The future of whitewater kayaking

Doug Ammons

It’s safe to say that none of us can foresee the future. There’s no crystal ball that shows how our sport will change over the next 10 or 20 years, or what twists and turns, surprising developments or fads will come. I’ve been astonished over time, seeing a rag-tag group of paddlers figure out how to meld with the water, to plane across it, dive under it, twist and cartwheel above it, to plunge over falls, and weave themselves into its most powerful and complex currents. Given all that, it seems probably everything we try to predict will be wrong in some way, but that’s most of the fun of guessing. So here’s my crystal ball’s worth:

Whitewater kayaking will always be a niche sport. Despite all the hopes and dreams of certain people in the industry, it will grow slowly, sporadically, but will never be large. Nor will it be fully mainstream for one simple reason: it demands too much from people. As much as we love it, it just isn’t the sport for everybody. That’s why there are ten or fifteen times as many touring kayaks sold as whitewater kayaks, and a thousand times as many skis and snowboards. Very few people want to run hard whitewater, waterfalls, or even simple Class III whitewater in a kayak. They don’t have the motivation or desire to learn the skills, nor do they have the attitudes these demand. For that reason, the sport will remain small relative to other sports.

However, there will always be a white-hot core of people who love the sport more than anything, and are inspired by the very things that intimidate others. People who think it’s fun instead of terrifying to go upsidedown, who have the ability to keep cool under pressure, and laugh with the flush of acceleration heading into a rapid. They are people who find a home in tumbling chaos, love the feel of the water’s fluid hands, and feel the pulse of the river’s flowing water in their souls. They are inventive, exploring, and always looking for challenges. There will always be thousands of such people; nobody can predict their creativity. They will feed the sport and keep it healthy. If you’re reading this, you’re one of them.

So the greatest strength of the sport is that people are so passionate about it. They’ll give up almost anything just to paddle. Following that passion, here are the things we’re likely to see on the extreme side:

Waterfalls will go above 350 feet as paddlers learn to “fly” their kayaks like wings through the air. “Big Gun” competition will go haywire when designs are tweaked to incorporate larger volume, allowing more power, height, and dynamicism. Vastly harder rivers will be run; many of them are known to us right now - virtually any steep river or creek becomes radically harder with higher water levels, and most steep stretches out there have only been run at optimal levels. Kayak exploration will continue to benefit from other disciplines, like climbing and rope work for complex scouting and intricate portaging. There is the application of alpine style to do committing wilderness rivers in a purer style of self-contained small groups and solo. We’ll redefine what a “line” in a rapid is, with ever more complex waterfall sequences and cascades, until in the extreme, the paddler will draw from every skill across the entire sport to do one river or even a single rapid: waterfalls, freestyle moves, slalom, creeking, and big water moves will all become a part of a single “line”. This already exists to a great extent: just take a look at the North Fork of the Payette above 5000 cfs – a big water steep creek – combining speed, power, and huge features with hard technical moves and nearly continuous gradient. There are many more.

None of these problems has an end, and together they will provide as many challenges as you have motivation to try. The strength that comes from pushing challenges is that all these skills will continue to develop.

However, there is a terrible weakness in all the above. It is that they only reflect the upper end of danger and difficulty, whereas 99% of the people in the sport spend their efforts on less than Class IV – while having the time of their lives. These people are much more the future than the dudes at the top, because not only do they have just as much passion, but without a healthy set of enthusiasts, none of the companies or the sport itself can survive.

So the future of the sport does not belong to the extremists or professionals, it belongs to all of us at every level. The cornerstones of the future are the things everybody can do: surfing, catching eddies, running whitewater from Class I on. These are the bedrock, they provide the electricity for a lifetime of fun.

Every beginner understands the fun factor of our sport, and it is there for the asking. You don’t need the latest boat or gear. You don’t need a video camera or sponsorship. You don’t even need to know how to roll. All you need to do is take paddle in hand and push off the bank.

In that small but profound act, you leave the old world behind and dive into the heart of the river. And when you return, the old world will never seem the same. So long as each one of you keeps the smile on your face and shares a passion for the life pulse of this planet, teaching others the ways of the greatest sport in the world, then whitewater kayaking will always have a future, and that future will be in the best of hands.