Journey to ACA Level 5 Whitewater Canoe Certification

ACA's Level 5 Certifications - the hardest level to earn, rare to find, and the journey to achieve Level 5 often takes a village.

Written by ACA Level 5 Instructor, Sarah Ruhlen

Some of my earliest memories are of being in a canoe. The feeling of sleeping on an airbag, with the sound of water lapping against the hull - that’s one of them. My dad made me a little paddle with my name on it, and he would use shock cord to attach it into the boat for when I dropped it. That’s another early memory of my life on the water.

I spent a lot of time in the front of that canoe with my dad. He would talk to me as we went down the river and narrate what was going on. “Okay, see the eddy up there on the right, about 100 yards? We’ll come in soft, we don’t need a lot of speed. I’ll need you to give me a high brace.” I’d sit and wait. “Okay… high brace now! Perfect. Paddle forward! Perfect. We’re in.”

This is how I learned for years. I learned to edge. I learned to punch holes. I learned to read water. Eventually I moved to my own boat, though it took me quite a while. I wasn’t adventurous. I didn’t like surfing. I snuck out the bottom of eddies ALL the time. I wasn’t some prodigy, but I showed up, wore the dorky gear, and slowly got better.

Like any normal kid, I just wanted to be a part of my peer group, and there really weren’t many other kids my age that paddled - maybe three or four. So some weekends - more of them than not really, I’d stay home like any normal kid. But other weekends, I’d go boating. And it was this whole other world. I liked the actual paddling well enough, but what I loved were the people. All these second sets of parents, and friends. My second family. Some of them had known my parents from before I was born. Even now, it’s pretty common for someone to say “I remember you when you were paddling in diapers!” It was this world of trips down the Nantahala and the French Broad, with people giving me tips and taking me into to new eddies. It was driving to new rivers and gearing up - in the hot, in the cold, in the in between - and waiting while my dad ran shuttle because I was too young to drive. It was pop tarts and cheese sticks at the lunch spot. Post paddle Mexican food. Sitting around campfires with all these pioneers of the sport, unbeknownst to me, and hearing their stories. I knew every rapid on the Ocoee before I knew it wasn’t spelled “Echowee.” I had the opportunity to be around some of the best paddlers and instruction, but considered the people family.

I remember one week where Vann and Laura Evans took me out every day and we spent six hours drilling on the Nantahala from Ferebee to the Falls (sometimes we didn’t even make it that far), catching every eddy, surfing every wave, making every ferry. I had so many people that I looked up to and that were great boaters and teachers, but who also knew me, and wanted to see me happy and enjoying the sport. So I would go out and paddle with them, usually with my dad in tow, but then get to share car rides and evenings sitting around swapping stories with them as well. It’s that experience that makes me so adamant that we need mentors in paddling, and that our heroes need to also be real people.

So I would paddle one weekend, play basketball another. I had school, and friends, and wanted to do normal pre-teen stuff. And then, it was around this time that I fell in love with boating, and really fell hard. Up until that point, I’d spent most of my paddling time either in a tandem canoe with my dad or in an old Dagger Cascade. I was a bit scared of the Cascade, and it was less cool to be in a tandem canoe with my dad (Dad, if you’re reading this, I love you and think you’re so cool and would love to paddle tandem any time). He came home one day though, and told me he had bought me a canoe. It was a Dagger Ocoee. The chines were a bit spongey. It was purple. He drove me out to the lake to hop in, and holy moly did I love it. I named that boat Puff, and thus started my obsession.

Moving from tandem to solo was an interesting transition. I had paddled the Nantahala Cascades a fair amount, but I didn’t ever really push to perform. The Ocoee was zippy and had nice hard edges. Everything I had already learned in a tandem boat translated into paddling a solo canoe. It sounds funny, but for the first time I really felt like the years of paddling were paying off and that I knew what I was doing. I was progressing and getting to paddle with new people on new rivers all the time. My dad got to share new rivers with me too and we went pretty much everywhere together.

In eighth grade, another boat came into my life. It was also purple. It was sparkly. It was an old Extrabat that Scott Strausbaugh used to train for the 1996 Olympics. It was so fun, but did it punish me! For those of you unfamiliar with the Extrabat, it is a low volume, 4 meter slalom racing C1, and has some serious edges on it. I remember barely making it down class 2 upright, and feeling like it was a small miracle to have done so. I didn’t have a roll at the time, and I did a decent amount of swimming out of that thing. But it did teach me a lot, and ignited my fire for racing and for training.

For two or three years, paddling was most of what I did in my free time. I’d either be out at the lake training during the week, at roll practice, or outfitting my boat in my mom’s kitchen before she got home and could scold me. I lived for the weekends when I could go paddling - either down at the Nantahala Outdoor Center, if I was trying to train slalom, or whatever other river had water that my dad was willing to drive me to. That is where I got especially lucky, both in that my Dad was usually pretty willing to drive me to go boating, and that I lived in a fantastic location for paddling. The Nolichucky was 45 minutes away, the Damascus Creeks (Whitetop Laurel, Tennessee Laurel, Beaverdam, Laurel) 45 minutes, the French Broad an hour and a half, the Smokies two and a half hours, the Russell Fork two and a half, and the Watauga an hour and a half, just to name a few. During the summer we would always attend Carolina Canoe Club’s Week of River’s, which remains one of my favorite paddling events. When October rolled around - it was Russell Fork season and most weekends would find us up there. We had an annual New Year’s trip on the Little River in the Smokies. And almost every year, my Dad would load up the car and we would head north for a multi-day trip. All of these experiences and memories, among others, helped to grow my love for boating. I loved the opportunity to go out and excel at something where I worked to hone my skill. I loved getting to go there with people I liked and respected. I loved the ritual that every boater knows of making it through the week, packing up your gear Thursday night, and heading out Friday afternoon. So while a lot of kids my age were playing school sports or on a traveling club team building peer groups and satisfaction through those avenues, for me it was in paddling that I felt as if I found my tribe, and what fueled me.

Most of the people I met and looked up to in my earlier days I was introduced to through my canoe club.

The Carolina Canoe Club remains one of the things I’m most passionate about, and one of the places that really feels like home. I remember Vann and Laura Evans taking me out, and Spencer Muse and I just trying to make the ferries. Don and Jo Beyer, bless them, were always willing to snag me and take me with them, and even eat my failed baked goods I tried to repay them with. I remember being young and listening to Dennis Huntley tell stories about the Cascades, and watching Paul Ferguson move a 16 foot canoe like it was nothing. Joe Berry dragged me out to the lake to help fix my roll, and Alex Vargas let me ride out to Colorado with him and has made me more tacos than I can even count. There was this one day when I asked if anyone wanted to run some gates, and this guy Wayne Dickert said he would love to. Cue the total teenage girl full scale freak-out. I had the most wonderful coach for slalom, Michelle Bertrand, who always gave encouragement and love, and while she taught me a lot about paddling, she taught me a heck of a lot more about life and being a good human.

There were also some amazing female slalom athletes in both canoe and kayak that worked to encourage younger girls such as myself, to name a few Ashley Nee, Hailey Thompson, Colleen Hickey, and Willa Mason. They were all incredibly inspiring and great role models to me during the years when I was working to figure out who I was and who I wanted to work to become.

I think it was these people in my earlier paddling that really helped inspire me, and instilled me with a desire to give back. I had seen so many great instructors, and benefitted from their instruction myself, that I was sure I wanted to be able to do the same for others. At the time, a few key people come to mind, such as Chris Wing, Larry Ausley, and Jimmy Holcombe. I note these people especially, because they were who I sought out when I chose to become ACA certified in 2015. In one spring, I became certified to teach both canoe and kayak, then began work at the Nantahala Outdoor Center. I loved teaching. I loved both learning how to teach, which definitely made me a better boater and gave me a better understanding of what we do, and loved getting to watch people get those lightbulb moments.

In the years since I started instructing, I’ve only become more passionate about it. I won’t lie, it’s not always easy. There are days where you feel like a crappy instructor, or like the student just didn’t understand what you were trying to teach, or that maybe the sport itself is not growing in a positive direction. On those kinds of days, it’s important to have other people to give you feedback. It’s important to remember that teaching is often a long haul. It’s especially important that you’re building member of the community, and that as long as your students are able to get out on the water and have fun, and do so in a safe manner, you are getting it right. Did you learn to ferry perfectly in a day? No. Do you even remember the exact day and time you got started getting eddy turns right? No. Do you still miss rolls sometimes? Yes. But, do you remember the people you learned with, the places you went? Do you remember your instructors, and whether they encouraged you - helped you to move past frustration and want to continue? Hopefully, yes. These are the experiences that reinforce paddling as a sport that everyone can enjoy, and that is an activity it is feasible for everyone to enjoy, and enjoy at every level. Personally, I want to always be able to appreciate my students’ goals, expectations, and most of all their fears. I don’t want to lose sight of what it means for someone to paddle their first rapid on the lower Green, and be nervous. I think as instructors, or even more so just as paddlers sharing a common space and human experience, we need to be able to recognize that feeling. We need to validate it. Our sport needs more instructors, and ones that give the sport a voice.

I’d like to conclude with a bit about what my ACA Level 5: Advanced Whitewater Canoeing certification means to me. When the ACA contacted me to write this article and recognize me as the youngest current Level 5: Advanced Whitewater Canoeing instructor, and the only woman to currently hold the title, my first thought was just “Hmm. That makes me sound cooler than I am.” I am where I am because of the love and labor of a lot of different people that were all willing to teach me, and didn’t push me beyond where I was safe, or enjoying myself. I’m here because my dad was an instructor, and encouraged me to become one. My mom always encouraged me to keep paddling, and when it came time for my certifications, helped me complete them. I’m here because people have told me when I can do better, but also when I am doing well. The L5 certification doesn’t mean that I’m done making mistakes, or that I have nothing to learn -in fact for me it’s the opposite. A lot of people asked me if it’s really worth it, and I have to say yes. It gives me the chance to work on different rivers and with more students. It puts me a step closer to eventually becoming an Instructor Trainer. It gave me a phenomenal course working with other experienced instructors, and made me remember what I do and don’t know. As instructors, it is important to keep learning, to keep getting feedback, to keep reevaluating ourselves. This course really helped me to do that. I’m hopeful that as an L5 instructor, I’m able to do the same for others. If we want our sport to grow, this is what it is going to take. We need to facilitate learning, with an emphasis on introducing people to rivers and the river community – which has the power to build lives from the riverbed up.