The Mental Side of Creeking

Many boaters are a bit reticent to talk about this aspect, believing that the nervousness we encounter before a big drop and the decision to paddle, walk or run home to our living room should be private decisions. Many are unwilling to talk about their decisions or the decisions of their companions out of fear of offending. I’d argue that this is one of the most important aspects of creeking to talk about and come to terms with. We must constantly assess our ability to accurately evaluate the abilities and circumstances of ourselves and our group.

We all cope with stressful situations differently and our responses to running the gee-narr can be incredibly varied. However, we’re all familiar with the many emotional and physiological responses to scouting and running challenging drops. In general, we all react to a particular patch of gradient in one of three ways. The first is where the consequences are completely out of mind and we are focused on the fun we’ll have and the feeling of elation we’ll receive at the bottom. This happens with me on a rapid I absolutely know I can run because I’ve styled it many times. The second involves some serious butterflies, but this nervousness translates into increased focus and awareness. The third is where we are so nervous that we feel physically weak and shaky (or “gripped”). The late, great William Nealy, in his tome Kayak, popularized the “Spit Test,” which is very useful. If you can’t summon your mouth to produce some saliva and then expel it, you probably can’t rely on your torso to stomp that boof. Another thing I watch for is difficulty getting your skirt on, as it takes strength, awareness, timing and physical coordination; skills that come in really hand when hucking a drop. Being excessively gripped is obviously the most dangerous condition, as it is most likely to result in a less than stellar physical performance. However, we also need to be wary of the first case, as it involves a lessened state of mental acuity. For example, the only time I’ve had any sort of scare on the Upper Yough was when I pinned myself upside-down in the class II run-out. In retrospect, I was not paying attention to my surroundings because they didn’t seem very threatening. We can work at fighting these natural side-effects of overcoming fear, but we will all eventually experience them, so I believe it is important to become intimately familiar with them so that we can react well when they do pop up.

Setting is also important to take into account when deciding whether to run or walk. Is this roadside park and huck? Or are you in a committed situation which would require your friends to perform a prolonged extraction to reach medical attention? How much daylight is left? How’s your group’s situation? If there has already been an incident or near-miss, it’s a good idea to become more conservative. My approach to scouting a big drop that is at the height of my abilities is to go into the scouting process with the expectation of walking. I then analyze the line, the consequences and the circumstances in an effort to convince myself that I stand a very good chance of nailing the line and that if I don’t I will be willing to accept the results of my mistake. I feel that this helps me to keep my nervousness working for me and prevents me from making a hasty decision based on a preconceived notion that I should “fire it up.”

Now we come to one of the biggest dilemmas in group dynamics as it relates to paddling. In running whitewater, we need to be very clear that we are all making our own decisions. We must never influence anyone to run something they would be otherwise uncomfortable with. Neither can we claim any sort of responsibility from the outcome of another’s decisions and performance. Likewise, when it comes down to it, we cannot prevent anyone from running something that we believe is above their head. However, it is important that we be honest with our fellow paddlers in assessing their decisions. If we’re not comfortable with one of our friends running something, we should tell them that we have a bad feeling about it. In deciding which river to run, we should take the abilities and comfort level of each individual into account. And we should be wary of leading a less experienced or talented boater to run something just because we make it look easy. In a weaker group, it’s wise to be more cautious even with rapids you might be dying to run, but would present a challenge to some of your companions. Boating involves contrary realities: we are solely responsible for the success or failure of our lines while at the same time we are responsible for doing everything in our power to minimize the risk to our group.

Even more neglected than our mental procedure of scouting and running a drop is a post-huck evaluation. This is a perfect opportunity to evaluate many aspects of our physical and mental performance without the emotional reactions mentioned above. Most importantly, did I make the right decision to run or not? Did I make any mistakes in scouting that I can learn from? Did the water move my boat the way I thought it would? Was I physical and mentally prepared to make the crux move at the crucial time? Did I succumb to any of the natural reactions that are the bane of creekboaters (such as freezing up, backpaddling or leaning back)? Is there anything I can do next time to make the drop easier, safer and cleaner? Is there anything else that I can take from this experience and use to perform better next time I’m in a similar situation?

This is also an important group activity at the end of each run, or on a six hour drive from Motown to the R-O-C. How’d our individual performances go? Was everyone well matched in their skill set to the creeks we dropped? Did we communicate effectively or do we need to work on our hand signals? (I’ve learned from experience that misunderstood directions are worse than no directions at all). Was our safety posture up to snuff or do we need to work on swiftwater rescue or medical skills? Did everyone skate in their lane, or did anyone cause additional problems by trying to do too much? These are tough questions to ask of your friends and tough questions to answer to your friends, but it’s important to talk and think about these things so that we can better prepare our team for our next mission. Communication is very important on and off the river, so that you understand what your teammates expect you to do and how they will react to fluid situations. -Andy Cook