About

What this is

Riverbeta pulls together the things you check before you load the boats: live streamflow and water temperature, the weather, run descriptions and rapids, and current beta from other paddlers. It exists to answer one question quickly — is it running, and what do I need to know before I go?

Why it exists

The real beta for these rivers lives in scattered Facebook groups, forum threads, and friends' texts. It is genuinely useful, and it scrolls away — the report that would have saved you a portage is three weeks deep in a feed nobody can search. Riverbeta is an attempt to gather that knowledge somewhere it lasts and stays findable.

How it's made

Conditions data is pulled live from public agencies — the USGS for flow and water temperature, NOAA for weather. Run descriptions are compiled from public sources. Community beta is collected from public posts and credited to the paddlers who wrote it. The full list of every feed, organization, and project Riverbeta is built on lives on the sources & thanks page.

A lot of it is still rough. Much of the river data is estimated and gets better as locals weigh in. We are honest about that — see the disclaimer and safety page for what that means before you rely on anything here.

What we hold to

• Free and ad-free. We don't sell anything.
• Community voices are credited to the people who wrote them, not anonymized into “the site says.”
• Honest about what we don't know — estimates are labeled as estimates, and safety content is never invented.
• Information from other organizations is attributed, with a link back to the source.

Contact & corrections

Riverbeta is built by paddlers in Bigfork, Montana. If something here is wrong, if a run or rapid is missing, or if you wrote a post quoted on the site and would like it changed or removed, we want to hear from you — getting the details right matters more than getting them fast.

Prefer email? hello@riverbeta.app.