I Tried Whitewater Kayaking with No Experience

Safety notice: if you have no experience and a guide tells you they're taking you kayaking on a WW4 river they're either not the guide you want, lying/joking or, as in this case, thinking about some very specific rapids that they know. This video may give some people the impression that you can just go on any WW4 but maybe it would be nice to have somebody with you to fish you back out, and as much as I love whitewater kayaking, that's not an impression you want to have.

...This advice may not apply whenyou go on a guided rafting tour, as long as the guide keeps the raft straight they'll usually slog through anything.

thats not whitewater kayaking. thats a packraft. If you were in a ww kayak you would have swam the whole thing. And those rating given by yall were exaggerated. I didn't see anything above a class 3 -

MMMM would like him to coach me

now I see the pro can read the river

Honestly super brave guy and props to the guide to have the nuts to get him into that, but also shows how amazing packrafts are.

Talk about going in at the deep end (despite being in a pack raft), you did awesome man! This is definitely a crash course and steep progression

You did really well man. I hope you enjoyed it.

Very good editing and video.

That last respite was crazy for a beginner

Started paddling on a Ducky.
Had a lot of swims, but learned to read water.
2nd season in a hardboat and stoked for the runoff to hit

Ahh Sjoa! Yes it's gnarly here

shame on you for kayaking in the thumbnail and actually going in a duckie

Dude, first, you have great balls for going head-on at this, awesome. I must say I laughed myself almost to death for a while there. Great job riding out those rapids, and for staring this straight in the face and going right at it, kudos to you. You have my respect and admiration. You are the man!!

Which river is this?

simon clearly has great taste in kayaks

Kayaking hard whitewater without taking the time to train properly is the lazy way.

Awesome, i had a lot of fun watching this 🎉

Simons been a staple in the kayak industry for as long as anyone can remember. Great to see you showing his company and work.

This is not kayaking, it's rafting ...

"My stomach is telling the truth. It's hurting." To be honest, that happens every time I paddle WW. In fact, my stomach is feeling it just watching your video.

that was really not bad man

This instructor is fantastic. Seemed to know his shit.

This is excellent. You showed exactly how it feels to experience whitewater for the first time, but I figure you did better than average. Nice job!

First time I swam a class three I remember feeling like people were hitting me with a baseball bat in my legs. Bouncing off the rocks. It’s not pleasant

Wow

Paddy had his work cut out! 😂

I began real white water kayaking in 1969 on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, the Selway river in Idaho and the Gallitan River in Wyoming. Back then, there were no commercial white water kayaks in North America, Everyone joined a club and made their own fiberglass boat in one weekend. There were no dry suits for cold water, I made a wet suit from a kit and glued it all together. I paddled every club trip that spring in southern Ontario to get the skills for that trip. Our trip organizer there was the legendary Walter Blackadar, look him up. I am still doing white water now and I will be 80 years old in a few months, We did some rivers last spring and the average age of the participants was 81 years old, and the oldest was 89. He still alpine skis, I have many very fond memories of those trips. I always felt free to portage when I was not up to something big, safety first. Click on my picture on the left to see a few old videos.

Please anyone watching this, if you are interested in kayaking, take a class from a certified instructor. Inflatable kayaks are significantly easier to learn in that a hard shell boat. (former pro here, nationally ranked racer back in the day, youngest certified ww kayak instructor in the US for a time). The Grand is fairly technically easy (class 3 to easy 4), its just big water (10k+ CFS is lowish) and takes a couple of weeks to run by most people in groups. Another challenge with the Grand is the permit system, unless you do a commercial trip it might take a while to get a permit. My advice is get good enough to easily run and catch every eddy in class 3 and easy 4s before heading to the Colorado River. In big volume rivers a swim can be brutal since the rivers are so much bigger/wider. Make it as safe for you and those you are with when you are going into areas that are very hard to get out of (emergency rescues in the Canyon are hard). WW Kayaking is an amazing sport, be safe out there!

This guys sucks at kayaking😂

I recon about another years worth of training until your ready for the Grand Canyon

Dont stop making videos. You are the best

Yes! Whitewater is the way 🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽

Really cool to see someone excited to learn kayaking. You should get into a hardshell now

Definitely crazy. For a complete noob, the best advice, well besides not doing this, is when you get to the whitewater, paddle like hell. Often the reason people flip is that they have their paddle in the water and the rapids grab the paddle and the boat causing it to flip. As a complete noob, just paddle as fast as you can. Now as experience increases, you will learn to read the water and know how to brace and lean the boat. But till then, paddle.

When someone says 4ish like that
You're in trouble

Great run!!! And that was some serious whitewater. Don’t worry about the nerves, it’s just part of the sport :)

Proud of this brave young man. It makes me wince, since I am an old whitewater instructor and rolling instructor.

If you don't know what he said DON'T say yeah! It could have been really important warning!

I've been a surfer for 50 years and done some kayaking in my time as well. I've never done anything dangerous in a river, that is whole different ball game to surfing. Salute man, that was awesome and takes guts 👍

A lot to correct here, However I know this is a fast forward instruction for a show. Fun to watch 😂 thank you for your effort. Dude! Climb back on that inflatable and keep going. Only plastic boat swimmers needs eddy.

This was the worst klick bait ever thought I’d see you beater god damn it

Stout lines for first time man good strokes

Just stumbled across this video. Happy to see you give Whitewater Kayaking a try. I never thought I would ever get into it but now I paddle pretty regularly. It’s super fun and addicting and I’ve completely fallen in love with the sport. I started in early 2020 and now paddle Class IV/V on a regular basis. I would love to see you continue with it and paddle the Grand Canyon one day. I also went ahead and subscribed. Keep it up as well with the great content :).

honestly you did pretty good dude. one big thing i see is paddle with way more intention. blade in at the toes, out at the hips, and give it hell. keep your top arm of each stroke fairly straight and use it as a fulcrum point to pull the blade with your bottom hand.

Respectfully, you tried duckying.

You should have definitely done the actual kayak 😂 and not a pack raft

Fun vid! Nothing better

Simons been a staple in the kayak industry for as long as anyone can remember. Great to see you showing his company and work.

You did seriously well brother!!