[mark_h]

I have a couple of friends, both white-water guides and accomplished outdoorsmen, and they both put whitewater in a different category of risk: you can do everything right, and still die just due to the unpredictability of it. One of them said he had an instructor who basically said "if you stick with this long enough, either you'll die or someone you know will". They were both in the latter category.

[auxym]

A pretty popular avalanche safety book [1] has, in the introduction, an actuarial table of your survival probability if you keep going out in avalanche terrain x days a year, year after year...

[1] http://www.mountaineersbooks.org/Staying-Alive-in-Avalanche-...

[Bartweiss]

Yeah, I've heard both wingsuiting and ice climbing described similarly. Possibly not as high-risk, at least for ice climbing, but they have the same issue with random disaster. If you hit a death block somewhere, that's the end, and lifelong ice climbers build up a lot of chances at that no matter how good they are.

[ganeshkrishnan]

It depends on the class of rapids you navigate through. I have done couple in Himalayas below class 5 and in most of them the guide said the risks are pretty minimal.

[rhombocombus]

That said, it's a river. You don't get to choose when bad luck hits. I have been a paddler for most of my life, and I have paddled over flatwater sections that have killed people just as handily as if they were a waterfall or a class VI rapid. We go to great lengths to be conscientious and meticulous in our preparation, and most of the time it pays off. I have run whitewater for many years in rafts and kayaks, and seen folks get hurt, but one of the worst injuries I have seen took place in two feet of calm water. I still go out, and I take my family on the river, but I always try to be meticulous in my preparation. That doesn't prevent calamity, but nothing will do that.