How to Plan a Multi-Day River Trip

Getting some of your favorite people together to share time on a beautiful river is a worthy pursuit. It takes some planning, but even if you’ve never done anything but an afternoon guided trip before, you can pull it off. And you should. No other outdoor experience beats a river trip, according to us. You don’t even have to haul gear on your back!

So, here’s what we know about how to put a river trip together. We’re starting with the basics here, but some of these tips might be helpful for experienced river runners, too. (And if you have more advice or contrary opinions to share, drop them in the comments and we’ll discuss.)

Camping at launch site on Smith River, Montana — *Getting geared up at the Smith River launch site*

Pick a stretch of river

For most multi-day trips, the planning starts in December because that’s when you need to apply for river permits. (Check out these tips for applying for river trips.) By mid-February, you’ll know what permits you or your river friends drew. If you all come up dry, you can start looking at non-permitted options. (And check out these suggestions for great, non-permitted river options.) If you’re new at master-minding river trips, consider starting with an over-nighter on some easy, Class I-II water. If you forget something crucial, or things go horribly awry, it’ll be over sooner and you can apply lessons learned to a longer trip.

Waterfall at Dominguez Canyon on the Gunnison River, Colorado — *The Gunnison River through Escalante Canyon in Colorado is a beautiful and easy one-night river trip*

If you have a mix of experienced and novice boaters (which is typical), have a conversation with those you’re planning to invite to make sure there’s consensus on the right level of whitewater, length of trip, and timing.

Study the rules

Keep an eye on important dates, especially the one for confirming your permit reservation. Even if it’s a non-permitted trip (definitely a good place to start so you don’t have the added complication), get familiar with the rules, including the launch process, required gear, camping regulations, and conservation policies like how to handle dishwater. Also check the size of party allowed before you start extending invitations. To find the regulations for your trip, check out a map to determine which agency controls access to the river you want to run: In the western U.S., it’s usually the Bureau of Land Management. But in some cases, as with the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, it’s the National Park Service. You can typically search the river name plus “permits” or “regulations” to find the governing agency’s guidelines.

Choose your team

Deciding who makes the cut on your trip can be an excruciating process, unless you just don’t know very many people who want to run rivers with you. If you’ve been running trips for a long time, you’ll settle into a groove with a group of people who you like to be around for a week or so at a time and who generally have the same attitudes as you about how to have a fun but safe time on the river. Potential areas of conflict that might arise:

Degrees of alcohol/drug consumption. Certainly the imbibers and teetotalers can coexist peacefully, but compatibility usually comes in the mid range. You probably don’t want abstainers constantly passing judgment with pursed lips—or hard cases who seem likely to stumble into the river every night.
Differing tastes for after-dinner entertainment. Some folks like to sit around the fire and tell stories. Some like to play guitar and sing until the stars come out. Some like to play glow-in-the-dark bocce. Some like lights out early. Consider whether the group you’re choosing can work it out. (Another point about music: Some people can’t abide any recorded music, podcasts, or other electronic sounds on a wilderness trip. Some want to bring along a speaker and a playlist. This conflict is hard to resolve successfully.)
Daily launch timing. Nothing causes more conflict (whether audibly expressed or under-the-breath muttering) than the division between the get-up-and-go folks and the crack-of-noon club. Either choose people from one inclination or the other, or be prepared to be assertive about what time you’ll launch each day.

Camp on Lower Salmon River in Idaho — *River people getting along well on the Lower Salmon*

Assembling a compatible river crew can be the hardest but most critical part of planning a river trip. Honestly, you can deal with almost anything that comes up on a river trip if you have a group that generally gets along well. (Side note: Once you identify a compatible pack, it’ll be tempting to just boat with the same crew over and over. But boating with new people can be fun, too. The great news is the only way to figure it out is to run a bunch of rivers.

Assess your group’s abilities, boats, and gear

Gather info from your crew about what boats they’re bringing and how much gear they can carry. Some situations to watch for:

Do you have enough rafts to carry the kayakers’ gear?
Will the rafts have enough room to carry all the water you’ll need on hot-weather trips?
Do you have a plan for boaters who think they want to be in IKs or paddle rafts, but then change their minds and want to ride in other boats (and is there room in someone’s raft to carry the rolled-up boat that was shunned)?
If the trip involves challenging whitewater, do you feel comfortable that you have enough experienced river runners to support less experienced paddlers—picking up swimmers, getting rafts off rocks?

Confirm your trip

If you’re running a permitted trip, make sure you confirm your slot by the deadline. In some cases, you’ll also need to submit the names of your crew and the number and type of crafts you’ll be running (hence the previous planning steps).

Pick your trip leader

Often the person who drew the permit or is organizing the trip also serves as the Trip Leader (TL) on the river. (We’ve got a discussion about how to be a good TL here.) But you can appoint someone else to plan the whole thing and call the shots once you all assemble at the put-in.

We could have a lively discussion about whether you need a trip leader on a private trip. We’re all here to have a good time, right, so why let anyone boss everyone else around?

So many reasons.

Having one person designated as the leader from the start makes a better experience all around. As a group, you’ll be more organized, less wasteful of resources (food, water, other supplies), safer, and more relaxed with a competent (or at least earnest) TL at the helm. This person doesn’t have to be the most skilled boater, or the ER surgeon, or the Eagle Scout among you. Just someone who can embrace communicating with the group early and often, from the moment the permit is pulled to the sad point when you’re discussing where to eat that last group meal after you leave the take-out. It’s just one decision after another, so a good TL can help the group cut the dithering and get to the good times.

Communicate with your crew

Once you’ve identified your party, figure out a way to communicate with them early and often. We typically just use email, but probably some of the high-tech things we use in our real jobs would work well. (The project manager in me can envision a cool Microsoft Teams site where you could post meal plans and shuttle information. But then that also would make a river trip seem too much like work.)

Whatever method you choose, your first task is to send everyone a communication with essential information:

Launch date and time. Name the time you want to launch so that people who have to travel for a day or two can plan accordingly. If you’re launching early, identify where the group should meet up and stay the evening before.
Take-out plan. Set a targeted time for taking off the river on the last day. You’ll want to accommodate those who are facing a long drive to get to the work the next morning or other real-life unpleasantries. If you’re hoping to gather everyone for a last meal at a restaurant after take-out, identify the place and make sure it’ll be open.
Meal plan. Let everyone know what the deal is with meals, starting from the time you gather until that last meal after you take out. After trying various different meal configurations, our favorite approach is assigning evening meals to specific individuals or couples/families, and letting everyone do their own thing for breakfast and lunch. The upside of this approach is that it cuts down on the number of times a cook crew has to figure out how to accommodate dietary restrictions or preferences. Plus, it allows people to eat when and what they want for breakfast, which seems to be the meal that causes the most friction. For more detailed meal planning tips and recipes for accommodating every kind of eater (carnivores, vegetarians, vegans, gluten-free, etc.), check out these resources:
- Time-Tested Guidelines for Raft Meal Planning
- Easy River Camp Meals for Every Kind of Eater
Shuttle plan. If your trip calls for a shuttle, it’s easier for the trip organizer to pick an outfitter, gather everyone’s vehicle information, and submit it together with any required deposits. Pass along the shuttle outfitter’s requirements, and remind everyone to have spare keys.
Fee collection. Gather money from everyone for any upfront costs such as river permits. Venmo or other similar apps make this easy.
Gear plan. Figure out who will bring which pieces of critical gear (check out our comprehensive gear list), and clearly spell this out in your communication. A good spreadsheet really comes in handy here so there’s no ambiguity. A few items you don’t want to find yourselves without at the put-in: Fire pan, first-aid kit, river toilet aka groover (check out our post on picking the best river toilet and setting it up in camp), stove, enough water (check out our post on water filters and how to carry water on raft trips), spare lifejackets for every boat, and anything else that’s required by the river rangers. You can find that information on the permit, or by checking the web site of the entity that manages the river, usually the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, or the U.S. Forest Service.
River activities that need special prep. Yes, river trips are engaging enough without any organized activities, and some people hate that stuff. But some of my favorite trips have a little special something, like the time our TL hosted a Best Band T-shirt Contest night. She got the word out early about this, so we had months to plot our entries.

After you send that initial manifesto, keep checking in with your crew as needed. When you’re about a month out from the trip, send out another thorough communique that covers:

Expected water level for your trip. If the water looks to be way higher or lower than you expected, start talking about an alternative plan if needed. If the river you chose will be too high or low to run, have a back-up river in mind. If the water level changes where you’ll put in, make sure everyone knows the new plan. (Here’s a guide to predicting future river flows.)
Confirm the crew and assignments. Make sure you have an accurate count of who’s coming, and confirm meal and gear assignments again.
Travel and launch plans. Make sure everyone knows where to gather the day before or the morning of the launch, where to camp the night before, and your targeted launch time.

Camping at Boundary Creek launch site on Middle Fork of the Salmon, Idaho — *Camping at the Boundary Creek launch site on the Middle Fork*

Embark!

With all this planning finally behind you, there will be nothing left to do but get in your boats and paddle madly down the river. Once you’re on the river, you or whoever assumes the duties of the Trip Leader will manage the day-to-day, but that’s another topic. If your job was simply to get everyone and their gear to the river, your work is done. Enjoy.