Learn About River Guiding

Rafting guide schools – guide jobs & training – recommended books on rafting

Our Rafting America members are experts in whitewater guiding. For anyone interested in pursuing a career as a white water rafting guide, their training is offered as part of the hiring process. Our members also employ cooks, administrative staff, bus drivers and operations managers.

Wilderness Aware Colorado North Platte River 015 1 Copy

​To learn more about Rafting America Guide Schools, training programs and job opportunities please visit:

Whitewater Voyages- CA
New England Outdoor Center- ME
Western River Expeditions- UT
ROW Adventures- ID
Wilderness Aware- CO
Zoar Outdoor- VT, CT, MA
Wildwater Ltd. Rafting- NC, SC, TN, GA
Glacier Wilderness Guides- MT
Landers River Trips- NY
Rogue Wilderness- OR
Adventures Mountain River- WV
Earth River- Chile
REO Rafting Resort- B.C, Canada
Mad River- WY

Recommended Guiding and White Water Rafting Books

The Guides Guide – Augmented by William McGinnis, President and Owner, Whitewater Voyages
Other books by Bill McGinnis – Whitewater Rafting, The Class V Briefing, River Signals, The Guide’s Guide
A River Runs Through It by Norman McLean
American West and Living Space by Wallace Stegner
Beyond the Hundredth Meridian – John Wesley Powell
The Second Opening of the West by Wallace Stegner
Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner
Down The Columbia by Lewis Freeman
Earth Is Enough by Harry Middleton
Floating the Missouri by James Willard Shultz
From the Andes to the Amazon by Kenneth Grubb
Gathered Waters (an anthology of river poems ed. Cort Conley)
Goodbye to a River by Robert Graves
Great Heart by James Davidson and John Rugge
Habits of Rivers by Ted Leeson
Huck Finn by Mark Twain
Life on the Colorado by Charles Hood
Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
Long Legged House by Wendell Barry
Methow River Poems by William Stafford
My Story as Told by Water by David James Duncan
Old Glory by Jonathan Rabin
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Riding the Tiger’s Back by Richard Bangs
River (poems) by Ted Hughes
River of No Return by Johnny Carrey & Cort Conley
River-Horse – A Voyage Across America by William Least-Heat Moon
River Lost by Blaine Harden
River Notes by Barry Lopez
Run, River Run by Anne Zwinger
Running the Amazon by Joe Kane
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Snake River Country by Bill Gulick
Survival of the Bark Canoe by John McPhee
Sutree by Cormac McCarthy
The Middle Fork (of the Salmon) by Johnny Carrey and Cort Conley
The River and I by John Niehart
The River at the Center of the World by Simon Winchester
The Snake River in Hells Canyon by Johnny Carrey and Cort Conley
The Place No One Knew – Glen Canyon on the Colorado by Eliot Porter
The Whitewater Handbook by Bruce Lessels
Theory and Practice of Rivers (poetry) by Jim Harrison
Week on the Concord and Merrimac by Henry David Thoreau