I shot this video while on my trip down Northern Saskatchewan’s Porcupine River. To make it down the river I needed to use several whitewater strokes which I cover in this video. Learn the basics of the draw, and cross draw strokes, the pry, back paddle, and both the high brace and low brace.
Transcript:
there's a teen whitewater strokes you want to know when you're going to tackle some whitewater and that's whether you're going solo or you're going tandem so the first one we're going to start with is the draw basically the draws you're going to paddle out to the side tuck your elbow in towards your body and draw the water towards you draw a stroke when you're paddling so low will side flip your boat it'll make your boat drift directly sideways like this so the opposite of the draw is the cross draw you reach over draw the water in and slice your paddle up forward like that but when you get into those rapids when they're really pushy you want to slow down and in whitewater you gain control over your boat by paddling either faster or slower than the current another really important thing to know is the back stroke and that's basically just paddling backwards like that one of the key things in whitewater that'll make you more comfortable and I'll get you down the rapids is knowing how to brake let's say I'm jumping to my right side like this I'm going to slap the water and push myself back up the high brace will save you from tipping to your off side differing like this throw my body weight over this way and catch my body weight with my paddle and that will save you from tipping and one more really key whitewater stroke is the pry use the gunnel to balance the paddle and when you're in whitewater a really good thing to do is pump another thing that's going to help you wrap it is a spray deck it's basically a tarp that's custom-made to fit over the top of the canoe and that means if you bomb a big way you can use less likely to fill up and swamp with water those are a few things you want to keep in mind when you're going to tackle some whitewater learn them get out there in practice and have some fun bombing some wraps you
