Kindly Old Dr. K’s Hydrosphere

The Outdoor Industry Association has published their annual review of statistics on the numbers of people participating in outdoor sports.  The new document is the 2008 Outdoor Recreation Participation Report, and it includes some numbers for recreational, sea, and whitewater kayaking.  The plot above shows the numbers the OIA has reported for whitewater paddling since they first started tracking the sport in 2001.

For the first few years the OIA reported on two categories of paddlers: participants are defined as anyone who reported being in a whitewater kayak at least once during the reporting period.  Enthusiasts were defined as someone who reported being in a whitewater kayak at least three times during the period.  After 2004 the OIA ceased to track the enthusiast category; they indicated that the number of enthusiasts were too small for defensible statistics.  I added the dotted line for enthusiasts using the ratio of participants to enthusiasts from earlier reporting years.

The current extrapolated level of enthusiasts is about 100,000.  This number is probably still somewhat too high as an indication of the number of “real” whitewater paddlers, that is those who own their own gear and get out regularly, as the OIA reported that the average number of outings per year for those in the enthusiasts category was just over three, the minimum for the category.  Does going boating three times per year make you a whitewater paddler?  I don’t know, I’d call that pretty marginal.  So, the real number of boaters is probably somewhat less.  AW says 50,000 and that sounds closer to me.  Other reports said that there were about 11,000 whitewater kayaks sold in 2006, and years ago Bill Masters of Perception said that about one in ten kayakers buys a new boat each year, so that would support the higher number.  Incidentally, Masters sold some 10,000 boats per year in the late 70s; that indicates the total number of boaters now is about the same as 30 years ago.

Whatever the actual numbers are, the trends are the most interesting information.  So, the bad news is the number of people in the sport is still down about 75% from the high in 2002.  The good news is that the precipitous slide of the last six years may be bottoming out.  This will only be proven in future years, but it has to stop somewhere.

Do we care that this is happening?  Intuitively I say yes.  As an amateur boater with no stake in the commercial side of the sport I’m not losing anything from the downturn, and the decrease in participation means that some of my destinations are less crowded than they once were.  The lower Yough, for instance, has been a famous madhouse on summer weekends through the entire 40 years I’ve been paddling, a place and time avoided by most experienced boaters.  In recent years, though, I’ve been able to walk up to the permit window on prime days and get a launch permit and shuttle ticket on the spot, no waiting.

I do have friends in the industry, however, to whom I wish no pain.  Most of them will agree if pressed for an honest answer that the commercial side of the sport is in serious pain.  The firestorm currently overtaking the broader economy has been a fact of life in the whitewater industry for years.  In addition, it has long been an axiom of all outdoor sports that paddlers, climbers, hikers, etc. make good environmental stewards.  This is reason enough to be alarmed at a drop in the number of whitewater boaters.

If we do care about this situation, how did we get in this fix and what can be done to improve the situation?  That will have to wait for another post.