Words and photos:
Jamie Greenhalgh

Jamie Greenhalgh

Bio

Jamie is a passionate river guide, kayaking coach and people person. He runs two kayaking businesses: Paddle365, for cutting edge white water skills coaching, and Dee River Kayaking, dedicated to giving the best possible introductions for regular people into the sport. Jamie is lucky enough to be supported by Pyranha Kayaks and NRS Equipment, both of whom make brilliant gear to keep him and his customers looking and feeling cool. www.paddle365.co.uk www.deeriverkayaking.com

Building a WW rollercoaster

The switch from river leading to river mentoring and why it’s important.

After a long lockdown hibernation, it’s time for us to shake off our cobwebs and get ready for what might be the most significant influx of paddlesport newcomers that we have ever seen. Many will come with zero experience, and we as a paddling community are about to have a big job in welcoming them and creating memorable experiences that will make these new paddlers into addicts, like you and I.

Designing and leading a trip for developing paddlers is an enjoyable and fulfilling thing to do. My aim with this article is to invite you to go out, have a great time on the water, lead by example and share the sport we love. I also aim to challenge you as a leader. In the game of paddling adventures, the most experienced paddler typically holds all the cards. Show your hand wherever possible, and give your cards away regularly as it is safe to do so.

Last summer was big. Fresh from their first-ever national lockdown, the UK’s public got out on the water in greater numbers than ever before. Watersport retailers reported record-breaking sales; activity providers were run off their feet. Areas of natural beauty such as beaches, rivers and national parks were regularly filled with people taking advantage of the freedom and their new lease of life. If the summer paddling boom of 2020 is anything to go by (and I believe it is), then our sport is about to be hit with a mad rush of newcomer uptake.

Mentorship is necessary, and this is why

At the same time, British Canoeing has just released a host of new leadership awards. These spans all aquatic environments, from swimming pools through the coasts and on to advanced whitewater. The leadership award scheme broadly focuses on a leader’s ability to deliver a safe and enjoyable adventure for their participants, which they will do by being skilled on the river and by their awareness of three major situational factors that allow them to make good tactical choices:

1. Understanding of the people they’re guiding (motivations, competencies and psychological states).
2. Awareness of the environment (what is happening around them now, what will be happening later, and how this could affect their plans).
3. Awareness of the challenge level (how hard the participants are finding/going to find what they’re doing and does this fit their motivations and competencies?).

By regularly monitoring these situational factors, a leader can make solid tactical choices on where to go and manage the situations they encounter, be those individual rapids or rising water levels. When put together, this should, in theory, allow for a great trip every time. They are building the ride that the participants will get on and hopefully enjoy. This model works well for stand-alone trips, but if you’re involved with someone’s progression longer-term, maintaining this level of control will damage those who have been taken under the wing. Mentorship is necessary, and this is why.

The RollerCoaster Theory

Rollercoasters are pretty damn good. When a person gets on a rollercoaster, they accept that they are about to be a passenger on the wildest train ride conceivable. By carrying stomach-churning speed through tight turns and steep drop-offs, the whole ride has been designed to leave you exhilarated whilst providing an ironclad guarantee of safety. No matter how much it rattles the nerves, participants are generally safe in the knowledge that the worst thing that can happen on a rollercoaster is that you receive a faceful of vomit from the person in the car in front.

On a rollercoaster, each person accepts that they will have absolutely no control of where the car is going. This is ok because safety is guaranteed by design. When we move this concept into the adventure sports setting; however, leaders can only limit the environment’s risks; they can never wholly remove them. Imagine if you were on a rollercoaster that you had no control over, but you knew that the ironclad safety guarantee was no longer there. At what point would thrills become terrors? When does the excitement of anticipation become a disabling fear of the unknown?

Paddling is obviously nothing like a rollercoaster. You have control of your boat, for starters, and it is your skills that get it round the track, no matter how nicely laid out the line is. In a boat, if your skill level isn’t up to the presented challenge, it can put you in real danger. When, as a participant, you feel that you are in a dangerous position, for the sake of your sanity, you have to find a way to take more control.

There are three factors in a paddling adventure that a participant can take control of, and you may recognise them from the section above:

1. Their performance.
2. The environment they paddle through.
3. The types of the challenge they take on.

If someone else is making all of the decisions in category 2 and 3 for them, the only thing they’re left with is their boat control skills. Suppose those skills are not quite up to scratch yet. In that case, it is almost inevitable that issues around fear and anxiety will creep in as they experience the uncomfortable realities of capsizing and swimming in white water. This is how a great many confidence issues in paddling are born. In short, no matter how good the river leader is, if they don’t share their understanding and control with their participants, every trip will be a roll of the dice for that person when it comes to their confidence.

River Mentoring – building the ride together

The paddlers with the experience to lead make decisions on a river for reasons that would appear obvious. Firstly, their personal skills in whitewater and rescue create the safety net if things go wrong. Their judgement calls should also keep the group out of harm’s way by putting them in the right place at the right time and using sound tactics to support the group’s descents. This is unlikely to change on a given day, and that is the reason that control can’t be entirely given away. On the other hand, there may be a great many other decisions that a leader makes on a day that has little to do with the group’s immediate safety at the time.

Here is an exercise. I invite you to imagine that every decision a leader makes on a day is written down on a playing card. Examples of cards could be:

1. Choosing a safe group paddling method for a rapid, such as eddy hopping.
2. Select an order that the participants will paddle down in.
3. Select a section of the river to suit the group with present water conditions.
4. Design the safety set up for a challenging rapid.
5. Choose a skill for everyone to work on as you go down, etc.

Order your cards

Lay your cards out in front of you. These cards represent your control of the trip. As a de facto leader, you can choose to hold them close to your chest and personally play each one when the time comes. Or you can give some away to your participants and support them to make decisions for themselves. The cards you play have differing consequences and rely on differing knowledge and experience levels to play them well.

Now order your cards from the lowest consequence decision and least knowledge necessary to the highest consequence decision and most knowledge and experience necessary. There may be some cards that it is inconceivable that a novice paddler can safely play, and for them to do so, they’d need a serious boost in understanding and experience. On the other hand, some are of so little consequence that anyone can play them and feel the benefit of that experience.

The challenge I’d like to set you is this: throughout a series of trips, without compromising group safety, find a way to give all your cards away.
When all the cards are in the open, your group has the knowledge they need to feel like they can build their own rollercoaster under your care as a mentor.

When they step into their boats and get ready for the ride, they’ll know exactly what they’ve signed up for. The trip will fit with their motivations and abilities on the day. The paddler has control of their own destiny. They have built their own rollercoaster. This isn’t ‘fall or fly’, nor is it an abdication of leadership responsibility.

This is how you as a leader can help novices become strong, confident and independent paddlers, and in the end, you’ll all be much safer and happier for it. Who knows, you may even appreciate it when one of your ex-novices casts out the safety net for you one day.