10 Words You Must Know To Understand Your Raft Guide

If you’ve ever been on a white water rafting trip or spent any amount of time with raft guides, you probably know that they talk funny. Their conversations are full of words like “stoked,” “sick,” “munchie,” “eddy,” “hyped,” and much more. We’ve decided to make you a “Raft Guide Lingo Dictionary” so that the next time you come rafting with us on Colorado’s most amazing river, you can understand your guide a bit better.

Here is what you need to know:

“Sick”: Meaning crazy, cool, sweet. Used in a sentence, your guide may say, “That was a sick backflip of jump rock!”

“Gnarly”: This is used when something is more extreme, more skillful and/or more intense. Your guide may say, “Wow, The Numbers section is totally gnarly, but tons of fun.”

“Eddy”: The water that fills back in around a feature when the current has split around it. Eddy’s can also be found behind a sharp turn in the river. Eddy’s are a great place to pull over, rest, wait for other boats or find lost paddles.

“Eddyline”: Not only a great brewing company in Buena Vista but an eddyline is the line between the eddy and the moving current of the river.

“Hyped”: Extremely excited, stoked or pumped. Your guide may say something like, “I’m hyped to be rafting down the Royal Gorge today!”

“Pumped”: Ready, excited or fired up. You may hear your guide say, “Are you pumped to go rafting today?” This means, “Are you fired up or excited to go rafting today?”

“Sporty”: A technical line that requires a lot of maneuvers to successfully navigate a rapid.

“Big water”: When the water level is high, the waves are big and the stoke is high.

“CFS”: Cubic Feet per Second. This refers to the volume of the water at a certain point on the river. If the river is running at 1,000 CFS, imagine 1,000 basketballs in a line across the river, that is what 1,000 CFS is like.

“Drop”: A gradient in the river, normally where the water becomes faster moving and is considered a rapid.