Canoe Cruisers Association

General Policy
Trips listed on the Calendar web page, elsewhere in this web site, the monthly Cruiser newsletter and the annual club Roster are cooperative adventures among participants. Canoe Cruisers Association ("the Club") functions solely as an aid to bring paddlers together to go on mutually arranged boating outings. The Club does not sponsor nor organize "guided" or "instructional" trips. Trip coordinators announce that they welcome the company of other paddlers on trips they intend to take.

Trip groups are collectively responsible for the conduct of the outing, and each participant is individually responsible for judging his or her qualifications and for his or her safety on the river. By participating in one of these outings, you release the Club, its members, trip coordinators and fellow paddlers from any injuries due to any act or omission which may affect your safety or well being.

Trip Participants
All participants on the trip explicitly acknowledge and accept that boating can expose you to various hazards, for example, boulders and other obstacles, strainers, bridge pilings, undercut or entrapping formations, changing conditions, cold, high water and other hazards, sometimes in remote locations which makes rescue difficult. Injuries and deaths occasionally occur due to these hazards.

You are responsible for learning to recognize hazards and learning and practicing the techniques for avoiding these hazards. You are responsible for acquiring boating safety and rescue skills commensurate with the level of difficulty of the location you are paddling. You are responsible for learning about, acquiring and having with you equipment which is either required by law or regulations or is considered to be proper equipment under generally accepted safe boating standards.

Specifically, you are solely responsible for the following decisions at all times:

● The decision to go on any trip.
● The decision to put-in the selected river (which may not be the scheduled river) under conditions existing at the time of the put-in.
● The decision as to what equipment to take with you.
● The decision whether to scout any rapid.
● The decision whether to run any rapid.
● The decision whether to participate in any rescue of persons or recovery of any equipment.
● The decision to pass up any walk out or take out opportunity.

Don’t endanger your life and the lives of others by trying to boat on water beyond your ability. Most good paddlers develop by gradually increasing the difficulty of rivers they run over a period of several years.

Trip Coordinators
Trip coordinators expect that other trip participants have the skills necessary to handle the difficulty rating of the selected trip location. Trip coordinators are volunteers and receive no pay. Their functions are to get the group to the selected trip location at the same time, to arrange a shuttle, and to respond to inquiries to the best of their ability. The trip coordinator may never have participated on a trip at the selected location, or if he/she has, it may have been under conditions different than what will be encountered on the current trip.

Your trip coordinator may not have had any organized or formal training in whitewater boating skills, boating safety skills, first aid, or CPR. If you prefer to go on a trip only with a trip coordinator who has had organized or formal training in these areas, or who has a lot of boating experience, it is your responsibility to ask him/her about his/her training and experience. It is solely your decision whether the trip coordinator’s qualifications are satisfactory to you. Trip coordinators have no responsibility to perform any of the tasks for which they may have received training.

The trip coordinator is not responsible for judging the competency of your boating skills or the adequacy of your equipment. If you inquire of or ask advice pertaining to same, the trip coordinator, at his/her option, can respond. The trip coordinator's response will generally be to the best of his/her ability. However, because many factors, which the trip coordinator may or may not have knowledge of, can affect his/her response no assurance is given that the response is accurate.

Keep in mind that the purpose of the trip is to provide an opportunity for paddlers with similar skills to meet and boat together. It is not a teaching or training exercise.

You Are Solely Responsible for Your Safety

Difficulty Ratings
In the Calendar, rivers suitable for novices are designated N for beginning level paddlers and PN for practiced novice. Intermediate rivers are subcategorized as LI, I, and HI for low, mid, and high intermediate, respectively. A is for advanced, and E is for expert. These are informal ratings only and are not recognized by any official group. In addition, they should never be considered absolute since weather and water conditions can drastically alter the nature and difficulty of any river.

River Rankings
The Monocacy Canoe Club, Frederick, MD, maintains a list of the relative difficulty of rivers in our area. If you are interested in a trip on a river you are not familiar with, review the River Rankings List to see how it compares to rivers you know.

Canoe Cruisers Association

Trip Guidelines

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2005 Canoe Cruisers Association