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Why whitewater canoe tripping is just the friggin best
FEBRUARY, 2025 | TIM ROBINSON
5-MINUTE READ | All SRO content is human-written
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Nothing is cooler than whitewater tripping—it’s the friggin best. Let me make my case.
If you’re not into outdoor activities and being active, ok, it’s not the best for you. But, if you are, there's nothing like whitewater tripping. Let’s first just go over some things that it offers.
Camping: If you like camping, it's got camping! l still find it super fun to set up a campsite—build a little temporary house for the night, set up a kitchen and living room and really move into the space for a night, and then pack it all up in the morning and carry on down the river.
Socializing: If you're into people, there’s nothing like spending time in the backcountry chilling with friends, singing, having some drinks, and telling stories around the fire. If you don't like people, skip this one.
Food: There’s amazing food made on a fire. How can I say that it's amazing? Because you're in the bush! There’s something about being out in the bush (and hungry) that makes everything taste amazing. The Split Rock crew usually makes actually fantastic meals, but some of the most memorable have even been the crappiest processed food-like products. The context magically makes them awesome.
Hiking: If you like hiking, canoe tripping has got that too. I like to keep the portages on the low side since they can be painful, but they are often quite special. It's the return walk for the second round where the joy of walking in the backcountry bush gets in your soul. Canoe tripping provides plenty of long views of distant shorelines, but it's the portages that provide that intimate in-the-bush experience.
The water: Just like with flatwater canoe tripping, you’ll get plenty of peaceful time out on the water. There's something about being on, near and in water that is restorative. Canoe tripping delivers this. While you're out on the water, you’ll possibly see animals along the shore, in the water, or in the air around you.
Exercise: Let's tack on exercise. If you're into that, there’s also plenty of outdoor exercise to be had on canoe trips. Sure, a lot of it is your arms, but after a long, difficult portage, you’ll also have taken care of leg day for the week.
Adrenaline rush: Whitewater gets adrenaline-rich blood pumping through your arteries. It offers you that incredible feeling when your skills meet the challenge, and you successfully make it through. In the case of whitewater canoeing, it's making it down with the open side of the canoe still facing up. But it's still fun even if you don't.
I could stop here, and it would make a nice little tourism pitch for a particular sport. But truthfully, it's not the sum of all these components. When all these elements come together on a whitewater trip, it transforms into more than just a collection of cool things; it is the recipe for a true adventure—a modern Greek epic like no other.
The whitewater epic
Let me set the scene. After months of preparation, your team has gathered and loaded all the provisions you will need onto your watercrafts and sets forth on an odyssey into the wilderness. Once you and your team cast off from the shore and head down the one-way river, you are committed. There is no escape or turning back—the current will not allow it. Whatever dangers lie ahead, you will face them, whether you want to or not. You're on an expedition, a journey where your skill, your companions, and the gear you bring are all that lie between you and peril. On many backcountry rivers, the only way out early is an emergency medical evac.
Along the way, everything is done with purpose. Every paddle stroke or portage step you take moves you toward your destination. When you set up your tent, it’s not because it’s cool to sleep in a tent. It’s because you need shelter for the night from the weather and insects that want to eat you. Gathering wood and building a fire is for actual food preparation and often warmth. When you cook on the fire, or even on tiny camp stoves, it’s not because it’s super cool to make food like that (which it is), it’s because that’s your only way of having supper that night. And you’re not eating just because it tastes good, but you critically need those calories the next day to move on towards your objective. It's rare to experience such critical intentionality in our lives, and river tripping gives us that experience.
There is purposeful, cleansing suffering on your quest down the river—it can be brutal, freezing-cold rain, scorching heat, sore feet, bugs that test your mental health, bruises, scrapes, burns, and punishing portages. But every bit of it is endured because it’s all part of the campaign—you’re past the point of no return. It's just like paddling itself. Your arm will get sore, and you'll want to switch, but if you resist the desire to switch for a while, the pain will subside, or perhaps you just get used to it, and you'll no longer feel the need to switch sides to remove the discomfort. Your body adjusts.
Often, along the water's path, your team will hear a roar around the next corner. Rather than a mythic monster or an opening to a dungeon, you encounter a rapid. The crew disembarks to size up the beast and make a plan. Scouting is one of the greatest parts of whitewater tripping. It’s collaborative group puzzle-solving in the wilderness. Experienced and novice paddlers alike discuss the monster and “read” it to interpret its hidden signs. Everyone collectively assesses this fear-inducing but exciting situation, looking for ways to overcome it. Strategies are suggested, dissected and the rapid is scanned for weaknesses. When ready, you and your team gear up. You don your helmet, chest protection and blade, strap in, and engage the beast.
All whitewater paddlers have skin in the game. It’s on every paddler to know the plan, execute, and adjust along the way. To get down this river, everyone has to get through. Running the rapid, portaging, lining, whatever the choice is, everyone must pass by the beast somehow. We push through because we have to.
In whitewater, you're not there to kill the beast, but to respectfully seek passage. Successfully passing through means understanding the whitewater, appreciating it, and working with it. It is a dance between your own skills, the physics of your craft, and the forces acting upon it in the water. And if you’re paddling tandem, then you also throw in the need for communication and collaboration between two people in a situation that demands peak performance. In this loud, turbulent and dangerous environment, the beast is ready to toss you in and beat you up, possibly even kill you on a whim. But when you show it the proper respect and steer carefully in the blurred line between where you want to go and where the beast will indifferently put you, you will be granted permission to pass. Sometimes we are taught a lesson, but we love it and return again and again.
Now you try to find me anything else that has all that.
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