trips on Saturday up in NH with a local club. Saturday morning on the Sugar River - 21 boats, 20 kayaks and one canoe (me). Saturday afternoon on Croyden Brook - 9 boats, 8 kayaks and one canoe (me). The sad thing is it is not unusual for me to be the only open boat in a group of kayakers. The kayakers seem fine with it, and I am pretty careful about what I run - I don't want to be the guy who swims all the time. Don't get me wrong, there is a small but dedicated group of solo open boaters around - lot of them are slalom racers, a lot paddling Millbrook boats, and a lot are better paddlers than me. It's a real treat when I get out with them, but schedules don't always align.

I guess we all know what happened to the solo whitewater canoes - they retired and got replaced by kayakers. Its a shame. The best way to learn whitewater paddling is in a solo boat where you have to be your own bow and stern paddler. I love paddling tandem with a good solo paddler. My favorite whitewater trip hands-down was a tandem run on the Dead with my friend Jonathan in his Explorer. (We portaged Upper and Lower Poplar, but that is a story for another time.)

So what do you think - how did you get into whitewater paddling, and what whitewater are you paddling now.



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I went the other way... I started paddling whitewater in high school; first in a 4 person raft and then in kayaks. I ran a High Adventure program for the local Scout council which led to guiding on the Yough and some Spring work on the Cheat in WV. Great runs for an adrenaline-filled youngster but not good for hauling gear and a weekend of paddling would mean daily (at least) shuttles.

These days, I've become sedate. I like solitude and I travel more slowly. I no longer own a Yak or a double blade and I miss neither. I portage anything that looks dicey and that definition changes as I get further from civilization. Don't get me wrong, I still look at class 4 & 5 rapids to find a line and I'm even tempted to try some of them after portaging gear around a small falls or tasty looking rapid but I never do (and not just because I lack float bags and a helmet).

Playing in whitewater taught me to respect the power of moving water and it was fun but, today, I enjoy the slower pace where I can look around instead of being fully focused downriver.

So what do you think - how did you get into whitewater paddling, and what whitewater are you paddling now.

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I have a couple of friends in the area who still do the type of whitewater paddling you are talking about, and i think they have mostly made the switch to playboat style yakking. To be honest, there will be a few people on this site who do what you do, or have done, but I think many of us are tripping focused, and would be out of our element in the stuff you are running. ( I might get flamed a bit for that comment, but I think it is accurate).

I took my white water training with some very accomplished instructors, and I told them that my preference on wilderness trips was to usually portage dodgy looking stuff. The white water training was part of a requirement for the trip leader certification that I needed. They humoured me, and explained that solid white water skills would enhance my tripping abilities, and make me a better all around paddler. This was many years ago, and of course they were correct, and i spent many years afterwards teaching basic white water skills to kids. However, I never got the bug to run whitewater for fun, and in fact, when I'm on a trip and have a few days full of runs, I'm usually glad when that part of the trip is over.

I still enjoy watching videos of other people's escapades though!

My buddy wanted to canoe camp Maine’s St. John river, which includes rapids, so we thought I should learn whitewater. In ‘99 I took beginning whitewater (tandem) with the Canoe Cruisers, and began paddling every weekend with a group of open boaters, informally led by guidebook author Roger Corbett. He’d usually call late Friday night with the greeting, “it’s the time of night when the only calls you get are from perverts or paddlers, and I ain’t no pervert!” Then he’d tell me where the group was paddling in the morning, which usually was two or more hours drive. I paddled with that informal group for a few years, but it kind of fell apart when Corbett died.

Meanwhile, I concluded that whitewater paddling was more about driving than canoeing. I live near the Chesapeake. There’s lots of water around, but whitewater is rare. I began locally paddling, most often in a sea kayak. If we had rain that brought up the local Patapsco or Gunpowder, I’d rack my Dagger Encore and meet up with locals for whitewater runs. One by one, that group thinned. Some moved away. Some dropped out as they aged. Gathering a group for whitewater open boating became difficult, and doing it solo is tough. I sold the Encore a couple years ago.

I often paddled with the Baltimore Canoe Club, now called the Baltimore Canoe and Kayak Club. But, it was like Eric’s experience: all kayakers with me in the open boat.

Flatwater paddling, I like going solo. Often, no shuttle required, and I’m less likely to need a team to retrieve gear or unpin a boat. I don’t have to drive far. So, the type of whitewater I paddle now is mostly none. I do want to run a short section of CII WW on the Patapsco. I’ve paddled all that local river, with the exception of a stretch revealed after a dam was removed a few years ago, and I’d like to canoe that “new” section. And, after hiking along its banks, one of my kayaker buddies wants me to take her on the South Branch, so I may yet have some ww in me, but I’m largely done with it. Whitewater paddling is magical, but for me, i discovered I’m happy paddling anywhere, and whitewater is not worth the extra effort.

Chip said:

In ‘99 I took beginning whitewater (tandem) with the Canoe Cruisers, and began paddling every weekend with a group of open boaters, informally led by guidebook author Roger Corbett. He’d usually call late Friday night with the greeting, “it’s the time of night when the only calls you get are from perverts or paddlers, and I ain’t no pervert!” Then he’d tell me where the group was paddling in the morning, which usually was two or more hours drive. I paddled with that informal group for a few years, but it kind of fell apart when Corbett died.

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The Canoe Cruiser Association of Washington, DC is still alive and kicking and we have a decent number of open solo canoe whitewater paddlers. Sometimes we even outnumber the kayakers. But I'm the youngest of the regulars -- and I'm 60! There's a few others who paddle with Blue Ridge Voyagers, the other "local" club.

Chip said:

Meanwhile, I concluded that whitewater paddling was more about driving than canoeing. I live near the Chesapeake. There’s lots of water around, but whitewater is rare.

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We live in the same state and yet my story is exactly the opposite. I wanted to paddle more flat water but there isn't any nearby if you are in D.C. or the abutting counties of Md. and Va. Whitewater, however, abounds --the Potomac, most obviously, and so many other rivers and streams in W.Va and PA, that I've barely dipped a paddle into. Take what nature gives you.

I started paddling moving water in canoes in 1960 and have never stopped. Now I am older and less brave. I learned to read water by paddling and rowing rafts. Now I like drift boats. They make many difficult canoe runs much safer. I no longer am interested in difficult whitewater.

eckilson said:

how did you get into whitewater paddling, and what whitewater are you paddling now.

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I got into whitewater by taking a kayak course from Western Mountaineering in San Jose, CA, in 1980, using Tom Johnson Hollowform kayaks, the first rotomolded plastic kayaks. After dumping five times in class 3 Old Scary Rapid on the south fork of the American River on our class's initial river trip, and rolling up only once, I decided I didn't like hanging upside-down underwater in a cramped kayak with a 20% roll. So, I began running Sierra Nevada and Coastal Range rivers in my new Mad River Explorer, both tandem and solo.

For a while when soloing my Explorer, I would use a nine foot double blade Carlisle paddle that weighed about a thousand pounds, because the double blade was the only thing that sort of made sense to me from my kayaking debacle. One day, in an eddy on Cache Creek, Bob Foote told me to put away that double paddle and never use it again because "you can't work close to the boat with it" and because "it's not really canoeing." I didn't quite understand then what he was talking about, but I took his advice and later became a big advocate of all of it.

Then I moved the the northeast in 1982, took whitewater courses from John Berry and Keech LeClair, and began paddling whitewater with the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), eventually becoming a member of several committees and a class 4 trip leader. Erik's father was in the AMC at the time.

In those days, open canoes outnumbered kayaks on whitewater trips about 10:1. Same thing in paddling shops. On big paddling weekends on rivers all over the northeast there would be hundreds of open canoes. I can still picture lines and lines of red ME's rocking-horsing downriver in front of me when I was paddling sweep.

But kayaks started their inexorable takeover sometime in the 80's, led primarily by models from Perception, later joined by Noah and Dagger. By the early 2000's, kayaks were in the majority. They were cheaper, easier to control, more nimble, and drier. Newbies flocked to them, and now those newbies are all middle-aged or elder role (and roll) models for kayaking, who have influenced subsequent generations of newbies. Kayaks now dominate whitewater—and, in most parts of the USA, flat water too.

I haven't paddled whitewater since my late 60's, about 10 years ago. I'm sure I could still be quite proficient in class 2-easy 3 rapids, but I'm not sure I can lift my Whitesell, Encore or ME. I mostly stopped paddling whitewater because my entire peer group of paddlers, which used to number over 100, have all died, moved away, left the sport, or otherwise disappeared. So, I paddle mostly alone now but not in whitewater, which for safety sake has always been a group activity.

alsg said:

We live in the same state and yet my story is exactly the opposite. I wanted to paddle more flat water but there isn't any nearby if you are in D.C. or the abutting counties of Md. and Va. Whitewater, however, abounds --the Potomac, most obviously, and so many other rivers and streams in W.Va and PA, that I've barely dipped a paddle into. Take what nature gives you.

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If you keep ending up on the white water runs, I gotta question how hard you are looking for flat water. There is more flat water on the Potomac than ww. Start at Riley's lock and paddling upstream, there's at least 10 miles of flat water. Put in at Fletchers, its hundreds of miles of flat water to the Bay. These are all pretty wide river sections. I like the stretch around Brunswick / Point of Rocks because the river splits among many islands and gives more of an intimate feel. Paddle the Anacostia, or the Monocacy. Then there are lakes and reservoirs. Rocky Gorge and Tridelphia have many secluded arms that are fun. Seneca Lake. Occoquan Reservoir. There's also lots of pleasant paddling on the Potomac tribs south of DC. Try Mattawoman Creek down by Indian Head.

I exaggerated a bit. No natural lakes at all in Maryland. Still, I paddled Triadelphia Reservoir many times before it closed to repair the dam, and also Rocky Gorge. They bored me after a while compared to the natural lakes of Maine.

I've paddled the flat water down from Fletchers to watch the fireworks and back, also Point of Rocks. Also did some of the tidal Pax. And some of the gorgeous eastern shore rivers including the Pocomoke. But those are a long drive for me. Hitting the whitewater around DC and out to Harper's Ferry and beyond is just too easy from where I live.

I last paddled with the River Touring Section of the Wisconsin Sierra Club maybe 10 years ago. Starting in the early 1980’s, I took several whitewater training courses with them. I didn’t have that much interest in whitewater paddling itself, but wanted to gain experience for my wilderness trips.

When I started paddling with them in the early 1980’s, it was all tandem canoes. The last time I paddled with them 10 years ago, it was all whitewater solo canoes, with the exception of myself and another tandem canoe.

I just checked their website and learned the Sierra Club and the River Touring Section parted ways last year. Sounds as if liability issues and onerous training requirements dissuaded volunteer instructors and trip leaders.

Why not come up here for the 57th annual Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race? Purportedly the largest paddlesports event in New England.



Last year there were ~350 boats, about 300 of them canoes. There are a couple of Class III rapids, although the biggest one is an optional portage for people with timid souls or pretty boats (i.e., not me). At least 100 of those 300 canoes are total noobs, which adds to the entertainment value. There are so many rescue personnel around that nobody gets hurt, swimmers may have to dodge multiple throwbags.

My friends and I mix whitewater canoeing with camping. These kind of trips are easy to find in Maine. We've been paddling every spring and fall since 2000. One guy prefers to kayak, but only when we have an odd number of guys. I have a few weekend trips planned for this April. Seems like an early spring in Maine.

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eckilson said:

Where have all the whitewater canoes gone?​

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Gone with the passage of time; the boomer generation is moving on to other things.

There never were many whitewater canoeists in Washington State when I took it up back in the 80's; mostly kayaks and rafts. I sold my solo whitewater canoe when I moved back to New England over a decade ago and by then my whitewater canoeing buddies weren't doing many runs any more so I didn't take it up again. Instead, I'm enjoying solo sport canoes and functional freestyle.

I have been invited to join up with some younger canoeing friends in Massachusetts for runs on the Deerfield River but the canoes they offer me to paddle are composite Millbrook canoes and I'm too rusty to trust myself with such nice boats.

I got my fist taste of whitewater paddling back in the early 1990's. As Glen said, my father was an active AMC member and once a year we would do a weekend trip on the Androscoggin - 13-Mile Woods one day, Rapids below the Pontook Dam the next. I have a picture of us running the Errol Rips.



The boat is a Mohawk Whitewater 16. It is a beast - flat bottom, weighs a ton, but it is still my go-to river boat.

Back in those days I had 3 small kids, so paddling really wasn't in the cards. It wasn't until 2005 That I was able to start sneaking off for weekend trips. I took the NHAMC Whitewater School in 2005 and never looked back. Here's a picture of me from the whitewater school running Sweet Tooth on the Sugar River - the same rapid that we ran last weekend.



I was in a rented Mohawk XL-13. Another beast, but I didn't know the difference. I missed the line by a mile, but I didn't swim, so all was good.

These days I'm still a class II/easy III paddler. I'd rather be playing in a class II rock garden than running a class III drop. When stuff looks too big I'll walk it and take some pictures, like I did last weekend on the biggest drop on Croyden Brook. The kayakers are just as happy. They would fish out my boat if they had to, but I try not to put them through it.

I used to live by the adage "if you are not swimming you are not trying hard enough". Not so much these days. I no longer feel the need to push it too hard. That doesn't mean I don't swim. I have already had my first swim of the year on the new mill rapid on the Salmon/Jeremy River. It's all good.

goonstroke said:

Last year there were ~350 boats, about 300 of them canoes. There are a couple of Class III rapids, although the biggest one is an optional portage for people with timid souls or pretty boats (i.e., not me). At least 100 of those 300 canoes are total noobs, which adds to the entertainment value. There are so many rescue personnel around that nobody gets hurt, swimmers may have to dodge multiple throwbags.

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There are a few big races around here, but not that big. Westfield Wildwater Race always has a lot of canoes. Apparently they are having some issues with the town this year, and it might get cancelled. That would be a bummer.

Another one is the Scantic Spring Splash - two class II+/III rapids with lots of carnage - Stokers (I'm #44 in pictures 23-26) and Staircase (you can see me swim at 3:32 and finally make it through at 5:02).

Yup - I swim a fair amount ;-)

I might have mentioned before that my "canoe" club is being taken over by kayaks, but only for solo paddlers.
Most tandem paddlers are still in canoes.
This last weekend I was on a club paddle with five other (solo) boats and only two of them were kayaks, so that was encouraging.
I think canoe companies can learn something from kayak companies. You buy a nice kayak and it's fully equipped, ready to take on a trip, right out of the box, so to speak, and it comes with a really comfy seat with backrest. Every time I buy a canoe I have to spend hours and quite a bit of money, getting it ready for it's first trip.

Idiot Savant said:

I think canoe companies can learn something from kayak companies. You buy a nice kayak and it's fully equipped, ready to take on a trip, right out of the box, so to speak, and it comes with a really comfy seat with backrest. Every time I buy a canoe I have to spend hours and quite a bit of money, getting it ready for it's first trip.

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Swift Canoe & Kayak offers special seats and backrests as options. Personally, I don't want more expensive seats and backrests to come standard with a canoe because then I'd have to spend time and waste money removing and replacing them with less expensive traditional seat(s) and selling/donating the seat and backrest(s). I think the way Swift (and others) offer upgraded seat configurations is the way to go.

tketcham said:

Swift Canoe & Kayak offers special seats and backrests as options. Personally, I don't want more expensive seats and backrests to come standard with a canoe because then I'd have to spend time and waste money removing and replacing them with less expensive traditional seat(s) and selling/donating the seat and backrest(s). I think the way Swift (and others) offer upgraded seat configurations is the way to go.

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Good point. Everyone has their own way of outfitting a canoe. But how do you think people would feel if their new car didn't come ready to drive? I have two touring kayaks, a high end recreational kayak, and a cross-over kayak. I haven't had to do a thing to any of them to get ready for a trip. That is really refreshing.

Idiot Savant said:

But how do you think people would feel if their new car didn't come ready to drive?

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I don't know what kind of cars (or canoes) you've been buying but the ones I've purchased have always been ready to drive (or paddle). Maybe not leather Recaro seats but they've always worked well enough.

Not sure what you needed to add to your canoe but being a kayak person you may have a different take on what a workable canoe is. Are you talking about a pack canoe configuration? And if you're talking about tie-downs for tripping and/or kneeling pads or foot braces or spray covers or lining loops, those aren't always needed or wanted by canoeists. Again, those can be added as options when you buy a canoe, and I'm sure most dealers would be able to provide them. I once purchased an expedition tandem canoe with all of those options and the dealer charged very little for the installation. It was worth it to pay a little extra since I was still working full time with a family. Being retired now I just do the work myself and save a little money.