Quite a few of my paddling friends call me ballsy. Not the politically correct ones, of course. I don’t really see it because whenever I choose to run a rapid or feature, I’ve calculated the risk, and my decision seems perfectly logical to me.

I have only ever made the decision to portage a rapid once; the rest of the times I’ve portaged, that decision has been made for me by more experienced paddlers. The rapid I portaged by choice was Crack of Doom on the Middle Etive. I never thought I’d be able to say I’d portaged a runnable rapid and had no regrets over doing so, but I was wrong; I don’t regret portaging.

Crack of Doom on the Middle Etive; weighing it up!

Here are the three things I take into consideration when running a rapid.

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