Yes, rafting the Futaleufú is safe, even for complete beginners. Over half of Earth River’s guests have never been rafting before they arrive. The first day starts with training, not rapids, and every rapid is run with a minimum of two dedicated safety catarafts, a rescue system Earth River invented specifically for this river in 1994 that is now required of every outfitter here. Our guides average 17 years of experience, and by the last day of rafting, almost everyone who started the week nervous about class IV chooses to run class V.
Do You Need Rafting Experience Before This Trip?
No. Everything you need to run class IV and V whitewater is taught on the first day, before the first rapid.
The Safety Talk and Calm Water Training
Before anyone touches a rapid, the group gets a twenty minute safety talk covering the dos and don’ts on the river. Then, in boats of six guests and one guide, everyone learns how to sit, where to tuck their feet for stability, and proper paddling form, which matters more than people expect, since bad form means exhaustion by the end of a long day.
The Two Commands Every Guest Learns
Guests learn two key commands. Lean in, where you fold your chest over your knees to lower your center of gravity before a big hit. And get down, where you slide off the outer tube and over your feet, the most stable position possible short of the raft flipping. Guides also explain, rapid by rapid, exactly what’s coming: where the raft will start, which line it will take, and when the lean in or get down command is coming. Nothing is a surprise, so when a command comes, guests react instead of panicking.
What to Do if You Fall Out
Everyone also learns what to do if they fall out, which direction to swim, and how to get back to the raft, before it’s ever needed. On the Futaleufú, guests are taught to swim actively on their stomachs toward the raft or safety cataraft, not to float passively on their backs.
Do Guests Actively Paddle or Just Hold On?
The goal isn’t to carry guests safely through the rapids while they hold on. Guests of all ages, body types and fitness levels are taught to actively paddle and participate in class IV water, not just survive it as passengers. The only real requirements are a willingness to follow instructions and to be there because you want to be, not out of pressure or fear.
What If a Rapid Isn't for You?
There’s always an option that doesn’t end the trip. When a guide judges that a guest would be more comfortable outside the main raft, an additional safety cataraft runs at the back of the trip, and guests can ride along on it, often taking sneak lines around the largest rapids. Nobody is pushed into a rapid they don’t want to run.
How Are Earth River Guides Trained?
Guiding class IV and V water on the Futaleufú isn’t a certification you pick up in a weekend. Earth River guides average 17 years of experience. We only consider guides with a minimum of five years on other rivers, and typically look for guides closer to thirty years old, with the professionalism the trip demands. Every guide holds Swiftwater Rescue and Wilderness First Responder certifications.
Training Happens Off the Clock
New guides start their training entirely outside of paying trips. A new guide first rides along in a safety cataraft, learning every rapid in detail: the hazards, the line choices, where boats run together and where they hold back in an eddy and run separately. Next, they co-run a safety cataraft alongside an experienced guide who can take over if needed. Only after that do they run a safety cataraft solo on training runs. Even then, they start as a third, extra safety cataraft on real trips, watching and assisting without being part of the core rescue team, until they’re fully signed off. That process can take a full season or more. It’s a serious, often unpaid commitment guides make, because a position on one of the most demanding rivers in the world is hard to come by.
What Happens if Someone Falls Out of the Raft?
Swims happen on big water. What matters is that a swimmer is something guides train for constantly, not something that catches anyone off guard, and the system behind that has been refined on this river since 1994.
How Guides Choose Lines at Different Water Levels
Safety starts before anyone is in the water, with line choice, the specific path a guide picks through a rapid, chosen for the day’s water level and always erring toward the lowest risk option. The Futaleufú’s flow is controlled by a dam on the Argentine side of the border, so it can change dramatically from day to day. At lower water, there’s more time between rapids to set safety, but some lines become more technical. At higher water, several of those same lines simplify, but the rapids run together with less space between them, which makes setting safety harder. Guides read the day’s water level and adjust every trip, and Earth River’s high water safety cutoffs are still followed on the river today.
The First Fifteen Seconds of a Rescue
If a guest falls out or a boat flips, the two safety catarafts positioned downstream of the guest rafts immediately row upstream to slow their own momentum and reach the swimmer. The first thing a guide says is simple: grab onto the boat, you’re okay, I’ve got you, don’t let go until I tell you to. The guide pulls the swimmer in, sometimes with help from a guest already on the cataraft, while continuing to manage the boat. If needed, the cataraft also helps guide a flipped raft toward shore so the group can regroup. It’s a practiced sequence, not an improvised one.
Why Does Earth River Use Safety Catarafts Instead of Kayaks?
Before the safety cataraft, safety on the Futaleufú meant safety kayakers, the standard on rivers everywhere else. But the Futaleufú is too big and too powerful for a kayaker alone to be an effective rescuer. A swimmer in this current can drag a kayak back toward the danger instead of away from it. In the early nineties, Earth River founder Eric Hertz came close to ending trips on the river over exactly that problem.
His answer was the safety cataraft: a fast, stable rescue boat, positioned below the rapids to pick up swimmers, even several at once. On the first trip of the 1994 season, one safety cataraft recovered six swimmers from a single rapid. Running safety catarafts is now the minimum safety standard required of every commercial outfitter on the Futaleufú. Read the full story of the invention of the safety cataraft.
Other Safety Practices Earth River Brought to the Futaleufú
Some pieces of the safety system were invented by Earth River, and others were brought to the Futaleufú, and in some cases to Chile, for the first time:
- The invention of the Safety Cataraft
- The first water gauges on the Futaleufú, to track high and low water levels.
- The first routes through the river’s rapids, and the high water safety cutoffs still used today.
- Teaching guests to swim actively on their stomachs to the raft or cataraft.
- The stern-mounted guide frame, with the guide on oars at the back while six guests paddle up front, the first used in Chile.
See more on our safety record and practices.
How Cold Is the Water on the Futaleufú?
Cold water is a real safety factor on any river, especially if a swimmer is in the water for any length of time. Every guest wears a three millimeter wetsuit, no exceptions, even on warm days. The Futaleufú flows out of a chain of lakes on the Argentine side, so it holds steady around sixty degrees, milder than most people expect for Patagonia. That, combined with the rescue system above, keeps the real risk low even when the weather isn’t.
Is Rafting the Futaleufú Actually Safe?
The biggest myth people carry into this trip is that because they’re paying a company to guide them, the experience will feel like a ride on tracks, where nothing can actually happen. It isn’t that. Whitewater rafting carries real risk, like any adventure sport. What makes the difference isn’t pretending the risk away, it’s more than thirty years of refining exactly how to manage it, on this specific river, as safely as humanly possible.
See the full itinerary, lodges and dates on the Futaleufú multi-lodge rafting trip page, or read our complete Futaleufú River guide.