Trip prepping
Whitewater trips can have a lot of moving parts that need to be thoughtfully planned. Meals, schedule, dates, transportation, gear, money—it all adds up. Here are a few thoughts based on how we plan our Split Rock trips.
On this page
Early planning discussions
It's a good idea to get a sense for what everyone is looking for in a trip ahead of time. Don't head into a trip that could be demanding, physically and emotionally, without knowing what everyone is really looking for in this trip. People can have totally different goals for going on trips. Some may be running to something, while others are running from something. Check out our Goal-sharing discussion guide for a guide to having some important discussions before getting too deep into planning.
Allocating roles
Especially as groups get bigger, there are a few areas that benefit from a predetermined point-person. These roles do not mean that others do not play a shared role, it just means that someone is responsible for either making sure everything is in order or making a quick decision in a crisis. The people in these roles will likely need additional experience in their area and require additional study and preparation. Of course in smaller groups some people will have multiple roles.
First aid responder
Safety first! Someone who has experience and skill in providing first aid should be identified as the go-to person for help. Make sure everyone knows who this is!
Cartographer
This person is responsible tracking where the group is and how far they have to go. They play a key role in making informed decisions about when to set up camp and how long to paddle each day.
Head chef
All members can contribute to cooking a meal or two, but this role oversees all cooking operations. They're responsible for what cooking gear is necessary and creates the overall meal plan.
River rescue specialist
This person, who has extra experience and training with fast-water rescue, assumes leadership if a complex rescue situation arises.
The Bard
Someone needs to be responsible to make everyone laugh and sing around the fire, but also plays a key role in monitoring group morale and might recommend a break or when to pull out a snack at a key moment.
Lead planner
While we try to make our trips a collaborative as we can, one person is needed to coordinate it all and find the best dates, book the shuttle, and work out all the logistics of getting there and back.
Treasurer
This person tracks all of the spending and payments. They may also have the unfortunate job of ensuring that everyone pays up.
Quartermaster
It should be the job of one person to account for all of the shared equipment. Before leaving for the trip and when loading the shuttle van, they'll make sure that everything is onboard.
Media specialist
If you want video and pictures of the trip, someone needs to make sure it happens. While everyone can record, it's best to have someone coordinating it all.
Panning a trip
Some paddlers prefer a single leader that plans the trip with some consultation with others and tasks are distributed throughout the group for things like meal prep. While this has worked for a long time, we at Split Rock prefer to have a more horizontal and collaborative approach while still maintaining some elements of trip leaders. Collaboration and communication can be a challenge with shared responsibility so a single online planning document is key.
Online planning document
We use a single Google Doc as a home for all planning information for a trip. It flattens some hierarchy by giving all members access to the same planning information. The comment feature offers asynchronous discussion on items without having to use email.
Even though meal responsibility is distributed, having a single table for all meal planning and shopping lists makes redundancies easy to spot so you won't end up with three mustard containers. It's also easy to consider the whole meal plan and adjust so that an extra heavy lunch doesn't follow a heavy breakfast.
You can access our Trip Planning Doc template here and make a copy for yourself.
We use it for planning:
travel logistics
the route
meals
gear
expenses
Printed maps
Don't go in the backcountry without a physical map. Sure, you just follow the river, but you may need to know where key locations are or to get an idea how far along you are. You can pick up maps for any popular river in Canada. Some have more specific details about the whitewater like the Madawaska one, others are a more traditional map. We've linked to available maps in the Routes section.
It's important to bring along a printed map, both of your route and the shuttle if you're shuttling yourself. New digital tech can he super helpful, but don't set up a situation where you depend on advanced tech that fails you.
On one attempt to run the Sturgeon River, Tim erroneously assumed that Google maps would still work up there but didn't download the area ahead of time for offline use. (More on how to do that here). For this trip, we had to rely on Tim's memory of where the shuttle route was on the map. We found it ok, but it turned out that it was the old abandoned shuttle route that people stopped using when a bridge was removed. We (very carefully) turned around when the road started to look more like a hiking trail. We ended up running a part of the Wanapitei instead. We later learned that the new road is a nice smooth gravel road all the way to the river.
For popular paddling regions in Ontario, Jeff's Maps offer incredible detail for paddlers. Coming in a close second place, and with a much bigger library, is Chrismar maps (adorably named after the couple that founded it named Chris and Mary).
Planning the shuttle
Rivers are rarely loops. You’ll need to figure out a way to get back to your car—this is known as the shuttle. If you have multiple cars, you can do the shuttle yourselves, or hire an outfitter to do it. You can sometimes arrange non-outfitter driver shuttles on a message board like Canadian Canoe Routes.
The most common shuttle options using an outfitter include:
Shuttle service picks you up at the take-out and drops you off at the put-in. The you paddle back to your car where you left it.
Shuttle service picks you up at their shop, drives you to the put-in in their vehicle. While you're on the river they move your car to the take-out.
You pick up a shuttle service driver and take them with you in your car to the put-in. They drive your car back to the take-out afterwards either meeting you there at the end, or they arrange to have it dropped off.
You launch down the river leaving your car at the put-in. Sometime while you're on the water, a shuttle driver picks up your car and moves it to the take out.
Shuttle options with your own cars include:
Both cars drive to the put-in, unload all gear and non-driving people. Two cars drive to the take-out, leave one car there, both drivers drive back to the put-in in one car. At the end of the trip, the two drivers take the one car back to the put-in to get the other car and return to the take-out for loading.
In regions with ride hailing services (Uber, Lyft) or cabs, the group all drives to the put-in and everyone launch as the same time. At the end, the drivers pay for a ride back to the cars and then drive to the take-out for loading.
In some situations with big enough vehicles, a car is left at the take-out on the way to the put-in. Occupants of that car hop in with the other car and carry on to the put-in. Note that this only saves on the shuttle on the first day. You'll still need to do the self-shuttle on the last day.
Shuttle services can be quite costly, but on long trips self-shutting can eat up a day on either end. If you'd rather use those hours for more paddling, then the shuttle option starts to look a lot better. It hurts a bit in tiny groups, but as the group gets better, the cost is spread out more. Now if a group gets too big, then more vehicles are needed and you lose some of the economy of scale.
We always pay for a shuttle on our longer trips. It's just worth it. Usually it's with an outfitter, but on a few occasions we just got the shuttling help of a family member or friend. On one Madawaska run down a 12km section (where the best whitewater is), we hid a bike in the bushes at the take-out and that was our shuttle back to get the truck.
Split Rock Planning Template
Researching
It can be really nice to just hop in on a pre-planned trip where someone else did all the research, but if you don't have that luxury, you'll need to hit the books (and websites, and people, but don't hit the people).
We get trip ideas from books, blogs, trip reports and talking to paddlers. Once you have an idea, there are a few things to asses before getting too deep into the planning.
What kind of water is it? If you want a whitewater trip, confirm how much whitewater there is.
How many nights are required? We've gotten into the trap of getting excited about a river and jumped to watching videos of its rapids, before assessing the minimum number of nights it will take. Later we realized it was beyond what we had time for.
How much will it cost? This can also be preventative. Some shuttles are wildly expensive, and some routes even need aircraft shuttles.
Once these are confirmed, you can get deeper into your research.
Here are some things to try:
I start by Googling "[river name] canoe tripping" and check out the blog and trip-report kind of material. Someone will have written extensively about the river.
Some paddlers make and share custom maps of the route, like we do on this site. So adding "map" to the river name can be helpful. These can give you quicker insights on where the portages are, how long certain sections are etc.
You'll likely also find footage of people paddling the river on YouTube.
If there's specific information that you can't find, go to Canadian Canoe Routes and navigate to their (ancient-looking) forums section and do a search. Likely someone over the years has asked and been given an answer to the same question. If you can't find your answer, then you can make an account and ask the question yourself. Someone will get back to you in a short amount of time.
If you're using our Trip Planning Doc template, start pasting in the links to all your helpful findings as you go so that the whole group has access to what you've found.
Gear planning
You can read more about suggested gear to bring over in our Whitewater Gear section.
Unless you're just starting out and only have the bare essentials for gear, you'll likely have to make some decisions on what gear to bring. Here are some things to consider:
The route: Easy flat water trip without portages or base-camping (staying in one site multiple days), you can likely bring more gear. A long complex trip with whitewater and portages, maybe a little lighter.
The season: Summer packing tends to be lighter. On colder trips there is lot more to consider. You'll likely want more extra layers and a thicker sleeping bag. On some cold, non-whitewater trips, we bring a long a hot-tent and stove. If you've got the space, and portages are limited, why not?
Portages: If it’s a backcountry trip with lots of portages, then you’ll need to think about how much you want to carry and how long the portages are. Too much heavy gear can quickly become a regret on trips with long portages.
Canoe agility: Canoes will handle differently in whitewater when they are weighed down. If you don't like that feeling, that could impact the decisions on how you pack.
Group size: The total size of the group impacts gear selection as well since shared gear will be spread out to more boats on larger trips, freeing up space in each boat for extras. Things can feel pretty tight when it's just one or two boats.
Canoe tripping does not need to be ultra-light camping. You have room for stuff, just don't make it too heavy and work with your group to figure out the right balance.
Have everyone use the shared trip planning doc to list what you're bringing (other than your own personal items). There are some heavy things that you don't need doubles of like an axe. If you're going to bring one, one is good.
Gear choices affect others
Keep in mind that the choices you make about gear may end up impacting others on your trip. If one person brings a large heavy luxury item, it could mean that they can't carry as much shared gear so others have to pick up the slack. If a canoe with extra gear dumps, other people will be chasing down that gear, and sometimes a some personal risk. Someone with a lot of extra gear may carry all their own gear on portages, but it also means they are not as available to carry more of the shared gear.
The best approach is to talk about it with your group. Decide together what is worth it. For us, the joy of cracking open a beer on a hot day in the bush is worth the extra weight for a few days and hauling around the empty cans. Sometimes we even stash more beer in the bush part way down the river so there's new beer available later in the trip. We in Split Rock collectively agree that a cooler of beer is too much, but could even change our mind if the group was large enough and the shared gear spread out. It's all a matter of what your group is comfortable with.
A note on gear-shaming
We believe it is basic camp etiquette to not gear shame people in the group (unless it’s just so funny we can’t help it). Not everyone has the best gear, and for some people, some luxury item is really worth it while it seems unnecessary to others. One of us carries a larger camp chair on trips to ensure that he can properly rest up at camp without getting even more sore. On first glance, it might seem unnecessary, but for him, it's totally necessary. Good communication about this with the group is always helpful.
Handling the money
We usually don't know how much trips will cost ahead of time. Each paddler will record their shared expenses as they go and insert it into a cost-splitting app or site. We like to use spliito.com since it's web-based and it doesn't require everyone to install an app.
Other groups with more of a single-leader approach may develop a flat fee for everyone, or someone might function as the banker for everything and then split up the costs. Those aren't really really our style, though, but it works. Whatever the case is for your group, talk about it before hand. Is it an honour system, or should everyone be saving receipts?
A safety checklist
There are several things you should think about and make some decisions on before starting your trip.
Is there an adequate first aid kit for the group size and a smaller backup one if it is lost? Have you examined the kits to see if they are up-to-date?
Have you shared your entire itinerary and trip plan with someone not going on the trip who can be a key contact if you don't come back when you should.
If you're far in the backcountry, do you have a satellite communications device? New phones are starting to have this now. Collect the emergency contact numbers from everyone.
Do you have back ups of your maps?
Do you have a plan if someone is injured. If a helicopter evacuation isn't an option, will it be possible to do a "fast canoe" exist with strong paddlers? Will the remaining paddlers have enough skill and gear to continue the trip and get home?
Have you selected someone to be the point-person for first aid and they've done some additional wilderness medicine refresher learning?
Has all the gear been examined to ensure it all works or won't fall apart? Are there spares for critical items?
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