Whitewater Rafts

A whitewater raft has to do three things well: stay stiff in big water, shed water quickly, and fit the crew you actually paddle with. This page lines up every whitewater raft we cover by the specs that decide those things: length and width, tube diameter, floor type, how many people it seats, and what it weighs on the bank.

Start with crew size. A raft sized for a full crew feels sluggish with two paddlers, and an undersized boat rides low once gear is aboard. Bigger tubes give a drier, more stable ride, but make a heavier, bulkier boat to carry and store. Check the floor and the weight together: they decide how the raft handles water coming over the tubes and how hard it is to get to the put-in.

Every spec below links to its source. Sort the table by the column you care about, and open a raft to see its downsides and who should skip it.