Yesterday I went whitewater rafting with my friend Heather. We had intended to go on a shorter, easier trip, at least partially because she had never been rafting. But the company had nobody else sign up for the trip we booked and so they asked me if we would go on a longer, more intense trip, and Heather agreed, and so off we went at 6am towards Auburn. The trip was a 4-5 hour trip on class 3-4 rapids and was advertised as “ok for adventurous first timers”. For anyone who doesn’t raft, class 4 is basically “hey, you might fall out of the boat but basically usually everything is fine”, and it’s generally considered pretty safe for commercial rafting. I had actually done this trip last year, but the flow was much more intense this year, at about 2500 cfs or cubic feet per second.
Things started out relatively normal. We got assigned a raft guide who, while he seemed experienced, definitely was a bit of a hippie and a goofball. He seemed nice but out of his element and even talked about how we didn’t enjoy leading or being on point, which seemed like a weird thing to say. He kinda half-heartedly went through the safety briefing and I filled in Heather on a few more details. There were 3 boats. The first few rapids were fast but honestly pretty manageable and we were both just starting to think this would just be a fun, exciting day.
Then, almost out of nowhere, we hit a certain class 4 rapid called Bogus Thunder. It wasn’t advertised as being anything special and we weren’t given any special instructions. We paddled forward into it, 6 of us customers and the guide in the back. Then, in a split second, it was over. I was seated in the back but on the leading edge as we went into the slight drop with the boat aligned from shore to shore. The boat started to yawn over and before I knew it, I was underwater. This by itself didn’t shock me; I’ve fallen out of a boat in rafting before. But I watched, as I went under, the person in front of me go over as well. It seemed to happen so fast, then everything slowed down to a crawl. I went under for just a brief moment and when I came up I was at the mercy of the river. I saw other swimmers out of the corner of my eye. I looked around frantically for Heather but I spotted instead another woman with her fiance. She was bleeding out of the side of her head and was hysterical, screaming that she couldn’t swim and that she couldn’t see and she was flailing. I looked for the boat but couldn’t find it. I started swimming for shore, holding my oar. A small tree came into view; I grabbed for it but missed. I spun around and saw Heather, still vertical, looking calm but struggling against the current. I think I yelled something. I swam again towards shore and an eddy. I missed it. The river was very fast. The woman kept screaming and I started having to fight down my own panic. We had already gone several hundred feet downstream and I knew there were more class 4 rapids ahead of us. I started again, this time more seriously. I caught the edge of an eddy and slowly dragged myself into it. I heard Heather call out and spun around just to see her drift past me, agonizingly. There was nothing I could do. I turned to help the couple. I crawled to my knees. My adventure was mostly over, but the day was just beginning. It turned out that Heather had, after several more close calls, been rescued by a boat about 300 feet further down the river, but around a bend and out of sight. I focused on the injured woman; me and her fiance trying to calm her down as blood streamed from a small cut near her eye.
After what seemed like an eternity, a guide came climbing over the rocks. We had to climb and move down river, he said. I was shaking like a leaf and I realized I had on my terribly old sneakers with no tread. But I climbed, up and over the rocks, about 30-50 feet above the river, to the next boat. Eventually we all got reunited. Only one problem: no boat. It was gone.
I’ve been told since by many people how rare this is. So rare, in fact, that the guides had no plan for it. Our guide was despondent and while he was physically fine he looked severely mentally shaken. The woman had stopped screaming but was now woozy. There was, really, no way forward except in the boats, but now they would be dangerously overweight, and we would have to ride in the middle with no paddles. After 10-15 minutes the guides succumbed to the inevitable and put us in the 2 remaining boats but told us we would only go until the next class 4 rapid and then beach again. I think they were hoping we would see the third boat. We did not.
At the next rapid, they decided to send enough of us hiking over the rocks and around the class 4 rapid so that they could run the boats with the normal number of people; splitting us up. Heather understandably did not want back in the boats so I agreed to hike again up with her. We were wearing tons of safety gear and I was in a full wetsuit and it was hot and dry and I started to get a little antsy, but we all made it. About 2 miles further down the river we found the third boat; another company had rescued it. Then came one of the worst parts; we had to get back into the boat, with our original guide. I never wanted out of a boat more. An hour or so later we made it to the pull out.
The experience taught me a number of things. I’m definitely going rafting again; I’m not scared. But I am mad at myself because, having some outdoors training myself, I recognized that things weren’t right. There’s no way to predict an accident like this, because there’s always a strong element of chance, but the guide I had in the boat, and the system around me, was not set up for success, and was not set up to process the event when it happened. The lead up to the accident felt wrong and I should have listened to that gut voice. As a first timer, Heather shouldn’t have been there at all, and our guide was not mentally prepared to lead the boat that day. Everyone came out of it OK, but it’s a reminder that activities like this are not amusement parks, and nature always gets a vote. We should have been much better prepared, mentally and physically, and that includes me.
