It’s the height of the paddling season and I’m chomping at the bit. I check the calendar of a local paddling club and find…nothing. Zilch. Naught. Nada. By contrast, a casual social media group has four paddles scheduled—all beginner flatwater.

Paddling clubs are dinosaurs. Their stereotype is that of a fusty group watching slideshows about paddling, while not actually getting on the water all that much. They’ll cite cumbersome procedures, declining participation and tempest-in-a-teapot internal politics. Caught between the devil of liability and a sea of seat-of- the-pants social media invites, paddling clubs occupy the netherworld between professional instruction and friends going out for a paddle, with the benefits of neither. It’s time to re-envision paddling clubs. It’s time to become Scottish.

I Googled my old paddling club from when I lived on Scot- land’s east coast. They offer two weekly pool sessions, river trips, weekly surf sessions, kayak polo and slalom tams, two formal balls and they take over a local pub twice a week. They supply the gear, just bring lunch and your “paddling costume.” This, in a town of 17,000 souls, compared to my current home of 2.2 million.

At their best, paddling clubs play three functions. They generate new paddlers, connect existing paddlers to other paddlers and disciplines, and build a social bond.

Social media formats like Meetup.com work for novice-friendly paddles, but become problematic when they venture beyond easy trips. Their spontaneous nature seldom vets skills properly, putting too much pressure on organizers. Unlike clubs, casual get-togethers can’t insure their leaders or subsidize skill development. Paddlers will grow out of them if they aspire to more than flatwater.

Even formal clubs, which often succeed at turning new paddlers into more frequent or better paddlers, usually fail at attracting new recruits. If we want the sport to grow, this is precisely what we need. In Scotland, with no gear, the fact that all I needed to provide was a sandwich allowed me to participate in a sport I couldn’t afford. Two decades later, I’m still thoroughly addicted — to paddling, not sandwiches.

North American clubs could mimic this initiation by establishing a fleet of boats and gear, partnering with paddling shops to provide storage, bulk rentals and instruction—things shops do already. Like clubs, shops have a direct interest in getting the vast numbers of hikers, cyclists, fitness enthusiasts and skiers to add paddling to their quiver.

My city has three separate clubs, one each for sea kayakers, whitewater canoeists and whitewater kayakers. Each has its own vibe, but it means paying multiple dues to join all or missing out on experiences. Paddling clubs should merge, or at least collaborate. The multi-disciplinary Scottish club gave me a chance to paddle whitewater, ocean, surf, and play polo, as well as meet people passionate about each. Combining also offers economies of scale on storage, classes, equipment and insurance.

Let’s take a cue from the Scots. Let’s trade our spray skirts for kilts, speak in thick brogues and make our clubs what they should be: the epicenter of paddling culture.

Neil Schulman lives in Portland, Oregon, and is a regular contributor to Adventure Kayak. He first paddled whitewater on the Tay River in Scotland many years ago. After a long swim, he ended up borrowing a paddling costume.

This article first appeared in the 2014 Annual Paddling Buyer’s Guide. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it on your desktop here. 

Adventurer Paul Everitt speaks with expedition paddler, Chris Hayward, who in 2012 became the youngest person to kayak down the full length of Australia’s longest river, the Murray. Hayward is now attempting the first full ascent of the river, starting at the mouth in the Southern Ocean in early December and kayaking 2,520 km upstream before hiking the last 236 km to the source of the Murray and on to the summit of Mt. Kosciuszko. To read the full interview, click here, and to learn more about Everitt and other adventurers around the world, visit Going Solo.

What kayak are you using to take on the Murray River during your Sea to Source expedition? 
Chris – I am using a Wilderness Systems Tempest 170, it is the same model as I used on my previous trip and after kayaking over 3,000 km in these kayaks I can honestly say I love them!

 I raced one of mountain biking’s crown jewels this summer. One hundred and one miles of roots and rocks, hour-long climbs and jack hammer descents left me with two numb hands and unable to climb stairs for two weeks. It was hard. When I was younger, I rock climbed a lot—that was hard too.

The semi-objective rating scale used by climbers made difficulty easier to measure than a 101-mile slog, but, like most action sports, “hard” is a relative term where enthusiasts find their own frontier. Whitewater is different—hard means unforgiving. More difficult means inherently more dangerous.

A simple way to understand and assess risk is: Risk = Probability x Consequence.

Probability is the likelihood of something going wrong—going off line or getting pinned, or going over your handlebars or taking a lead fall.

Consequence estimates how bad the situation will be if the above is realized—broken gear, a broken body or death.

Multiply them together and a relative risk rating is created. It’s an approximation at best, but provides language to deal with these ambiguous dangers. This formula illustrates why whitewater carries more risk than almost any other sport.

For the majority of action sports, consequence is more or less fixed regardless of difficulty. Serious injury is the exception, not the rule.

Consequence is always present, but generally realized at low to mod­erate levels. For example, the potential severity of going over the bars is the same whether the mountain bike is going fast or slow—a bro­ken collarbone. The consequence of a climber’s lead fall is the same regardless of an easy or hard route—a short fall arrested by bolts and harness. Likewise, these consequences are the same whether a novice or expert—falling is falling.

Probability on the other hand, does change with difficulty. We are more likely to fall off of a difficult climb than an easy one. It’s also in probability that novices differ from experts. High skill levels suggest less probability of a negative outcome. Only at the extremes of these activities does this break down.

Whitewater paddling is different. For each increase in the difficulty of rapids, both probability and consequence rise in lock step. Difficult rapids imply both more chance of something going wrong and worse outcomes when something does. The multiplying effect of the for­mula cranks up whitewater risk much more quickly than other sports.

In other sports, the individual defines when things get hard. For us, the river tells us when it’s hard. At class IV and above, things can unravel quickly regardless of skill. A hard river is an unforgiving one.

For aspiring paddlers, this lesson may be hard learned. While difficult rock climbs keep novices away because they can’t get off the ground, anyone can drop into a class IV rapid. And they do.

New paddlers may tempt difficult rapids and realize their limits with a thumping, but I see advanced paddlers falling into a similar trap. So focused on whether they can make the line, they mistake confidence for low probability. Confidence in being able to make a line does not change the odds of it going wrong, or the consequences. At the extreme, elite paddlers are merely rolling the dice on whether consequence will be realized or not.

In whitewater, hard means unforgiving, but we can find challenge wherever we choose. Given a target level of risk and consequence dic­tated by the river grade, it’s our decision-making and skill set that manage the probability of something going right. In whitewater, the reward of putting it all together is harder earned.

Jeff Jackson is a professor of Outdoor Adventure at Algonquin College and is the co-author of Managing Risk: Systems Planning for Outdoor Adventure Programs. His Alchemy column appears in every issue of Rapid. 

This editorial originally appeared in the 2013 Paddling Buyer’s Guide. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it on your desktop here.