Learn To River Run-intro  (level 2)

Chances are that this is your first real experience with negotiating moving water in a kayak. The focus of this course is to teach all the necessary skills required to safely get you down a river. The techniques that you will learn during the 2-day course will be your first steps in the path to become a solid White Water Kayaker

This is a 2-day intensive course that will be held on a class II river, and on each day you will spend between 6-8 hours on the water.

Requirements and Eligibility

  • Students must have successfully completed the LTK (Level 1) course, or posses equivalent paddling skills.
  • Swimming ability is a must,  the possibility of swimming in white water during this course is high.  
  • Must not suffer from any medical or physical condition that prohibits the participant from partaking in strenuous physical exercise.

 

​Students looking at some river features in a rapid, on Cauvery river

Course contents

River Reading

To be able to "read" the waters in front of us s an essential component for a kayaker. We will start observing the water flows and their dynamics, trying to understand what happens on the surface and under it. We will learn how to identify and name all the different features that we can find in a river environment, and we will start reasoning on how those features will have an impact on our kayak descent. River reading is a learning process that will take a lifetime; in this course we will put down the foundations.

River Rescue

Kayaking is a relatively safe sport, but while in the river many things can happen, and we need to know what to do. You will learn how to rescue yourself and how to rescue others, according to the most efficient rescue techniques hat are preferred in the river. We will teach you how to swim a rapid in the safest way, how to use a throw bag, how to take a boat to the shore, but most of all how to decide what to do in case of an emergency on the river. 

 

​A kayaker breaking out of the current into an eddy

​A kayaker breaking out of the current into an eddy

Paddling on moving water

After revising our basic skills we will start bringing them into the current, learning the basic moves of river kayaking, like catching an eddy, peeling out, and ferrying. We will work hard to make sure that our paddling strokes are effective when we need them, to move in the river keeping control of our boat, while following a line, avoiding obstacles, stopping at our will. This will keep us busy and will fill us every second with the unique sensation which is to flow down with the river...