Sea Kayak 206 - River Kayak Cross Training for Sea Kayakers

If you want to become a better, safer, more confident sea kayaker, take our whiter water river kayaking cross training lesson. To paddle safely in open water, sea kayakers need the kind of rough water practice that white water rivers offer. With proper training, river kayaking can be as safe or safer than sea kayaking because it's easier to control the level of challenge on a river than in the sea - where things can really get wild. We won't be hurling waterfalls or doing cartwheels in this lesson, just the basics of boat control, hazard avoidance, and some surfing on standing waves.

River and sea kayaking are more intimately related than most people realize - the paddling strokes and skills for reading currents are mostly the same and so is much of the equipment. The skills and confidence gained from a whitewater course will translate directly to paddling your sea kayak in rough open water and ocean surf. You'll also discover that river kayaking can be fun for people of all ages and abilities. River kayaking isn't just about adrenaline rushes and waterfalls; it can be as relaxing or challenging as you want to make it. River kayaking is inherently more social than sea kayaking, and river kayaking often rivals sea kayaking for scenery and wildlife.

Sea kayakers who haven't tried white water are missing out on a lot of fun and good skill building.

Location: TBD
Duration: 2 days
Class Size: 4
Fee: $446

Call us at (206) 527-1825 or E-mail us at info@kayakacademy.com to make a reservation.

If you've already begun sea or river kayaking, and don't need to start over with the basic equipment lectures and wet-exits in pools, then this is the perfect entry level white water kayaking lessons for you. We offer a two-day (typically Saturday - Sunday) course. These courses are limited to people who already have the ability to roll reliably on at least one side. Those without basic kayaking instruction will need to start with our flat water lessons (Sea Kayak 111). To accelerate your learning, we maximize your time on the river, hence the prerequisites, no indoor lectures, no pool time. To assure that you receive plenty of individual instruction, we limit our class size to a maximum of four students.

To make learning easy and fun we provide kayaks to match a variety of existing skill levels and rates of learning, or you may use your own kayak. For flat water lessons, see the course description for our 111 Paddle Strokes and Rescue Techniques course.

All year round there are numerous rivers for paddlers of all skill levels within an hour's drive of our base in Seattle. Few other locations are so ideal for learning and enjoying river kayaking.

Rolling and River Kayaking

This two-day course is designed for kayakers who've already had some success at Eskimo rolling and want the training needed to begin running rivers with their friends and clubs (in sea or river kayaks). It's also good practice for sea kayakers who want to get some combat roll experience and develop a higher level of bracing and rough water skill.

Before getting into moving water, you'll review the paddling strokes, work on bomb-proofing your Eskimo rolls, and learn to handle a highly maneuverable river kayak. Then after extending your safety knowledge to include river hazards and basic river rescues, you will get two days of hands-on white water kayaking experience including running a Class II+ river (rivers are classified I to IV in ascending order of difficulty).