As a guest on a raft trip, you can’t help but wonder how qualified your guide is. I mean, your life is quite literally in your raft guide’s hands.
If you’re rafting in Colorado, it’s comforting to know every raft guide must meet a minimal list of requirements set by the Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
These requirements include:
- First Aid and CPR certification
- 50 hours of on-river training using paddles, oars, or whichever equipment the guide will be using on river trips
- Instruction on a variety of other topics, some of which include river hazards, river rescue, emergency procedures, maneuvering rafts, and running rapids
- Guides must have seen the section of river they will be guiding, and they must pass a certification run with commercial guests and a guide instructor on board the raft
With KODI, our guide training doesn’t stop at the minimum. We offer additional courses to improve our guides’ river safety skills. These classes include:
Awareness Water and Rope Rescue: A course designed to develop knowledge of scene assessment and incident size up, resource ordering, activation procedures for rescue response, site control and scene management, and hazard recognition and mitigation procedure.
Swiftwater Rescue: A course that provides students with the fundamentals of survival in moving water
Whitewater Rescue: An intensive, hands-on course where guides learn to use techniques and simple equipment to assess and perform river rescues. The emphasis is on speedy, low-tech, and improvised rescue techniques that are effective and require minimal equipment.
Our commitment is to help you have a great time on the river and to provide you guidance from the most qualified guides with optimal training. Come raft with Kodi and enjoy your river adventure!