I Love Rafting!

Yesterday, I took my first commercial trips on the Rio Grande. It was running at about 3,700 cfs, which is pretty darn big! My morning trip was on the Gorge section of the river, which is basically just a float with a couple of Class II rapids. Nothing crazy. I took a group of boy scouts who were supposed to go on the Racecourse, which is solid Class III and IV right now, but the age limit for our company was bumped up to 12 years old, and most of the kids were too young or too small. Anyway, they were pretty disappointed that they didn't get to do the big water, but they ended up having a really good time, trying to one-up each other by jumping into the freezing water and shouting the best paddle commands and such. It was fun. I'd never seen that section of river before, so it was interesting when they were asking me questions such as, "How much longer?" and, "When's the next rapid?" I couldn't even lie because I had absolutely no idea, but they just went with the flow.

The afternoon trip was definitely where all the fun was to be had. Before yesterday, I'd only seen the Racecourse twice, once when the water was pretty low and I was in a ducky, and once a few days ago when I rode along on a trip. Let's just say that it's a completely different river at almost 4,000 cfs. The waves are absolutely huge and the water is really moving! I had spent the morning trip warming up and mentally preparing for the afternoon trip that was sure to be a ride. It was! I ended up with a boat of 7 people from 3 different groups. One was an older couple, then there were two younger couples and one of their friends. We started out practicing all of our paddle strokes and moves on the river that might be needed to keep everyone in the boat. No matter where I moved people, the right side of my boat was having trouble keeping up with the paddlers on the left. Looking back, I think that the amount of air in the right and left tubes must have been uneven and that's why the boat tended to turn to the right the entire trip.

We punched through the first set of rapids called Little Albert's and Big Albert's. The other guide had a swimmer, but nothing bad. Whew...The day before someone with another company had flipped in Little Albert's and they had to MedEvac a lady out because she was blue. Yikes!

The Narrows is the longest section of whitewater and it's huge and fast. It's called the narrows because the river is more narrow there! Get it? We made it through there as well and I still hadn't lost anybody. Good. I was still so very nervous though. The big stuff was still to come!

After some other sections of water came Big Rock. Big Rock is a set of huge boulders that are in the middle of the river, one of which has a huge and nasty hole behind it. Since the river is high, we ran the left side of the huge rock. That rapid is called the Toilet Bowl. It's a steep drop and you pretty much just get flung around the huge rock and into a huge lateral wave. I was afraid that I wasn't going to get around the rock! But we made it because the current around the rock is so strong. It grabs you and, as a guide, you have just enough time to take 1 or 2 strokes to square up to the huge lateral wave before you have to yell at you crew to "get down" and you yourself have to get down before you all get flung out of the boat by the power of the water! No swimmers in the hole...but almost! We filled completely up with water, then caught a strong eddie line that pulled the right side of the boat down. Since we were full of water, the right tube sunk WAY down and I almost lost 2 people! I almost went in as well! That would have been embarrassing!

There was another big surf wave called Chupacabra, then it was time for the biggest wave of the trip-Sousse Hole. Sousse is another big drop with a huge curler at the end that's pretty much a ginormous boat-eating wall at this water level. At around 4,000 cfs, it starts to flip 50% of all boats that go into it. It's big and nasty, but a pretty safe swim with few consequences. People gather on the cliff above Sousse Hole when the water is high just to watch the carnage of boats flipping all day. I noticed that there was quite a crowd there as we rounded to corner, headed toward the hole! I informed my crew that this was the last wave on the trip and the last time that they would have to paddle, so to give me everything that they had left. The more speed we had going in, the easier I could move the boat, and the less likely our chance of flipping. The first 2 boats made it through and then it was my turn. I gave the "paddle forward" command and we were off. We hit the lateral wave on the left side and were set up perfectly for the hole! My crew paddled hard and we got tossed just as hard when we punched the huge wall of water. A helmet made contact with my front tooth, (no, not the one that I already had a root canal on due to a previous rafting incident, the other one! But it's fine Mom and Dad, don't worry!) Finally we made it through! No flipping! Yessss! I was SO stoked, and SO relieved! The look on my face was probably priceless!

After we made it through, everyone had this look of relief on their faces as well. Apparently I went right for the meat of the hole. While I could see that I was FAR from the obvious boat-eating part of the wave, it didn't look like that to everyone on the other side! They thought we were going swimming for sure! Maybe I did hit it a little more right than everyone else, I dunno, but I lived to tell about it! I got all kinds of props from all of the other guides and the owners who were watching when we hit the Sousse! I guess the pictures will tell just how vertical my boat really was...pretty freaking intense! You're not gonna want to miss THESE PHOTOS! They're really going to freak my Mom and Dad out! Love you guys! Oh yeah, and the series of photos before me are of K going through the same rapid. Better czech them out too.