White Water Rafting

White Water Rafting Tips and Trips

White water rafting – you’ve seen it on TV and in movies, and it looks awesome! Getting in a raft or boat, going over waves, avoiding rocks, getting wet and having an exciting time. It’s a sport that’s gained more and more converts in the last dozen or so years, and has (of course) gone mainstream (so to speak).

But white water rafting isn’t just as simple as getting a boat on a river and hoping for the best. Unfortunately, great as it is, it can also be dangerous for the inexperienced. This being the case, this article has white water rafting tips for safety, along with white water rafting trips you might want to check out!

White Water Rafting Tips

The first tip is the most important for anyone who has never been white water rafting before, and it’s to go with an experienced instructor. This is not a sport you teach yourself, even if you’re an experienced canoeist or kayaker. An experienced instructor knows the river and how to navigate safely. The white water rafting guide also can teach you the signs of danger to watch out for, like looking for underwater obstructions.

Tip number two is make sure you know how to swim. At some point, you will get dunked and when you find yourself in a river and separated from your raft or boat, you need to know how to get to safety. And so along those lines, always wear a life jacket! Just keep in mind that your life jacket is not a replacement for learning to swim – it’s just to give you a better chance to get to safety when you do know how to swim.

A third tip is to know that like any sport, you shouldn’t jump in with both feet and expect to be a master rafter, tackling dangerous rapids from the get-go. Instead, you need to learn with smaller white water rapids, like categories one and two, before graduating to meaner water (so to speak). White water rafting can be physically demanding, so if you’re out of shape, it’s even more important to start slowly.

White Water Rafting Trips

Before you start taking lessons in white water rafting, you’ll probably want to take some guided trips. This serves two purposes; first, to make sure that you actually like the white water rafting and two, that you can physically handle it.

With all that in mind, here are two popular white water rafting trips.

The Grand Canyon is one of the best beginner white water rafting trips available. There are trips that can accommodate just about everyone. The canyon itself is awe-inspiring, and the rafting is a blast!

One river for premier white water rafting trips is the Nantahala River in western North Carolina. There are guides and trips for all levels of experience.

White water rafting is a fantastic experience – just be safe!