Launching the ACA River Kayak Hand Paddling Curriculum

Paddling with your hands? What’s that all about? Probably a decade ago, I was presented with a silly contraption at a pool session that was made from plastic, strapped to your hands, and made it super easy to hand roll a whitewater kayak. Someone called them hand paddles. Eventually, it became suggested to buy (or build) a pair and stow it in the stern of my whitewater kayak to use as a back-up paddle “just in case.” Then one day I was paddling the Green River Narrows in North Carolina and noticed a friend of mine lose his paddle and have to use a spare set of hand paddles on some highly technical rapids. This was a pivotal moment in my kayaking career. I didn’t want to be in the situation, paddling at the highest level with a piece of gear I’ve mostly used in a pool. So I decided to commit a bit more to hand paddling…and I purchased a 4-piece breakdown paddle. It wasn’t that much further down the road that I broke my paddle while paddling the Thompson River near Lake Jocassee, in which the fellow paddlers in my group nervously chuckled that I better have the skills to paddle class V with hand paddles because that’s all they had. Then I reached into my dry bag and pulled out a 4-piece breakdown paddle and sighed with relief.

After years of whitewater kayaking, hand paddling felt so natural to me. I could feel the water at my fingertips and dancing through the rapids felt so intuitive. I couldn’t immediately harness the same amount of power I had with a shafted paddle, but I couldn’t blame the hand paddles as I knew plenty of folks who navigated class V in hand paddles and Keith Sprinkle raced the Green Race in them. Living in the southeast United States, I had plenty of friends who hand paddled so it never felt odd to me. Whether it be paddling down river or going squirt boating, hand paddling brought joy to many of my friends and provided them a tool that motivated years of paddling in their lives. When I had hand paddles on, I was definitely the odd duck on the river as everyone else was using a shafted kayak or canoe paddle. Paddling a river I was familiar with while wearing hand paddles felt like paddling the river for the first time. I was looking for the “hand paddler line” on each rapid and just let my hands stay submersed in the water to feel the twists, turns, and swirls of the currents. While wearing hand paddles, I felt more like the more connected with the water and where it was trying to guide me.

In one of my recent posts (https://hub.jacksonkayak.com/2022/04/cedar-river-slalom-race-in-the-antix-2-0-and-dynamic-duo/), I decided to take my set of hand paddles to the Cedar River Race in Washington state, a whitewater slalom event. No one had ever raced the Cedar River Race in hand paddles and I decided to change that. I may not have been the fastest one out there but I showed another path for entering the whitewater racing scene. I was even able to get through 21 of 22 gates! I have never been someone who pushed the envelope of paddling the hardest rapids. I have been someone more focused on paddling as may different crafts on as many different rivers as possible. I love the rawness of exploration. I also love seeing that moment in the students I teach and people I guide down rivers for the first time.

Years into my volunteer work with the ACA River Kayak Committee, Mary Pedrick approached me with a passion for developing a curriculum and Instructor credential for hand paddling. At the time I was living in Seattle and had hand paddled far less due to the cold water in the PNW. I was inspired by Mary’s drive and wanted to help her in any way that I could. Hand paddling is a niche sport within the niche sport of whitewater kayaking. Take that one step further and try and find an ACA Instructor who is a hand paddler, and you’ll find only a small group of folks. I decided to step up with my grassroots education in hand paddling to help develop the first ever ACA River Kayak Hand Paddling program. Mary did almost the entirety of developing the program and getting it approved by the ACA Safety Education and Instruction Council (SEIC), but I was happy to offer help and voice my support for the program and offer to help launch the program. Mary did a phenomenal job at creating a program that was hand paddler centric as opposed to simply adapting existing River Kayak curriculum for hand paddles.

Thankfully I earned my ACA Instructor Trainer certification in late 2021 and was able to be one of two mandatory ACA Instructor Trainers needed to launch a new program. I flew from Seattle, WA to Asheville, NC to co-lead the first ever ACA River Kayak Hand Paddling Instructor Endorsement Workshop, a three-day clinic progressing from class 1 skills to class 2 and finally to class 3. In total we had 10 participants including 5 students, 2 subject matter experts, and 3 facilitators. We brought in two subject matter experts with more than 15 years of hand paddling experience to help us test out the curriculum, make improvements, and make sure the curriculum was effective. We setup the course such that each participant would be able to share their thoughts on the curriculum and test out what was written on paper. One unforgettable moment occurred on Day 1 when our group of three facilitators pulled together our different hand paddle designs to show the group, and upon seeing them several participants went to there cars and pulled out design after design differing from our’s. We ended up with huge pile of designs and interesting stories to support each design. After Day 1 on the river concluded, we were amazed to find that one of the people spectating from the river bank was in awe of the hand paddles we were using. She mentioned having to give up on kayaking as she couldn’t use a shafted paddle, but that the hand paddles seemed like a way for her to reconnect with her kayak and the water. She was so happy!

One of the biggest takeaways from the curriculum was considering how to execute assisted rescues with hand paddles strapped to my hands. For example, performing an Unresponsive Paddler Rescue (aka Hand of God) as a rescuer or a Bow Rescue (aka T-Rescue) as an individual receiving rescue. This brought into question the need for built-in flotation in hand paddles and the use of retainers to prevent losing the hand paddles during a rescue attempt. In these rescues, seconds matter and any delays mean that someone is still underwater or closer to wet exiting their kayak. Ideally, we would have come up with rescue techniques that kept the hand paddles on the paddler’s hands. This was attempted but posed a possible risk of shoulder injury or unsuccessful rescue execution. Individuals who were able to quickly remove their hand paddles and retain them on their wrists were the quickest and most successful without risking losing their hand paddles. Others were able to accomplish the rescue by stowing the hand paddles near their torso on the sprayskirt. We will continue to refine these techniques and the curriculum.

After three days on the water with fellow hand paddlers, I had such a large amount of energy for hand paddling. I met people who only kayaked rivers with hand paddles, people who felt their hand paddles made them unwelcome to join paddling crews, and people interested in spreading the sport of hand paddling so that others may engage with the great outdoors and paddlesports. Kayaking has had a transformative effect on my life and I want to do whatever I can to introduce kayaking into the lives of others who need a change in their lives. After more than two years in this stressful pandemic, I have depended my connection with the water and seek it as a form of therapy. I hope that this new ACA River Kayak Hand Paddling program will provide opportunities for new individuals to connect with kayaking and provide an alternative for folks who didn’t connect with kayaking with a shafted paddle. My advice: pull out those hand paddles from the stern of your kayak and start practicing with them before you need them on difficult whitewater.