Before thinking about running any stretch of any river, you must reconnoiter it first by use of maps. Please don't even think about using highway maps for this; they're meant to show general directions of highways, not specific topographies of rivers. If you don't want to bother with the hassle of buying full sets of topographical maps from the USGS for each stretch of river, then please buy a bound book of county road maps from your local outdoor gear store, or obtain them from their respective County Roads Maintenance Section in each county your river runs through. County road maps usually show a lot more useful detail, and a generally much more accurate in plotting river topography, than any other kind of map except a USGS topo quadrangle or hydrologic survey (floodplain) map.

Since most paddling guidebooks invariably have at least some rivermileages wrong, ascertaining the correct distance between put-in and take-out points, as well as between major bridges or other landmarks that you'll see from the river, is most critical. For example, if you know you can typically canoe ten miles in a day assuming no problems and a guidebook says a riversection is twelve miles but you measure it to be fifteen, that means you would actually arrive at take-out a full four hours later, which would probably be after dark at fifteen miles, than right at dusk which your common sense would dictate if it was twelve miles actually, instead.

My preferred way to accurately measure river miles, but definitely not the only way, is by use of a set of dividers. I use two kinds interchangeably. One is a steel 6" pair with needle points taken from a set of drafting instruments, the other is an old-style brass set with steel tips bought mail-order from Goldberg's Marine Supply in Philadelphia decades ago.

To use the dividers to measure rivermileage, set the gap between points to a preferred distance, using the mileage graph on the map to open the spread up until the points touch the outside of your mileage division. I usually prefer, using my set of county maps or a USGS topo, to set the gap between points at 2/10ths of a mile, sometimes going to 1/10th of a mile if they river has a lot of bights or tight bends. In no case should the gap between points exceed much more than a standard inch, no matter what the scale. And, please don't use a stick ruler or other measuring device from off the map to set your divider's gap with! Because of potential printing and scale errors, always, always set your gap by the mileage graph that's on the respective map. That way, if there is an error of scale or printing, it won't matter because it will proportional and therefore correct.

Starting at your put-in point, walk the dividers down the spine of the river by turning the dividers 180-degrees with each turn of your wrist, being careful to keep the downstream point of the dividers firmly on the map as you pivot the upstream point to become the next downstream point. Since I'm not as smart as some people, I usually have a scratch pad and pencil handy, and mark each measured section on a piece of paper with a "hashmark", so after I run the dividers down a section of river and see that I have 42 hashmarks, for example, I'll know that section of river is 8.4 rivermiles if each gap division between points of the divider represents 2/10ths of a mile, as I pre-set before beginning my distance measurement.

Since few rivers are straight, the main art in measuring riverdistances is developing an accurate "fudge factor" through the river's curves and bends. Keep in mind that while you're paddling, you're not going to stay in the spine of river right down the middle, no, you're going to be ping-ponging at least some, easing from one side of the river to the other as you cut the angles off bends and try to find shade or faster current as the day demands. Unless my swinging-around downstream point will grossly over-shoot past a river's bend, I always measure at least some through the curve, then swing back at a 90-degree or similar to land my next divider point division measurement back on the river's spine. Of course, if you've got a section of river with nary a' straight section and a ton of tight curves and swing-backs, then basically any measurement will be a guesstimate at best. But using my method of measuring through/past the point-of-curve in a given curve and then swinging back to land the point in the middle once again, I've come up with some amazingly accurate distance measurements, when compared with estimated time through that hypothetical maze of bights. This because when you're in a rattrap of endless tight bends and bights, you're going to be spending a lot making many, many course adjustments, all of which will kill your normal pace of paddling.

You can also use other means of measuring rivermile distances, but I don't think anything's more accurate than walking a set of dividers down. A lot of people prefer a "wheel-type" measurement device, where you roll this watch-size device with a wheel at the apex on its bottom down the length of river, and it gives the total distance rolled in inches and/or centimeters. I don't like using ones of those because 1) it doesn't take into account the possibility of printing or scale errors as previously mentioned, and 2) while it might measure the spine of river perfectly, it doesn't give you a realistic, instinctive fudge factor like using a set of dividers does, so you have to SWAG a fudge factor of 3% or 5% or 10% or whatever, depending on how many and how tight the curves are, etc. And some people use a 24" or similar length piece of thick, semi-flexible waxed thread or string to accurately measure distances in inches or centimeters, but that has the same problems of roller-measurers, in unknown scale or printing errors and lack of "accurate" fudge factors.

Especially on a section of river I've never canoed before, I always make copies of the river's side-stream areas, keeping the river in the middle more or less of the copies, and take those copies with me. Topos will normally show potentially important landmarks, such as powerline and railroad bridge crossings, buildings you might can see from the river, roads near the river, etc. Topo maps always show lines of elevation, which can be useful for spotting potential rapids before you reach them, i.e., if there's several 2-foot-drop-between lines of elevation grouped tightly together that span across a river's topographical width, then you can usually count on a rock garden if not a rapid being right there. County maps at least will show dirt and other secondary roads near the river; this can be very important to know where the roads are, just in case you run into trouble and need to exit the river very quickly for medical or other emergency assistance! Carrying photocopied sections of maps is also very useful for marking up as you paddle along to transfer to your logbook later, making note of interesting or useful tidbits such as washed-out dams, fishing shacks, old riverlocks, etc., that might come in handy next trip down that section.

Don't forget to pay attention to a map's compass rose! A "compass rose" is that funny-looking thing on topo and some other kinds of maps that show true and magnetic north directions in relation to the lay of the map, as well as degree-gradients off them. Virtually all maps, even if they lack a real compass rose, have a true north arrow indicator, pay attention to it, so when you listen to the weather broadcast the night before you leave and the weatherguy tells you that the wind is going to shift from southwest to southeast, and you know the direction of travel down your river tomorrow will be generally southeast too, you know you're in for a hard day's paddling, and perhaps should put-in a couple of hours before your planned departure time, just so you won't be caught out on a strange stretch of river you've never paddle before after dusk.

Once you've ascertained exactly how far a given river section is, what good is that information, and how best do you use it?

The most accurate distance measurement in the world won't do a you a bit of good, unless you have a set of developed paradigms about your own paddling speeds, as modified by what craft you're paddling, what paddle you're using, the type of river you're on, the perceived current speed in various parts of the river, etc. Speaking only for myself, on a typical flat river (I'm a flatwaterer, not usually a white-waterer) in a typical 16' recreational canoe with my bentshaft Grey Owl cruising paddle, I can measure out an almost super-precise 3-knot-speed/hour (three nautical miles per hour) all day long, at usually a stroke count of 30 per minute or less. Since a nautical mile is longer than a standard mile, being 2,025 yards as compared with a statute mile's 1,760 yards, I can measure the river's spine tighter and with less fudge factor in my preliminary map reconnoiter using standard miles only, knowing my comfortable but precise paddling speed will encompass the needed overshoot slash fudge factor. I'm not saying you should do it this way, unless you really do know what your comfortable paddling speed is.

If you use your buddy's lighter fiberglas canoe instead of your much heavier ABS one, do you know how much of an increase in hull speed that will create? What about if your ABS canoe has better lines that cut through the water easier than his, does that make the extra weight "a wash"? What about gear weight, how much does what amount of gear stashed certain ways decrease hull speed by increasing drag, and decrease safety factors by increasing total physical exertion on your and his' muscles? Do you know how to read the various current channels in rivers and pick the fastest ones out to maximize current boost? What about having to switch from a bent-shaft cruising paddle in flat water to a flat-blade for whiter water, do you have a clue how much the narrower and less-efficient straight straight and smaller blade will decrease your overall hull speed? What about the forementioned headwind factor, do you know much a five-knot dead-on headwind will probably decrease your observable riverspeed? Every little thing you do in a canoe or can be done to your canoe by outside forces will either help maximize or minimize your predicted riverspeed for a given trip, and you need to have a set of developed probabilities for those contingencies and influences.

Do you train for canoeing? One "secret" to my consistent paddling speed is that during the season, I train two or three nights per week. I have a homemade contraption consisting of a piece of new, smooth 1" galvanized steel pipe, to which I've poured a 60-pound lead weight around it on the end. Any shaft with a heavy weight will have the same effect of course, such a freeweight shaft with some weights locked on one end. Sitting on an ottoman in my living room while watching teevee, I make paddle-stroke motions with it, and yes, even when I'm in shape it just kills my arms and shoulders after no more than twenty or thirty strokes per side. But after a rest of half hour or so, I grin and push through another twenty strokes per side, until I've done a hundred strokes per side that night. Two or three nights per week of that, and when I'm in my canoe that following weekend, my trusty ol' Grey Owl feels literally so light in my hands I barely notice the weight or even the leverage from the strokes, at least not until close to the end of the day.

Do you regularly at least wash and wax your hull? If not, why not? One can never have too much efficiency, too much potential hull speed. I much rather be a bit faster than my estimated time of arrival at the take-out and load up half an hour earlier, than have to fight through brambles and bushes at a strange bridge after dark.

Have you had a buddy help you with finding the correct balance points for your seats in your canoe? If you've never moved your seats from where they were placed at, at the factory when your canoe was made, then they're probably in the wrong place and it's cost you lots of hull speed and lots more physical, grunt effort. Have someone who knows canoeing a little go with you on a smooth lake in another canoe or low-waterline watercraft and spot your balance points for you, as you slowly make your way up from stern seat to the bow while on your knees to lower your center of gravity as much as possible, looking for that somewhere-usually-amidship point where your weight and the canoe's weight between stern and bow is divided smack in half, where the gunwale if it was level-straight (it usually isn't of course, tapering upwards to the bow and stern) would be dead-level, where the left-right balance looking dead-on to the bow is also level, where your hull lines of displacement maximize forward separation while in motion but minimize stern pivot, then mark that point with a thick-lined permanent magic marker on your hull's inside, and move your seat to that point. If you normally use a bow or sternman, you can adapt a similar procedure using bags of rocks for deadweight previously weighed on a bathroom scale to create points of weight-balance, to find the same desired points of where to accurately place your bow and stern seats to minimize your bow or stern leverage.

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