The GoPro line of cameras has really revolutionized outdoor recreation and extreme sports, allowing adventurers to document their exploits with a gadget up to the inherent rigors of the given activity. GoPro river rafting is a case in point.
Our guests here at Echo Canyon River Expeditions understandably like to have their thrilling rides down the Arkansas River and other Colorado streams immortalized in photos and videos. That’s yet another reason to go with our long-running company: We offer our own whitewater rafting video packages, which means you don’t have to worry about bringing and setting up your own camera.
That said, you may be interested in knowing how best to rig a GoPro for whitewater rafting to best capture the high points while protecting the camera from damage. And, perhaps you’re curious about how we set up our GoPros here at Echo Canyon. Well, read on!
How to Mount a GoPro for Whitewater Rafting
There are actually quite a few different ways to mount a GoPro camera for rafting purposes. You can do so with a helmet mount or a chest mount, for example. At Echo Canyon, we’ve got proprietary hardware for rigging the GoPro to the raft itself—more on that shortly.
We don’t recommend mounting your GoPro to a selfie stick, though: certainly not on a whitewater route wherein you’ll need to be actively paddling with the rest of the crew through rapids, as on one of our adventure rafting trips. Besides keeping your hands free for the paddle, you also obviously want a secure, stable mount for your camera so it’ll withstand the rough-and-tumble ride—and a selfie stick just doesn’t cut it!
Our GoPro Policy at Echo Canyon
Can you bring your own GoPro camera on an Echo Canyon rafting trip? You bet! We absolutely allow our guests to wear GoPros via elastic chest or helmet-strap mounts. In our opinion, the head strap mount is the better way to go, as it provides a better viewpoint in the raft than the chest mount. Mind you, we don’t allow guests to stick adhesive mounts on our helmets.
Our Echo Canyon guides are always happy to assist guests with their own personal GoPros, given they tend to be proficient with these devices.
How Echo Canyon’s GoPro Cameras Are Set Up For Trips
As we mentioned, we’ve got our own GoPro setups here at Echo Canyon River Expeditions that can document your whitewater adventure via photo/video packages. We use proprietary mounting equipment to affix our cameras to the front of the rafts; the hardware is designed to accept the GoPro’s plastic housing, so we can efficiently and securely mount the cameras without additional hardware.
We program our GoPro cameras on a burst-photo system. Under this setting, the cameras will take 30 photos in five seconds. In the more significant rapids, we set the cameras up to take video the whole way through. The burst photos, meanwhile, record the waves of lesser significance.
In other words, your journey is meticulously documented with our boat-mounted GoPro river rafting system!
How to Use a GoPro While Rafting
Here’s what we tell our guides here at Echo Canyon River Expeditions when it comes to using the cameras on our GoPro rafting trips. We recommend they record video during the more “significant” or “faster-paced” sections of water: stretches during which guests understandably would like full documentation of their experience, and also when the guides (also understandably) don’t want to have to be playing that much with a camera—they’d rather be fully focused on navigating the rapids, naturally!
For more “one-off”-style waves, in which Echo Canyon guides have more control, time, and freedom to operate a camera, we suggest they capture still photos.
GoPro River Rafting Adventures With Echo Canyon
Rest assured the team here at Echo Canyon can help you memorialize your ridiculously fun, ridiculously scenic rafting adventure in Colorado thanks to GoPro technology.
Want to book your next whitewater rafting adventure? Check out our adventure rafting trips on the famous Arkansas River and get ready for an unforgettable experience!
