Still, I knew the proof would be in the paddling. So my friend Bill Cross (author of Western Whitewater) and I hauled a Rogue down to the river (the Klamath, ironically) to see if it lived up to its name. I had read the literature, and had some notion of the company’s claims about the canoe.

The Rogue is a Dave Kruger design, and is very pleasant to look at—which is important if you ascribe to the axiom that the first rule in all canoeing is to look good. The Rogue’s eye-catching Royalex hull is 16 feet long, comfortably wide, with straight sides and flared ends. The boat we paddled had ash thwarts, ash seats with nylon webbing, and vinyl gunwales (other options are available). One thing that I especially liked was the seat mounting. The seats are cleverly hung from the top edge of the hull in such a way that no screw heads or finish washers interrupt the smooth top of the gunwale. Very tidy and comfortable for the paddler.

The run we picked for our test drive has enough Class II-III rapids to test the boat’s whitewater performance. First we paddled at moderate speed into a train of two- to three-foot waves. We weren’t surprised to discover that the Rogue, with its 24.5-inch-deep bow, is exceptionally dry. We also drove the boat into every eddy we could, and found that the Rogue turns nicely and remains steady in eddy catches and peel-outs. Though the spec sheet says this boat has two and a half inches of rocker, it feels like more.

There were no unpleasant surprises, and one very nice surprise—something they didn’t tell us about in the brochure. For a 16-foot, 66-lb. whitewater boat, the Rogue is quick off the mark. Put the wood to the water and the Rogue moves out. Whitewater paddlers don’t talk much about speed, but we all know that there are times when acceleration is handy: the very important ferry, the sprint out to a good surfing wave, or the paddle across a long flat to the next rapid.
We didn’t have an opportunity to surf any big waves, but we did play on several small ones where the boat behaved well enough to make me think it would handle nicely on a larger one. Since we paddled on a windless day, we couldn’t judge how a headwind wind would affect this high-profile boat, but I suspect the Rogue’s cruising ability would off-set any negative wind effects.

It’s exciting to see that We-no-nah, long a leader in competition and cruising boats, is introducing whitewater playboats. With the new Rogue, they’ve created a canoe that lives up to its name.