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A raft
A river with some steeper drops to navigate
Understanding Lines of Sight
The Geometry of Gradient
How to Eddy Hop
What to look for when you’re boat scouting
In this lesson, Trevor is discussing how to scout rapids without getting out of your raft also known as boat scouting. Learning how to effectively boat scout can help keep the trip moving and help build your confidence in running tougher rapids. Boat scouting is also much more energy efficient since you don’t have to continually stop and climb over rocks.
Simply put, boat scouting is a technique where a boater moves down river scouting rapids without leaving the boat. If you are in a raft, IK, or hard-shell kayak the same principals apply to boat scouting. One of the major benefits of boat scouting is conserving energy, but beyond that boat scouting helps to keep you moving down river. This also lays the ground work for improving your ability to read water and getting faster more accurate reads. By practicing this skill, you will develop more confidence and more speed allowing you to both shore scout less as well as run longer more continuous whitewater. There are a few things that we need to examine in detail to really get these skills dialed in:
Sight Lines
The X / Y Axis Relationship
Eddy Hopping
CORC
Islands of Safety
General Boat Scouting Safety
When we start looking at lines of sight there is an important element of geometry that comes into play when we discuss boat scouting. This geometric relationship forms the basis of understanding how sight lines work and how we can use them to our advantage.
To start we will need to look at the river from a side view with a drop structure and the raft above the drop in the river. The X-axis will create a plane across the surface of the water with a mark placed at the lip of the drop. The Y-axis will then rise to our eye level. From that point we can draw a line from our eye to the lip of the drop. Your sight line will cover everything above that sight line downstream of the lip of the drop and everything upstream of the lip of the drop from the water surface to the sky.
A small blind spot will exist in front of the raft where the boat blocks your line of sight, but this blind spot can generally be ignored because you can rotate the boat or look around the boat to fill in that gap.
Everything below that sight line and downstream of the drop can be assumed to be a blind spot, though in most rivers the drop is irregular so you will see more of the drop compared to a manmade dam structure. The whole reason we dismount the raft and scout is to fill in this line of sight, but the question is: How can we improve our sight lines from inside the raft?
The answer is yes, we can definitely improve our lines of sight, but there are only 2 ways to effectively do that. Both ways of doing this involve changing the geometry of the angles of our lines of sight to help us see over drops there by altering the location of our eye level on those X and Y axis.
The first way we can alter this relationship is simply moving our eye vertically in the Y-Axis. The best way to do this is to stand up in the boat, or even stand on the tube. By raising your eye level, you will increase the downward angle of your line of sight giving you a better field of view to see what is below the drop.
The second way to increase your line of sight is to get closer to the drop. By getting closer to the drop, you can further increase the downward angle of your line of sight.
In either case by reducing the length of the X-Axis relative to the Y-Axis you are increasing the angle allowing yourself to see more of what is behind the drop. This opens up the question though: How do you get closer to the drop without running the rapid?
The only way to effectively get closer to the drop without throwing yourself into a place that you don’t want to go is to hop from eddy to eddy. If you are unsure what lies below you in the drop you can move downstream one eddy at a time until you get a good look at what is down below you. Depending upon the locations of the eddies this may require you to move downstream crossing the current to get to the appropriate eddy that you feel will improve your line of sight into the rapid below. All of this however is predicated on your ability to effectively catch and peel out of eddies. If you are having trouble with effectively catching eddies you may wish to review our eddy catching lesson.
Boat scouting as a skill builds upon the basic principle of CORC established in our basic scouting lesson. You can always review that lesson if you have questions, but as a quick refresher CORC stands for:
Current
Obstacles
Route
Contingencies
Incorporating this guideline into your boat scouting will help you quickly and effectively make decisions on where you want to go. As your scouting skills get faster, quicker, and more effective you will find that boat scouting comes more naturally as well. All of the same basic scouting principles apply wherever you are doing it, but when you boat scout, you should bear in mind that you want to take careful note of landmarks to help guide you through a rapid. When you stand up, you may notice a feature that you can’t see until you are right on top of it so tagging that feature with a landmark in your mind and keying your movements off of that landmark will help you navigate the drop properly.
Another feature to take even more notice of when you’re boat scouting, are the islands of safety in the river. Islands of safety refers to areas in the river that you can stop and collect your self in. Eddies, pools, and slack water all can serve as that island of safety. From these points you can take a moment to reevaluate your scout, set safety for another boater, or sever as a contingency zone in case of a swim. These areas may not necessarily be safe places in and of themselves, but they may provide a momentary relatively safe location for you to gather your thoughts and decide on your next action.
Don’t ever forget that boat scouting is just another tool to help you efficiently navigate the river, however it is no substitute for a full scouting mission to find the best way through the rapid. When you are just learning to boat scout more effectively a lot of folks have the tendency to over commit while eddy hopping. This can create a seriously dangerous scenario where you have eddy hopped too far down into the rapid and placed yourself into a dangerous scenario. Remember it is always better to stop higher up and scout something unfamiliar rather than pop into one eddy too far and end up having to portage because you are too close to the bad place in the rapid.
