Simon is the coolest, most chilled instructor. Fantastic man.

Simons been a staple in the kayak industry for as long as anyone can remember. Great to see you showing his company and work.

you did great! love the nervousness and excitement that comes with starting out in whitewater, its a sport that I've fallen in love with! super thrilled that you got to experience whitewater and thanks for sharing the stoke and bringing attention to the sport! :)

I began real white water kayaking in 1969 on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, the Selway river in Idaho and the Gallitan River in Wyoming. Back then, there were no commercial white water kayaks in North America, Everyone joined a club and made their own fiberglass boat in one weekend. There were no dry suits for cold water, I made a wet suit from a kit and glued it all together. I paddled every club trip that spring in southern Ontario to get the skills for that trip. Our trip organizer there was the legendary Walter Blackadar, look him up. I am still doing white water now and I will be 80 years old in a few months, We did some rivers last spring and the average age of the participants was 81 years old, and the oldest was 89. He still alpine skis, I have many very fond memories of those trips. I always felt free to portage when I was not up to something big, safety first. Click on my picture on the left to see a few old videos.

I've been kayaking lakes and canals for years, just never been able to do whitewater. I'm going to spend winter getting fitter and get the correct gear. Ready to go on my Kayaker white water course in spring.

I've been kayaking for 18 years (since I was 8). Both in white water and on the sea. It's great that this great sport is getting attention.

Just stumbled across this video. Happy to see you give Whitewater Kayaking a try. I never thought I would ever get into it but now I paddle pretty regularly. It’s super fun and addicting and I’ve completely fallen in love with the sport. I started in early 2020 and now paddle Class IV/V on a regular basis. I would love to see you continue with it and paddle the Grand Canyon one day. I also went ahead and subscribed. Keep it up as well with the great content :).

So hyped to see you try this! I’ve recently gotten into whitewater paddling and I’ve only been out on a River 7 times (the Ottawa river which is another great spot to learn although it’s over in Canada). I can totally relate to all the feelings you described here… your throat dries up and you start to question what am I doing as you drift into the rapid. But then it’s all so surreal and amazing. If you get the chance you’ve got to try it in a kayak with a sprayskirt. Work on a bombproof roll then that’s when the real fun begins!!!

Dude, first, you have great balls for going head-on at this, awesome. I must say I laughed myself almost to death for a while there. Great job riding out those rapids, and for staring this straight in the face and going right at it, kudos to you. You have my respect and admiration. You are the man!!

Gratz on 200k subs bro, doing amazing job!

Well done, thanks for sharing such a great experience and emotions. Keep going 🔥

Proud of this brave young man. It makes me wince, since I am an old whitewater instructor and rolling instructor.

Great video! Always interesting when you try out something new!🎉😊 Keep pushing!

That last respite was crazy for a beginner

Now i am definitely going to give whitewater kayaking a try 😃. Thanks man

Really cool to see someone excited to learn kayaking. You should get into a hardshell now

Amazing quality as always

Awesome, i had a lot of fun watching this 🎉

This is excellent. You showed exactly how it feels to experience whitewater for the first time, but I figure you did better than average. Nice job!

When I was in jr. high, we went on a raft down the river in my city as part of our science trip to discover how treated waste water impacts the river flora. There were some parts of the river that can get a bit dicey for a group of young teenagers with little to no experience rafting. It wasn't anything too serious but there were a few times we had to work hard to keep the raft righted. We did have a teacher with us but they can only do so much. I know a few of the groups did flip but we weren't one of them. It sure wasn't anything like this but this just reminded me of that.

LOL love it. everyone that gets on a powerful river for the first time says exactly what you say at 5:45. "What have I signed up for?" You did great and should keep at it. It is a beautiful sport.

Dont stop making videos. You are the best

Started paddling on a Ducky. Had a lot of swims, but learned to read water. 2nd season in a hardboat and stoked for the runoff to hit

how the hell was this not suggested to me even though I'm subscribed? Was just thinking "man he hasn't posted in a while", looked at your channel and saw you did upload! You deserve so many more views, honestly!!

content is always too good. keep it up

Ahh Sjoa! Yes it's gnarly here

Definitely crazy. For a complete noob, the best advice, well besides not doing this, is when you get to the whitewater, paddle like hell. Often the reason people flip is that they have their paddle in the water and the rapids grab the paddle and the boat causing it to flip. As a complete noob, just paddle as fast as you can. Now as experience increases, you will learn to read the water and know how to brace and lean the boat. But till then, paddle.

Great run!!! And that was some serious whitewater. Don’t worry about the nerves, it’s just part of the sport :)

Great video Jonne

The only way to get experience is to try it, everyone has their first experiences! Well done. To my eye it looks like you ended up in the water because you leaned upstream. The water is going downstream, you lean up, and then you get thrown into the water and upside down. You did good on your first day out!

Jonne, great video as always! The cinematic elements really conveyed your anxiety. Also, was that a teaser? The grand canyon????? Would love to see it!

U are great!Keep it up, 👍

Please anyone watching this, if you are interested in kayaking, take a class from a certified instructor. Inflatable kayaks are significantly easier to learn in that a hard shell boat. (former pro here, nationally ranked racer back in the day, youngest certified ww kayak instructor in the US for a time). The Grand is fairly technically easy (class 3 to easy 4), its just big water (10k+ CFS is lowish) and takes a couple of weeks to run by most people in groups. Another challenge with the Grand is the permit system, unless you do a commercial trip it might take a while to get a permit. My advice is get good enough to easily run and catch every eddy in class 3 and easy 4s before heading to the Colorado River. In big volume rivers a swim can be brutal since the rivers are so much bigger/wider. Make it as safe for you and those you are with when you are going into areas that are very hard to get out of (emergency rescues in the Canyon are hard). WW Kayaking is an amazing sport, be safe out there!

Good job hanging on to the paddle, but at some point you should shove the boat towards the eddy and use the paddle to swim… toward an eddy of course. This was my 3rd year WW kayaking and I’m still only an advanced beginner.

First and only time i went canoeing it was a school trip. We had these heavy and green 2 man canoes and wooden oars and it was really hard to get any speed or steering. At the time the rapids between the lakes we were traversing were more active than the teachers had expected. They ranged from 1 - 3 on the scale showed in the video. Me and my mate made it through the trip dry, but one boat did flip which was not ideal. Pretty insane to after the fact realize a lot of thought and preparation should go into white water kayaking(canoeing?), and we did it on a whim. Exhilarating stuff.

I've been a surfer for 50 years and done some kayaking in my time as well. I've never done anything dangerous in a river, that is whole different ball game to surfing. Salute man, that was awesome and takes guts 👍

Stout lines for first time man good strokes

Yes! Whitewater is the way 🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽

You did seriously well brother!!

Paddy had his work cut out! 😂

I love Kayaking but do not have enough water near me to make it a regular hobby it would be to boring. Great Video! It is not an extreme sport but what about a cross country sking tour? I have been looking for a holiday where I can learn it.

simon clearly has great taste in kayaks

Check out getting a thing of spare air. I carried it on my life jacket back in my rafting and kayaking days. I use to be a guide. I would get made fun of for having it, but it made me feel a bit better knowing I could get a breath if I got stuck underwater for a spell.

First level was already😮😮😮😮 😅. PS: love the white lines editing hehe

Woah that flip was crazy. I felt scared for you

A lot to correct here, However I know this is a fast forward instruction for a show. Fun to watch 😂 thank you for your effort. Dude! Climb back on that inflatable and keep going. Only plastic boat swimmers needs eddy.

My favourite creator does my favourite sport

I hard boated my first class IV in WV on the New River. Nervous as hell. Fayette Station (I dont wanna hear it's a class III it's a class IV to me damn it). I was looking at it from the banks and there were these two dudes, a few years younger than me, one in a pack raft the other in a creeker, doing a wet exit under the guidance of an older guy. I was like hold on, do you guys have a roll? They were like no, we've never done whitewater before. I told my friend when he came down to the bank these two have never done whitewater before and he laughed. Then his eyes got wide and he said "you're serious?" One of the funniest things ive seen. Anyways those two motherfuckers made it down clean. I flipped but managed to roll back up. Hope you stick with the sport. Nothing like it.

Very cool video. Watching it AFTER having seen your poll question about it not doing well, I kept thinking through how you could title and thumbnail it differently, and while I might have gone slightly more "extreme" in the title and thumbnail, I think this is just one of those videos that isn't easy to convey the message in a title and thumbnail. Unfortunately, I think some REALLY good videos and even really good video IDEAS are very hard to "tease" properly in the title/thumbnail. I know his content isn't nearly as interesting as yours, but if you think about something like Mr. Beast's "Running a marathon in the world's biggest shoes" video. Sure it's not an amazing video, and it's just a silly idea but the big thing it has on its side is: We know exactly what that is. We don't know what's going to happen (does it takes 3 days? What ARE the world's biggest shoes? Do they even finish the race?) but we understand what the video is. Not many people know how dangerous whitewater kayaking is (I certainly didn't). So the idea of doing it as a beginner... it's just a tough idea to convey. But for what it's worth, I might have had the thumbnail and first 5 seconds of the video be from the bit where you capsized and couldn't get back in... I actually held my breath during that bit. And even though it wasn't the climax of the video, I might have just put it at the end anyway to really build the tension. You could possibly also add voiceover that you do later in your studio, like "This was hard, but I didn't know that it was about the get a lot worse."

that was really not bad man

Just a heads up man, I typically click nearly all of your videos, but this one never appeared in my feed. It took your poll about the video's performance for me to even know you posted. Good luck on future adventures, can't wait to see them!

This is pretty freakin insane

"My stomach is telling the truth. It's hurting." To be honest, that happens every time I paddle WW. In fact, my stomach is feeling it just watching your video.

So cool

I recon about another years worth of training until your ready for the Grand Canyon

The mustache fits perfectly!

Which river is this?

honestly you did pretty good dude. one big thing i see is paddle with way more intention. blade in at the toes, out at the hips, and give it hell. keep your top arm of each stroke fairly straight and use it as a fulcrum point to pull the blade with your bottom hand.

First time I swam a class three I remember feeling like people were hitting me with a baseball bat in my legs. Bouncing off the rocks. It’s not pleasant

Fun vid! Nothing better

When someone says 4ish like that You're in trouble

Your swimming was not in vain, the YT recommended your channel to me, probably because of all the other Sjoa kayaking videos I have watched. Rapid #4 is called 'china hole', like all white water it is a lot bigger in reality than on film.

This instructor is fantastic. Seemed to know his shit.

I wouldnt be scared of water... rather about my hips mobility 😅 it would hurt sitting like this a lot

Wow

CRAZY crazy shit LOL

LEFT!!

I feel my first time(s) i was tortured lol I had to stitch my own eyebrow closed 😂😅

❤

Good video! Just a supportive comment :)

Classes are a bit loose. NZ class 4 is very very different to UK class 4

It’s either an inflatable kayak or an inflatable pack raft. Otherwise I’m a sea pack rafter/ sea kayaker.

You should have definitely done the actual kayak 😂 and not a pack raft

FIRST

Respectfully, you tried duckying.

Kayaking hard whitewater without taking the time to train properly is the lazy way.

Looks scary, but it looks like doing it for 40 years doesn't burn that many calories ;)

That's not whitewater kayaking. That' R1ing.

This is not kayaking, it's rafting ...

shame on you for kayaking in the thumbnail and actually going in a duckie

If you don't know what he said DON'T say yeah! It could have been really important warning!

Simons been a staple in the kayak industry for as long as anyone can remember. Great to see you showing his company and work.