C-Forum

So I was wondering again, what with all the yast improvements in paddles, and blade design, and boat design, and teaching improvements, and so on and so on, how come there's still no improvement in the method of hand signaling from the bottom of a rapid to some poor, clueless soul at the top of a rapid? I can't count the number of times in my paddling career that I've been at the top of a rapid and watched some person at the bottom sort of weakly waving their paddle in some sort-of-kind-of imitation of a “non-disabilitating” correct route. When I began teaching, the Red Cross program out here was really ripping, and every summer you could teach about three weeks out of every month. Then the students would call and ask for help on certain intermediate runs once they had gotten through their beginner's jitters etc.. I worked out a system of talking them through certain rapids, telling them to scout the rapid first but giving them the directions over the phone. Basically I would have them draw up a 5 inch square. Then I would have them divide the square into five 1 inch squares in either direction (across and up-and-down). I chose five because those were the most easily recognizable directions across the river; River Left, Center Left, Center, Center Right, and River Right . I then had them label each square going across 1, 2,3,4,5, and label each square going down A,B,C,D,E. So the top left square would be 1A (River right at the top of the rapid) and the bottom right square would be 5E (River left at the bottom of the rapid The most common rapid described was Ewings rapid on the Powerhouse run just above downtown Kernville. In an overview this rapid looks like an hourglass, narrowing right before the pour-over, with two big rocks at the bottom of the rapid (center and center left, or at 5 C and 5 D in the rectangle) capable of whacking a swimmer or pinning a boat. Most people run it dead center or try to sneak River left starting at the top; both of which would push you through the center of the curling waves below the pour-over and into one of the two rocks at the bottom. The best route through the rapid is basically a 45 degree angle across that rectangle: starting out at River right 1A and hitting the drop at 3C headed left with power, so you'll end up at River left 5E. I also thought that this would be very easy to translate into a series of hand signals using the paddle. If you are downstream facing upstream you could create this same rectangle by your blade being the river directions 1-5 (River right through River left) and your bottom hand on the shaft being the top-to-bottom position through the rapid, ABCDE. I'm going to explain it here further, and it will take forever, but it's very simply and quickly communicated if you're standing there with the paddle to use as a visual aid. I will offer proof at the end of this. So, anyway, to communicate the previously mentioned route through Ewings rapid from downstream, you would start out by looking upstream with your paddle held as if you were paddling on the left . If you put your paddle over your head with the shaft parallel to the water and your bottom hand (left hand) right next to the blade, that would be position 1A, River right at the top of the rapid. The next position, 2B, would be with the blade held at a 45 degree angle to the river surface and your bottom hand halfway between the middle of the shaft and the blade (or 1/5 of the way up the shaft). 3C would be with the shaft at a 90 degree angle to the river surface and your bottom hand directly in the middle of the shaft. At this point you would change hand position as if you were paddling right-handed, so that position 4D would be with the blade again at a 45 degree angle to the river and your bottom hand halfway between the middle and the top (or 4/5 of the way up the shaft). And the final position 5E would be with the shaft again held parallel to the river surface and your bottom hand right next year top hand. I could then put the paddle down, and by crossing my arms over my head to make an “X”, I could then determine any danger points in the rapid as well. Again, although it took 12 pages to do so here, this is very easy to demonstrate visually! I know this, because one year I began to quiz beginning white water students on it, to see if it was difficult to understand or not. Anyone who took one of my classes was sent a package before the class started that contained basic information about the workings of a River: the common names, gravitational features, the two main types of differential lines, etc. On the first morning of class they were given a test on this material, and if they didn't pass this test they were not allowed to continue in the class. When the test was over I would gather the students who had passed, give them the 5 inch rectangle on a piece of paper, and then demonstrate this "rapid description by paddle position" procedure for around five to seven minutes. We would then go and spend an entire day on the river with no mention made of it. When we got off the river and after we had loaded boats and before they got a chance to shower or eat (in other words, when they were the most tired), I would pass out a sheet with three rectangles, then walk about 100 feet away and demonstrate three different routes through three different rapids. About three-quarters of the students would correctly identify the route through the rapids. So I don't think it's too difficult for someone to understand this, and I think it could help tremendously in all kinds of intermediate situations if this were brought into the teaching technology at the beginner stage.
Now I know that the”KISS, Keep It Simple, Stupid” rule has been in effect forever, but I don't think this is too difficult for the normal paddler to understand. And it would drastically improve short drops if you could communicate the one move to River right or River left that was necessary to get through a drop safely. I heard talk of the American Whitewater organization doing something about this but never heard any follow-up. Does anybody here use a more complex variation of the basic signals?
Ric Taylor

I like the idea of the signalling system. Could you eleborate on describing the hazard. After you cross arms above your head do you go through the same sequence of paddle gestures to describe what to avoid? I ask this only because typically to avoid confusion, only the route to take is described.

til next
Jim

Yeah, Jim;
after you cross your arms above your head, you just show the exact position of the hazard. For instance, on Ewing's rapid again. You would demonstrate the two rocks at the bottom center (5C.) by crossing your arms above your head, and then holding the paddle straight up in the air with your bottom hand right next to your top hand. That way if you get pushed down to Center Right of the rapid by the current and the first wave, which is what happens a lot, you would know that you had a clear shot to go around to the right of those two obstacles at the bottom. And if there were two hazards, you would cross your arms two times, in other words before each hazard direction was given.
This all sprang from a first descent that I did with a group from the mouth of Kern Canyon down to the outskirts of Bakersfield. They had dug up the channel to build a dam and because there was high water, there was enough water to do the run. So we lowered our boats by rope down the side of an overpass and set off. About 300 feet into the run there was this wicked little drop. I was running sweep, and 4 of the 5 people that went before me all dumped rather harshly and had to self rescue. All the time it seemed like there was another route down that just looked as easy as pie to me. I kept mentioning it to people and shrugging my shoulders towards people downstream and telling them to signal back up, but they all sat there like little lumps on a retard. So we all, like the perfect little lemmings that we were, went over the drop that the first person had run and proceeded to dump. I made it through, but only because I did this humongous pry at the last-second to avoid the rock than had dumped everyone. Unfortunately because I was so nervous, I did the pry not off of the gunnel, but off my bottom thumb, which was between the shaft and the gunnel at the time. So I got to do the rest of the run with a thumb that felt like a squashed papaya. I eddied out and waited for everyone to gather up and dump their boats, and looked upstream to see that you could've just blipped through the other route as easy as pie if someone had only signaled back up.


Another thing that I always did with students in a class, on the one rapid that we made them scout, was to set up at the bottom and guide them left or right at the top with paddle directions, in other words you could tell them to get a little more to the right or little more to the left right at the beginning of the drop by signaling as well. The time that I ran the Chattooga section 3 by myself, Second Ledge was at a level where there was only one 3-4 foot wide slot center left in about a 100 foot wide horizon line that you couldn't see over until it was too late to change your route. There was an open boater in a group that had just finished portaging it. He hung back to watch me run it, and it was very reassuring to be able to see him pointing with his paddle in the direction that I thought was correct.

This system sort of never got off the ground because I wasn't allowed to start teaching it, and every time that I paddled I would paddle with a different group, and a lot of people didn't want to waste the time that it would take to learn a slightly more complex system. Which I understand; I think this would have to be used every time and would have to be introduced at the beginning level for it to be truly functional/familiar, but it worked quite well the times that we did use it, and it just seems that since everything else has improved, and skills are achieved faster now, that a little bit more knowledge at the top of every drop would be (as our current "corporate criminal Du jour" would say) a good thing.
RT

Space Canoe wrote:
The time that I ran the Chattooga section 3 by myself, Second Ledge was at a level where there was only one 3-4 foot wide slot center left in about a 100 foot wide horizon line that you couldn't see over until it was too late to change your route.

What level was it at? the left side is pretty wide open up to 3 feet or so... just a big 5-6' ledge. At those higher levels you might not want to pencil into the hole though.

On topic, your system sounds great, however even in teaching it early in a beginner class, it may add more confusion. I've found that early on in our beginner school the simpler your directions the better, because the most intimidating thing about river running for beginners is complexity. It might be more in place in the case of a group that regularly runs together. The old left, right, stop, go system is almost intuitive and widely accepted.

Well, I would agree with you about not wanting to overwhelm your students, but I have to respectfully disagree; I just don't think it's that hard to learn; especially if it becomes a part of your paddling life from day one. And I think equally as intimidating is this sense of not knowing what's going to happen to you once you enter the rapid; of feeling that you're going to have to make up your mind in the middle of things rather than knowing what's waiting for you. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe you have to learn to make up your mind on your own or get out of the sport, who knows? Anyway, in almost any class or group paddle, it seems to me that there's almost NO time spent on signaling.
I think the five separate river directions are easy to understand. You have Left , Right and Center; between Right and Center is Center Right, and between Left and Center is Center Left. Even if you make it a "5 by 3" method so that you just have the top of the rapid, the middle of the rapid, and the bottom of the rapid, it's still better than what you have now. I mean, which would you rather see; someone at the bottom of a rapid telling you "Enter the rapid Center Left.", or someone at the bottom of the rapid telling you "Enter the rapid at Center Left, then at the middle of the rapid you should be Center, and you want to be Center Left at the bottom, because there's a danger point between the middle and the bottom at Center Right."? Even if you're just going to use it for danger points, you could then say "Enter the rapid at Center Left and beware of a danger point near the bottom at Center right.". I really think that a rapid with two separate and distinct hazards and two separate and distinct route changes could be communicated quite easily if you had this "5 by 5" method. Even if you still get chowdered, you have a better idea of what's waiting for you.

I just think it's more a of case of it being that nobody wants to try anything new. I wanted to make the signals part of the handout that was mailed to students, so that they had a week or two prior to the class to memorize them, but no-one would O.K. it. I also found that the majority of beginners understood this "counterintuitive" method of looking at the top of the graph as being the top of the rapid, rather than looking at the bottom of the graph as the top of the rapid (which is where the students would be when they received this information). But I told my students that either way would be acceptable.

The people who answered me on Boatertalk said that they generally use their hands to denote this same sort of information, or their hands and fingers for the different upstream to downstream sections and then the paddle for the different Left and Right directions.. I just felt that the paddle shaft was much easier to see over a distance than hands or "hands, then paddle".

As to the Chattooga; I hope that I'm speaking of the right rapid. This is the section that ends right below Bull Sluice. If my addled memory serves me right, about eight or ten years ago, I taught at a girl's summer camp there, and a couple of weeks prior to my running it we took a group of campers down it. These girls were not your typical summer lily-dippers; this was a serious program, one of the best I've ever seen, and they knew no fear! My friend Annie, who ran the program, called the rapid "Dick's Creek" which I think is the stream that comes in just below the rapid on river right, correct? Or maybe that's the real rapid name and "Second Ledge" is something else entirely. If so, sorry! Anyway, we all portaged it at that time because the water was too low, not because it was too high.
I think the normal route was over a ledge on River Right-Center Right, but there was no way we could do that. The only other route that seemed remotely possible was actually much more River Left than Center Left, now that I think of it. You had to hit a narrow sort of slide, and then slide down into a pool on top of this humongous rock that formed the left half of the ledge. If you slid out of this pool you went over an airdrop and fell down into some serious carnage rocks. But if you didn't slide on over, you had to make a 90 degree turn, and then angle off down across this big section of rock to the bottom. Annie said that normally they positioned a person down at the far end of the pool to stop the boats from sliding over. She was concerned that there wasn't enough water and the boats might turn sideways during the slide into the pool and then eject the stern paddler off into the nasty stuff, so we didn't run it. It really was a pretty narrow slot that you had to slide down. When I ran it two weeks or so later, it was up slightly higher, so I thought I would run down into that pool. But when you paddled upstream and then turned to go over the slide, you couldn't see anything except this humongous horizon line; there was nothing to mark the exact point you had to go down that slide. It was a little scary because as I slid down into the pool there was no way that I could really stop the boat's forward motion, because there wasn't enough water to get your blade into so that you could back paddle on the actual sliding section. You just hung on and scraped frantically with your paddle as you slid. Luckily I stopped with part of my bow over the edge of the pool and then back paddled and spun, and went on down to the bottom.
RT

Yup, you just gave the very best description I have heard of Dick's Creek Rapid. Second ledge is a few miles below there, just below the "narrows" section. It is a river wide ledge with some bumpy, not fun lines along the entire right side of the rapid, and an easy sheer 6' ledge drop on the right, it's the rapid shown on AW's main page for section III chattooga. As for the signals, I agree with your system for rapids that are of increasing complexity. However, most rapids on the rivers we instruct on are either short drop/pool type, or they can be broken down into simple segments.

Often, with more complex rapids (as in complex to the uninitiated beginner) we will break the rapid into "moves" after a breif overview of the dangers. The first move would likely be to an eddy that has an instructor in it, right above the rapid. From there the instructor would give a pointer on the next "move" and so on. We are also fortunate however, to often have trips where the instructor to student ratio approaches, or sometimes exceeds 1. This method is less effective when there are insufficient instructors to staff all positions, including safety. Finger signals are agreed all but worthless, as are verbal instructions over whitewater. The biggest obstacle would be unwillingness from the instructor corps, and the veteran boaters. As cliche as it is, it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks. I'd be really interested in how it works out for your program if you can get it approved. Good luck with it!
Tim

Ric -

What we do, when we don't actually want to watch somebody get munched, is :

* point towards the hazard andvigorously shake our heads (or make an X with out arms)

* point the right direction and vigorously nod our heads

That doesn't convey as much data as your system, I need some pictures to know for sure!

Scott

You see, I was,uummm, just testing you on that, Tim, I umm … knew all along that it was not "Second Ledge".Uuuum….
Sorry, my bad!
Anyway... it looks like we agree on pretty much everything, including my addled memory!
Yeah, I was going to say as well, that you shouldn't be putting beginners on any rapid that required this communication system unless you were a sadist! But you could START TEACHING IT then, quite easily, I think.

As to my having any luck with it out here, you can forget it. When I trained the city of L.A. instructors for a kayaking class I got to work with lifeguards, and let me just say, I understand that the 1 percent of the time you really need a lifeguard it is TRULY wonderful to have a lifeguard, but as to training these people, it was not a lot of fun to work with cocky little brats who just wanted to screw around in boats and get paid $17 an hour for it while I got to develop the program, teach the program and train the instructors all at the same time for $10 an hour! Not that I'm bitter, you understand; not that it upset me in the slightest degree, you understand; not that I'm in anyway marginally TICKED OFF about it!
Just kidding, really, I didn't do it for the money but rather to get some sort of paddling program going out here. Something that amazes me even more than the unwillingness to try to develop a new hand signal program is the fact that I live in arguably the most sports oriented population center on the planet, that at one time 20 years ago was running 1200 people a year through a canoeing and kayaking program , and now we can't get any interest at all in any type of paddling program. And I agree with you about the old dogs; that probably has a lot more to do with the problem than I'd like to admit. Old dogs, young brats, if only C-1ers could run things, huh?
But, I still say; you have beginning moves, intermediate moves, advanced moves, why couldn't you have beginning signals, and intermediate signals?
Scott, I think I took some pictures at the time for my private class tests, but God knows where they are .Maybe I'll just stand out in front of my video camera and send you off some.

What school do you teach at, Tim? That sounds like a great instructor/student ratio. How long as it been in business and are you fully employed at it or is it just summer work?
Anyway, thanks for all the great feedback from everybody;
Ric Taylor

Rick
I Instruct for Georgia Tech's outdoor program. We run relatively small classes (canoe classes have been sparse lately, so I help with the kayaking program as well, but don't get any funny ideas I do it from a C-boat.... mainly setting safety and demonstrating lines), but all of our instructors and Tripp leaders are trained by our program, and all are volunteers. It works pretty smoothly, although I'd love for the interest in canoeing to come back some, I have so much I'd like to teach as far as playboating for singlebladers goes. Our classes are largely GT students, but we accept outsiders after all of the students that want to enroll have enrolled. It's nice too, because we have weekly roll clinics in the pool on campus. If I stay around here I'll likely take the ACA instructor course as well, and lead trips for GT.

That and the extraordinarly long paddling season here (12 months ) makes it a great place to be!
Tim