AMC Outdoors, March 2000

It was 20 years ago that a promising 18-year-old whitewater canoeist launched into Canada's Ottawa River on a day when its water level ran as high as local outfitters had ever seen it. That young man was feeling, he admits now, "incredibly cocky," and decided to run a big rapid without scouting it first — violating a cardinal rule of whitewater.

"I lost my way and went straight over this 15-foot waterfall," he recalls. At the base, the rapid's powerful hydraulics pinned him against the river bottom. Companions on shore began counting the seconds, nearing a full minute without any sign of the river giving him up. "I spent a lot of time underwater and had some serious doubts about whether I was going to come up," he says. When at last the rapid spat him out, "I sat on the shore for an hour and just shook."

The cautionary tale takes on added meaning given the identity of its teller: Bruce Lessels, a former whitewater world champion in C-1 (one-person closed canoe) and member of the U.S. Whitewater Team from 1984 to 1988. He's also author of several whitewater guides, including the AMC's Whitewater Handbook and The Classic Northeastern Whitewater Guide.

Lessels is certainly not the only experienced whitewater boater with a chilling story of near tragedy, just one of the many fortunate enough to have survived and learned from it. With the number of people getting into whitewater kayaking growing exponentially, the sage safety tips of experts like Lessels seem particularly worth reviewing.

"The sport is growing rapidly, and people move up through the ranks of Class II, III, or IV water more quickly than they used to," says Lessels, who teaches whitewater skills as owner of Zoar Outdoor in Charlemont, Mass. "Their skills may be for Class III or IV water, but their judgment isn't there yet. You see a lot of people going out and running very dangerous rapids without having the experience they should have."

As the number of paddlers has increased, so have paddling opportunities. Norman Sims, a whitewater kayaker for 25 years and an AMC Berkshire Chapter whitewater trip leader, points out that prior to the 1990s in the Northeast, whitewater paddling was "a wetsuit sport. There was water in the rivers late winter, spring, and fall. Everything dried up in the summer." Now the Kennebec and Dead Rivers in Maine, New Hampshire's Rapid River, and the Deerfield in Massachusetts all have scheduled dam releases from spring through fall. Farther south in AMC territory, many boaters in Washington, D.C.; New York; and New Jersey live in proximity to good whitewater in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia, the whitewater mecca of the East Coast.

"The essential skill is reading the water — that means looking at the river, understanding the obstacles, and knowing what the water's doing, or what it's going to do to you," Sims says. "It's largely experiential. If you've paddled enough Class II water, when you see Class III, you understand that it's bigger, it's faster, but you know what the water's doing.

"I think it's very difficult for a beginning boater to understand the classifications," Sims says. The widely recognized six-point scale for rating whitewater difficulty, used throughout the Northeast, employs the following categories:

Class I is moving water with a few ripples and broken areas requiring very little maneuvering.

Class II is broken water (rocks or breaking waves) requiring some maneuvering but mostly demanding good stability and the ability to guide the boat. The course is usually easy to recognize.

"Generally, moving from one class to another, you go up a magnitude in difficulty," Sims says. "That's very true from Class II to Class III, which is the transition from beginner to intermediate."

Class III whitewater has obstacles such as rocks, holes, and standing waves which require maneuvering the boat in the midst of a rapid. The course is not always obvious. You need the ability to read whitewater and skills such as eddy turns, peel-outs, ferries, leans, and braces. "In Class III, if you make a mistake, you can usually recover from it," Sims says.

Class IV is much more serious. It is defined as whitewater containing significant, irregular obstacles that require aggressive paddling techniques and advanced water-reading ability. For decked boaters — kayaks and closed canoes — a reliable roll is required. Drops may be long and technically difficult and may contain violent hydraulics and other hazards typical of mountain rivers. It requires the ability to maneuver aggressively and to adopt alternative routes. "My private definition of Class IV water is a big Class III drop with a must-Class IV move, perhaps from one side of the river to another, or around an obstacle, with serious consequences if you don't make that move," Sims says.

Class V is an order of magnitude more difficult than Class IV, for experts only. It presents a barrage of technical, hydraulic, and maneuvering difficulties; abruptly changing routes and conditions; and other hazards.

Class VI is simply defined as any drop that presents a reasonable expectation of death — including, for example, a Class III drop with a "strainer," or downed tree, blocking the route. "People typically do not run Class VI, for that reason," Sims says.

Some fundamental safety rules of whitewater include:

• Know as much as possible about the river before you get there.
• Be aware of developments on the river, including whether it has rained all day, or is raining upstream, which may cause a flash flood.
• Scout a rapid from upstream or the riverbank before running it.
• Paddle with a group, which will enable you to learn from others.
• Be willing to get off the river.

"Before you start running harder water, think about whether you want to be swimming in it," Lessels says. "Look at guidebooks to get a sense of what a river is like. If you're less experienced, make sure the river's normal condition is within your skill level, and evaluate the river once you get there to see whether it's in flood or normal condition."

"In my opinion, the most essential thing is to get instruction," Sims says. "Whitewater is a technical sport. It requires skill, intelligence, and practice. That's what you get from a good instructor. The second thing is, paddle. Only experience can make you a boater."

— Michael Lanza is author of The Ultimate Guide to Backcountry Travel, from AMC Books, and has found himself inexplicably upside-down in rivers on several occasions.