Went on my sec­ond white-​water raft­ing trip on Sat­ur­day. This time, I went with Eddie C, Michow, James S, Joe M, Alice H, and Rachel Loh.

We were pre­pared for more near-​death and lost shoe sto­ries like from our first trip, but it actu­ally went really well. No one was knocked out of the raft this time, no one lost any equip­ment or cloth­ing, we did not get embar­rass­ingly stuck at the photo spot for sev­eral min­utes, and we did not have to hitch­hike to get home.

After a rough start at the early Class IIIs where we got knocked around a bit, we all set­tled down and got a sys­tem going, thanks to a “guardian angel” kayaker who gave us some pro trips as he passed us. Here’s a video of us shortly after that on some smaller rapids:

(There was a bet­ter video later on the river when we hit another Class III, but I’m again hav­ing some prob­lems with my cam­era. I think the bat­tery may not be charg­ing properly.)

Over­all, we did so much bet­ter this time, I think every­one who went on both trips was a lit­tle shocked. I’m a lit­tle sad, since our first raft­ing trip will always have bet­ter sto­ries, but you can’t com­plain about a smooth trip. We were say­ing that it’s prob­a­bly a bit of expe­ri­ence on our part, but prob­a­bly has a lot to do with the river’s flow being a lot greater this time. More water means less rocks to give us trouble!

Oh, and the kayaker told us to think about send­ing some­one to guide school so that we can hit higher class rapids, and I’m giv­ing it some thought now. Maybe some­thing to do next summer.