American Whitewater Releases New River Guide App!

American Whitewater is excited to announce the release of our new mobile app, available for both ios and android devices! The new American Whitewater app shares crowdsourced information on over 6,000 whitewater runs, including easy driving directions, improved flow information, maps, descriptions, and photos. The new app is a volunteer-led project supported by American Whitewater staff and contractors. We hope you love it, and that it inspires you to explore our nation’s many awesome rivers and contribute to the app.  

About the River Info: American Whitewater has invested in our Nationwide Whitewater Inventory since before the internet and ever since. We are confident that this dynamic river guide helps people make better decisions about where and when to paddle, resulting in more enjoyment and safer outcomes on our nation’s rivers. American Whitewater staff also leverage the photos, descriptions, mapping, and flow information every day in our work to protect and restore whitewater rivers. 

App Features: The new app employs our new river gauge system that is a significant improvement in terms of real-time reliability and accuracy. It also utilizes the same mapping interface as our website, offers a view of just gauges, and has numerous usability improvements. Gone from the previous version are a few features we’ll bring back in a future update: favorites, photo upload, and a list view that is color coded for flow range. Apologies for any inconvenience, it was necessary to hold these features back as we improve our infrastructure in the near term. A big plus is that the new app is more sustainable to maintain and more easily improved over time.  

Appreciation: We’d like to extend a special thank you to Drew Althage and Owen Coutts, who volunteered large amounts of time and creative energy to bring you the new American Whitewater app, with support from staff and others on our programming team. Hats off too to Greg Lee who made our original apps as a volunteer project. And a special thank-you to the many paddlers who’ve contributed the river information to our site over many years.  

Help Make it Better: The app and our online river guide is only as good as the information in it, which is crowdsourced from volunteer paddlers. If you find information in the app that needs updated or that could be better, you can fix it yourself by going to the Nationwide Whitewater Inventory on your computer and clicking the edit pencil above the beta box on any river page to make edits. Check out instructions first for how to edit pages. We would especially love new photo-rich trip reports, double-checking that put ins and take outs are accurately located where you park to aid with good directions, and adding rapids and other river features. 

Support the App: This app exists based on the generosity of the paddling community! Your membership and donations will help us maintain and improve the app. We have some exciting plans for future features but we need your help! If you like the app, please Join or Donate to American Whitewater!  

Get the Apps: Available through your mobile devices app store. Search for "American Whitewater," or click here for the ios app, or here for the android app.