List of whitewater rivers

In the north, most rivers in India descend from the Himalayas, the highest mountains on Earth: cold glacial waters thunder down the rocks, bringing with them ample whitewater rapids to encounter.

In England and Wales rivers are typically less than 20 m3/s, and some are run with less than 1 m3/s (usually these involve skidding the kayak down steep rockslides and small waterfalls).

Like many places in Europe, England, Scotland and Wales have been subject to centuries of rivers getting dammed, weired, or diverted in ways that suit agriculture or land development and the natural flow has been altered heavily in many regions; there are many orphan dams or sites intended for grist mills that no longer have any function but obstruct the water.

Some areas of the island Great Britain occupies has enough gradient to create rapids and waterfalls, but unfortunately ages of damming prevents the full volume of water and snowmelt from reaching the lower reaches: Clywedog Dam holds back approximately 50,0000 megalitres of water alone on the River Severn, and Parliament granted weirs and locks to be placed upon that river multiple times during the 19th century, some of which are still used.

[citation needed] There are several artificial whitewater courses, where water is pumped or diverted through a concrete channel containing obstacles to create rapids.

There are several sites off the west coast of Britain where strong tidal currents channeled between islands create big volume sections of whitewater.

[citation needed] The season is short (two or three months in early summer when the snow and glaciers are melting) but the whitewater is reliable in this period.

Tourists come from around Europe to kayak and raft–the most common centres are Briançon in the French Alps, the area around Landeck in Austria, and Bovec in Slovenia.

The main information channel for Swedish white water is Forsguiden, Canada has a varied terrain that supports many kinds of environments, with the majority of whitewater found in three areas: the mountainous Rockies in Alberta, the smaller Eastern forests of Quebec, Ontario, and some of the Maritimes, and the volcanic influenced geology of British Columbia.

Like its neighbor to the south, First Nations had used the river systems as personal highways and built dugout canoes to run rapids; later French Canadian fur trappers used the same technique to collect beaver pelts and form small settlements.

It also is highly subject to the change of seasons, where many places are frozen solid by October and, for example, runs that are ready in late May in the neighboring US Pacific Northwest are still too dangerous to attempt in British Columbia or too cold: the spring run-off of the glaciers has either not finished or the landscape is not fully thawed.

On multi day excursions in The Northwest Territories, British Columbia, or Alberta it is extremely important to know or learn to coexist with the grizzly bears that live there; this is particularly true when it is salmon season.

The United States offers varied terrain and conditions through which rivers pass, everything from the deserts of the southwest to glacial peaks in Alaska to Appalachian creeks that thunder through the glades to even a few that run right through the downtown sections of small cities and isolated hamlets.

Many whitewater rivers and creeks exist in rather rural or wild conditions when compared to parts of Europe and thus are located in places where animals can bite back or harm visitors, including children and dogs.

Beavers are sometimes extant on rivers but prefer to build in the calmer sections where there are only minor riffles and their dams are easily portaged or surmounted.

In fact, there used to be more of them but over time some of these have been dammed or altered; the upper portions of the Mississippi River near St. Paul Minnesota, for example, used to have very large rapids and several waterfalls.

[10] In the western United States, the more noted rivers, such as the Grand Canyon have much greater water volume and therefore require a different set of paddling skills.

California has some of the most challenging whitewater runs in the United States as well as several rivers with sections that are safe for families with children who wish to go rafting.

Several rivers in California are fed by the snowmelt of the Sierra Nevada mountain range as well as natural springs in high mountainous areas; some rivers flow directly through protected land and foreign visitors should be strongly warned that early spring runs can be very dangerous; the normal classification cranks up much higher turning some runs into death traps for even Olympic level whitewater enthusiasts.