How to scout rivers for rifting?

Scouting from shore is probably the most conservative way to run a river. If you’ve checked out a guidebook, and you understand that there are some large river features on the route that you want to check out before you run them, then scouting from shore is the best way to do that. Often guidebooks will tell you some river features upstream of the large rapid so that you have a better understanding where to take out, so that you can walk downstream and check it out. One of the beauties of rafting is that you’re also with a group of other people so scouting from shore give you an opportunity to talk to fellow raft guides so you can decide which is the best route to take and which are the best rapids to run and the best rapids to walk around. Also you have the ability to split your group. Some folks will be comfortable running certain rapids, other folks won’t and scouting gives you the opportunity to pull over to shore, give your crew a rest, give you the opportunity to figure out the line you want to take. It also give you an opportunity to let your crew see where they’re going to go and make an educated, um, educated decision whether or not they want to run that rapid or not. Um, also scouting from shore gives you the ability to walk down beyond the rapid and set up safety, you can stop downstream, you can run a rapid one boat at a time, you can have one guide downstream perhaps with guests setting up safety so that you run that rapid as conservatively as possible. It’s always recommended that if you’re on a class three or above rapid that you scout it the first few time you run it, so that you know exactly what you’re doing and where you’re going.