| Reading the River |
Rocks in the River
Rocks can be your friend or your foe. Sometimes they are foe.
Sometimes they are your friend. Sometimes they are fun! It is
usually no big deal to hit rocks. A friendly rock is one with
a rounded upstream face and a pillow of water cushioning it. When
you encounter a rock on the river, it is important lean into the
rock, lifting your upstream edge. The pillow helps keep your boat
off the rock.
The Eddy
One of the most obvious river features are the eddies, or slow
water zones, most often found on the sides of the river. A rock
or 
pile
of rocks deflects the current, and the water circles back upstream
to fill in behind.
On your local river, see if you can find eddies with water actually flowing upstream!
Paddlers in any type of competition or just for fun do eddy turns. Eddy turns are the foundation for controlling your descent of the river. You can stop, rest, set up moves. Eddy turns require an approach path that sets you up to get all the way into the eddy. Your bow stops in the calm of the eddy, and the stern is pushed around by the current. Once a paddler enters the eddy they need to tilt their boat to stay balanced, or else water climbs up on their boat, and flips them. On your local river, count how many eddies you can see that would fit a kayak.
Reading the River
But a river has more than eddies behind rocks. The spectrum
of features at formed at different water levels is part of what
makes whitewater so much fun. As more water covers a rock you
get a rock that is barely covered changing to a steep pourover,
to pourover to wave hole to a series of waves.
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Reading the River
As a tiny bit of water goes over the same rock, you still have a pillow on the upstream side, and an eddy below. As even more water goes over, you get a pourover. With even more water over the same spot, it turns into a wave hole,tall and more wavelike, with white crashing back upstream. With more water you have only a occasionally breaking wave, and a series of waves after. With more water the wave will stop breaking, and you have a series of waves.
