We need water to survive, but while most people simply drink it, and perhaps even occasionally wash in it, there are those that use it for much more exciting activities. One such activity is white-water rafting. Personally I think the name is misleading as I tried it once and was so scared, the water ended up yellow!
White water rafting is where you use a raft or kayak to travel down a very rough river, hence the ‘white water’ part of the name. There are hundreds of white water rafting locations throughout the world, and like all things natural, they differ in intensity of the challenge.
Some white water rafting courses are suitable for novices, others for advanced white water rafters, and still others for the mentally insane that have lost the desire to live…ok, that class can also be called the expert extreme rafters, but insane still sums it up rather well.
If you’re considering taking up white water rafting you will defiantly want to know how the grading works with these rivers. Graded using an internationally recognized system, the rivers are divided into groups on the scale of one to six.
Class I – These are easy courses which have a little bit of white water with very small waves
Class II – Suitable for novices, they are straightforward and easy to navigate
Class III – These need more skill and are suitable for intermediates
Class IV – These are only suitable for advanced white water rafters. They are very powerful rapids but are fairly predictable.
Class V – Only suitable for experts, these are quite dangerous.
Class VI – These courses are not suitable for anyone, they have been deemed impassable – Crazy people step up here!
Rafting in rivers with a low water volume is much more challenging because different skills are required to read the river. Shallow water rafting is potentially quite dangerous due to the exposed boulders. It’s a completely different experience to raft in a river that has a large water volume. These have faster rapids, and are much more unpredictable.
Every river is unique and requires a different set of skills and to tackle them, the modern kayaks used for white water rafting are state of the art as well. These are custom built to suit exactly what the rafter in question needs. White water kayaks are specially designed to be strong enough to withstand the extreme pressures in such situations.
Some great places and websites we recommend for white water rafting experiences include:
West Virginia Whitewater
UK Rafting
Wild Water Rafting
Cairns White Water Rafting
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December 27th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
How many days? what is the price?