Whitewater in B.C.'s Southwest: A Guide to Accessible Runs for Beginner to Advanced Kayakers [Paperback]

Steve Crowe (Author), Jim Hnatiak (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 109 pages
• Publisher: Stephen Crows (April 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0968803806
• ISBN-13: 978-0968803806
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,762,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Decent attempt to fill a need, but not quite there, July 9, 2004

By 

Thomas O'Keefe (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Whitewater in B.C.'s Southwest: A Guide to Accessible Runs for Beginner to Advanced Kayakers (Paperback)

I have to say that I found this book fairly disappointing. Having long waited for Stuart Smith to publish his much-anticipated whitewater guide to Southwest BC, I was excited to see that someone else had taken the lead to get some current information published. As many folks know, the only other guidebook to the region's whitewater was published by Betty Pratt-Johnson back in 1986 and the material in that book is now two decades old. Rivers have changed as have paddling styles and Pratt-Johnson's guide, although well written and comprehensive, is now out of date.

The problem with this guide however is that it really doesn't add anything new to Pratt-Johnson's guide and the only new material you get is some updated information on logistics. The run descriptions are very brief and not particularly comprehensive. Some of the information on logistics is helpful, but you get the sense that this guide was written over the course of one paddling season and that few of the rivers were visited more than once. Basically, it appears the authors drove around with a copy of Pratt-Johnson's guide on a long road trip, made edits in the margins, and then published their edits as this book.

This guide is a decent start and if these guys were to expand this for a future edition it might be worth a second look, but for my money a used copy of Pratt-Johnson's guide supplemented with current information from the internet is still the better deal. What we really need is a guide to the dozens of new runs that have been discovered in recent years throughout the Whistler area and along the Fraser Valley, and for that I guess we'll just have to wait.