As Team Paddler Kailee Hutchison calls it “the white wall” and hitting it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately, when you hit the whitewall, it takes whatever you were just doing and fragments it in your memory. There are a variety of psychological phenomenon at work here, but at the end of the day it is a stress response that affects your memory. When you’re charging hard it alters the way you perceive your surroundings and creates adrenaline fueled gaps in your memory ..read more

Rafter’s elbow often manifests as a combination of possible injuries from the repetitive stress of paddling. Lateral and medial epicondylitis more commonly called Tennis elbow and golfers elbow respectively, are conditions characterized by pain and inflammation in the tendons that attach to a bony bump on the outside and inside of the elbow. The repetitive motion of paddling can put stress on the tendons that attach to the lateral or medial epicondyle ..read more

In rafting we often have a very short window to welcome beginners into the sport. Summer and early fall months are often warm and inviting enough to help people get started without too much equipment. Unfortunately, this means that we have a tendency to rush people into higher class whitewater or overload them with information, but for beginners we have to remember that we need to start slowly. This can be a very frustrating situation for experienced boaters and guides when they bring some one new into the sport as someone may seem to be progressing more slowly than we would like. So how do we ..read more

We never start out knowing much about a sport and the outdoors is no exception. It’s dirty, you get smelly, it’s generally uncomfortable, and the bugs are horrendous. Because of the adversity in the outdoors, we spend a lot of time creating rules for when, where, how, and why we do things ..read more

Leave No Trace Principles and practices promote respect and inclusion to all who spend time outdoors and in the natural world of which we are all a part. The Principles are based on science and built on a shared respect for nature and each other. This respect, coupled with good judgment and awareness, will allow everyone to put the Principles into action on any outing ..read more

Someone got sick on the trip. No big deal, right? Sure, modern medicine has a lot of great options that can help us through this, but in a wilderness setting this gets tricky fast. In a wilderness setting, quarantine and management of a viral outbreak require a combination of individual and collective efforts to prevent the spread of disease. There are some serious issues to consider when you do have an illness outbreak ..read more

We’ve all been on that trip where you’ve been dreaming of pulling a permit all winter since the lottery opened and that one perfect campsite has stuck in your mind for months. You’ve talked it up on the shuttle and all the way down river only to find that it is already occupied when you arrive. Great time for plan B ..read more

We can probably all agree that a head injury is a quick way to ruin a rafting trip. Nobody wants to end their trip in the back of an ambulance so, in November of 2022 we covered the Virginia Tech helmet study to get the spotlight on helmet safety. Since that study, there was a lot of discussion in rafting circles about the implications of that study and several questions have come up about helmet use in the whitewater world ..read more

This one is for the raft guides in the group. Trips that suck sometimes happen, there are a variety of reasons for it, but it’s going to happen. Its not that it happens but what you do about it that makes the difference between a professional river guide and a mid-tier river trip ..read more

Filtration and water purification are two methods used to remove contaminants and impurities from water. While both processes can improve the quality of water, they work in different ways and are used for different purposes ..read more