Talk:Whitewater sports

What's missing?

What about tags for portage? Previous suggestion was made: 'whitewater=portage_way' (or 'portage') - makes sense to me as it ought often to be added to existing paths. Also see previous suggestion for 'paddlecraft=put_in;egress' to allow for additional/compatable non-whitewater mapping without having to change whitewater tagging.Rostranimin 15:20, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Is "portage" the origin English wording for carrying a canoe between an egress an a put_in over land?
In German it is "Umtragestelle" --Markus 12:10, 24 April 2012 (BST)

Yes - carrying (people walking with) a canoe over land to avoid an obstacle on the water (like a weir or a difficult rapid) or to go from one piece of water to another (like one lake to another). Rostranimin 15:37, 25 April 2012 (BST)

Canadian canoeist chiming in here. I think that whitewater=portage is preferable to whitewater=portage_way because the nature of a portage automatically implies that it is a way. Didymops 22:54, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I wondered if we were missing a tag for features only appearing at some water conditions - prompted by an island in a river usually covered. Have now added a see-also type link on the page to Proposed_features/Water_cover as this seems to fit the bill. The suggestion has been for water=intermittent and water=tidal, but I wonder if we might also use water=occasional and water=usual. Rostranimin 12:30, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I am missing in the proposal description a tag more basic than all the others, like whitewater=rapid (http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/whitewater=rapid[please note that it has the highest ranking in all whitewater tags]) or just whitewater=yes. We should take into account that many rivers in the world have whitewater, but not commonly used by canoes (including many branches of the Amazonas river, for instance). I am a mapper and I identify the places of whitewater on satellite imagery , but without information on grades, names or even if this river might be used for whitewater sports or not. --Federico Explorador (talk) 01:40, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I think this page concerns whitewater sports, not about water looking white. If you are a mapper, but not practising this kind of sport, it would be advisable not to map 'whitewater sport features'.

To my opinion, the question would be: should we advise the use of the whitewater tags to whitewater sports only? Otherwise such tags would just be useless, if not harmful. --Yvecai (talk) 16:56, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Waterfalls as whitewater:section_grade=pretty_big_number?

There is no real hard distinction between smaller waterfalls and high grade rapids, and it does seem natural to tag all waterfalls as whitewater. Also, we already have two stale proposals for waterfalls (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Waterfall , http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:waterway%3Dwaterfall ).

So it might be an idea to tag the waterway with whitewater:section_grade and the waterfall cliffs either with (natural=cliff,underwater=yes) or natural=waterfall as one of the stale proposals suggests.

Thoughts? RicoZ (talk) 12:38, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

The whitewater= tags is meant for whitewater sports, every waterfall is not meant for whitewater sport. whitewater:section_grade=* follows its own classification based on whitewater practice (see International Scale). This includes whatever waterfall that may be runnable or not. There is no rule such as waterfall implying grade x or y.--Yvecai (talk) 21:37, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I have updated waterfalls to reflect that. RicoZ (talk) 17:21, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

I have added a security warning there, too. --Yvecai (talk) 17:09, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Hazards

What about advising for whitewater=hazard instead of waterway=hazard?

This would allow for instance tagging nodes with waterway=dam + whitewater=hazard. --Yvecai (talk) 21:26, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Is the dam the hazard? Maybe there should be a way to mark areas of water with attributes such as hazard or maybe even grade if there are different river arms. RicoZ (talk) 10:16, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Please add a section "How to map"

It would be helpful to have a section called "How to map". I am not familiar with mapping whitewater sports, otherwise I would add a section.

Is this entire whitewater section only for mapping qualities about rivers or is whitewater about types of routes and passages available on a river? (e.g., "route in middle is grade 6, route on edge is grade 3") This section seems to be about mapping qualities about the river, but some of the advice and comments seem to be more about routes, passages and ways within a parts or currents of a river (and how the current varies from one side of the river).

The following questions concern mapping "routes" or "trails" on rivers (e.g., route=canoe (already mapped 218 times); route=whitewater or route=rafting do not exist yet). http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:route Please advise if "whitewater" is only about mapping a river's qualities, and not about routes on a river.

SEE ALSO http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Relation:route#Water_related_routes

The following questions concern mapping "routes" or "trails" on waterways and rivers

• If there is riverbank; then is adding routes inside the riverbank preferable? At least one of the guides for GPS routing of whitewater suggests "paddling in the middle of the river" in order to create a route that will be added within the middle of the riverbanks.

• If no riverbank or coastline is mapped then:
  • Is a "whitewater trail" or "canoeing trail" or "kayaking trail" added as a secondary feature to an already existing river's way?
  • Or, is a trail added as a separate way (e.g., route=canoe or route=whitewater [fyi: route=whitewater does not exist yet]) next to the river's way?

• What if there are multiple overlapping and diverging canoe routes on one river?
  • Relations: If separate routes are added for each trail that is fine, but if each trail is a feature of the river, then each trail must be mapped as a separate relation. Is that how it is done, or is there another way to map multiple water trails on one river?
  • What about mapping multiple relations in marshes or in the open ocean where the trail cannot be added to the riverbank or to the river?

• Is a whitewater, canoeing or kayaking trail in a marsh area still "whitewater"? Is "grade 1" whitewater in a marsh actually whitewater?

Thank you --Peace2 (talk) 16:49, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Tagging rapids

Hello I have no clue of how to tag rapids: waterway:rapids is deprecated and whitewater:rapid_grade is abandoned. So how should I do?

whitewater:rapid_grade=* is not abandoned, I removed a misleading link to whitewater:grade=*.--Jojo4u (talk) 11:52, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

whitewater=* seems to be sports orientated, while waterway=rapids isn't.
How exactly do we tag a rapids regardless of whether it is used for sports? It should be exactly how we map a waterway=waterfall: it shouldn't matter if it's used for sports or not; we should simply map a natural feature. whitewater=* doesn't really replace waterway=rapids in my opinion. --naoliv (talk) 12:02, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

I completely agree that this is too sports orientated, I just want to add a natural feature. waterway=rapids does exactly that. Let the sports people add the sports-related stuff

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Even though the page states that waterway=rapids is deprecated, there is no indication about how to tag the rapid using this scheme. There are tags for whitewater:rapid_name, _grade etc., but how should one tag the rapids itself? AlaskaDave (talk) 13:52, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Has Whitewater become diluted?

I have begun mapping a section of the Michigan, Grand River water trail. A local paddling club created a Google Map. When I would prefer they were investing in OpenStreetMap. So far, I have found the "whitewater" tag scheme to be adequate, but would prefer a more generic name, like "paddlecraft" or "watercraft". At the basic level, the needs are the same for human powered water craft (kayaks, canoes, sups or even innertubes). Primarily, the basics I speak of are for routing; put in, egress, portages. Most hazards would apply to any boating activity. Shops, rentals and the like should also be made more generic. Save the whitewater tag for elements that are specific to the sport. --TreeStryder (talk) 02:36, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

whitewater:put_in;egress

How should I tag a low bank frequently used as an access site, on an otherwise difficult to access river? --TreeStryder (talk) 19:33, 28 February 2021 (UTC)