THRILLS, CHILLS AND SPILLS!

I was splashed, thrashed and trashed. I got a soaking that left me choking. At times I trembled in panic and a little fear. Undoubtedly I felt humbled. And I will probably need therapy but I SURVIVED the white water of the Gallatin River. 

I didn’t grow up white-water rafting.  Most of Missouri’s rivers are lazy, gentle things. You get a group together, get several large tire tubes, tie a net to one of them to carry the beer and tube down the Ozark's overgrown creeks like the Current River’s sweet placidness. 

 

I think I had tubing in mind when I tried my first white-water adventure on the Roaring Fork River in Colorado. That wasn’t what the Roaring Fork had in mind at all that day. To be honest, I remember being told that the snow melt made the water cold – really cold. I remember being told and maybe signing something that said something about white-water being a dangerous activity and that if I died it was my own fault.

 

It was my ex-husband’s idea. The people Dennis worked with put this together as a ‘group activity’. Dennis and I were already living the adventurous life in Boulder Colorado hiking, backpacking, and learning how to rock climb. But we’d never been white-water rafting before the Roaring Fork literally pulled us into its raging current.  We hit a suckhole and BOOM, the wave ‘crunched’ the boat and both Dennis and I went flying out into the violent water.

 

Let me be very clear. The Colorado snowmelt should NOT be described as ‘cold’. It was FREEZING and for seconds that seemed like hours I believed something had vacuumed all the air out of my body.  I was close to the raft and was quickly rescued by my fellow rafters who were fortunate enough to remain in the boat. I searched for my husband and did not see him in all the foamy white water.  I thought I might be a widow before he ever had a chance to build up a pension. I screamed “My husband!” and then I saw a familiar hand clinging to the rope circling the boat. I didn’t raft for a good twenty years after that.

 

Eventually my adventure quotient required I take up rafting again. I have had the opportunity to raft down the Arkansas River in Colorado and the Upper Salt in Arizona. Each time I go there is a tiny warning in my head that I completely ignore. White-water rafting is thrilling and chilling but mostly it is a cunning competition between you and the river. If you fight the river, you lose. If you move with the river, the river will give you the ride of your life.

 

Montana Whitewater is perhaps the most organized raft company I’ve ever come across. Its permanent headquarters at Three Forks, Montana below Bozeman offers a gift shop, a cafe, all the gear you are going to need for your white-water trip and even changing rooms where you can strip to your bathing suit and pull on the extremely tight neoprene wetsuits, your equally tight neoprene booties, your fleece vest, your splash jacket and of course your PFD (Personal Flotation Device - a PFD is really what we’d call a life jacket but I assume some marketing genius realized that ‘life jacket’ gave off the wrong aura.) AND when you get done with your rafting and back to raft central, you can continue your pee your pants adventure day with a trip on their zipline.  All adventure all the time. This place is not in the least bit like the temporary Gilligan’s Islandish trailer and tents we Arizonans encounter on the Salt. This place is really flash.

 

So after you suit up, you all help each other get in the raft by slipping into the freezing water and sort of hoisting yourself into the boat. The boat is kind of like a big oval blowup backyard leaky (self-bailing) swimming pool with three or four ‘ribs’ in the middle where you sit and paddle your head off when your guide yells things like ‘Two Forward’. The guide is yelling because the roar of the river makes it hard to hear the instructions.

 

The instruction I like the most is ‘All Forward Hard’ which means you have an appointment with the mother of all rapids and if you don’t get your paddle in the water and paddle in sync with your fellow rafters you are going to take an unplanned swim. (Side note – as part of your ‘safety lesson’ prior to putting the boat into the water your guide instructs you how to get into the white-water rescue position – feet first, butt down. I’ve always wondered if I would remember the white-water rescue position in 40 degree water.) When you conquer a big rapid or reach your pullout point, all your fellow rafters put their paddles in the air for a paddle high-five. It’s really cool. Really.

 

The Gallatin is a burly river in the spring (I love that word – burly – got it from our trip guide. Cool, huh!?). It throws your boat around pretty much constantly. Rivers are rated from Class 1 through Class 5. The Current would be a low Class 1 unless in flood. There are Class 6 rivers but only dead people ever try them. I like to stay in the Class 3 and Class 4 range. Our trip, because the Gallatin was engorged with rapidly melting snow, experienced one Class 4 which would normally have been a high Class 3. Good enough for me. After we went safely through it, we could all be a bit smug as we watched another boat dump not only two paddlers but also its guide!

 

Largely due to the skill of our boat’s guide, all of us stayed in our boat from beginning to end.  Tom, our guide, was probably the best and the most experienced raft guide with whom I have ever had the pleasure to paddle. I learned a lot about the River (that’s part of his job), more about paddling in a high volume river (it’s his job to explain how we are all going to get down this raging rock and roll water slide by working together and doing exactly what he says) and myself.

 

Adventure of any type always gives you insights about how you might handle the big events in your life. That’s one of the reasons I do adventurous things. If I can raft a river, I can certainly climb a mountain. If I can climb a mountain, I can certainly visit some country completely foreign to me. If I can visit some country….. Well, you get the idea.

 

So I get a little waterlogged. So I get what feels like a pail of ice water thrown into my face many times before we get to the pullout. So I am tired and cold and wet (those suits aren’t really for keeping you dry but more like not waterlogged or hypothermic). As my t-shirt says, I survived the splashing, thrashing and crashing. Honestly, a good contest with a rebellious, burly river is what I call FUN!