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RAPID RIDING 101 Jeremy Fry, freelance writer and stuntman in Los Angeles California with 7 years of river guiding class I-V water.
The point of no return; committing oneself to something from which it is impossible to turn back. Perhaps most people encounter this point only a few times in their lives as there are truly not many of them to encounter. While it may feel like we face them often, usually we can, though it may be difficult, stop what we are doing and cautiously/dangerously/slowly return to where we previously stood. However a true point of no return offers, as it describes, zero chance of retracing our steps, even the inability to pause the action.
Skydiving, for example, most definitely has one of these points. One moment you stand secure, able to move to and fro, and the next you plummet earth-bound, completely incapable to do that which you were only seconds before doing. But it offers this moment only one time. You cross it and complete your journey and are finished until you return for another jump. If reaching and breaching this point pulls your trigger, perhaps white water rafting is what the doctor ordered.
Led by a guide ironically sitting in the back of the boat, you and up to eight or so of your closest or soon-to-be closest friends can face the terror, thrill and majesty that only thousands of gallons of frothing water clawing towards you can offer. Perhaps only your guide will truly know where it is, but each rapid has a point of no return: Until you reach it, you can eddy out if desired – pull the boat into calm waters usually along the side of the river.
But there is a point where you have no choice but to navigate the waters ahead.
Should you be running a pool-drop rapid, immediately following the rapid will be a section of calm river. Found in these waters are missing paddles, lost equipment, floating friends and cheers of thrilled survival. It is here that selves are gathered and stories thrown around about how death was narrowly avoided. Most guides and paddlers do what they can to keep themselves from becoming the next swimmer, but truth be known, the best rafting stories must include at least yard sale where everything in the boat is tossed, yanked or dragged overboard. Flipping is optional, but nearly always guarantees another great story of righting the boat just in time to pull everyone and thing on board before the next point of no return is crossed.
Perhaps nothing is more fun on the river than a train of towering haystacks – standing waves caused by water pushing upwards after running straight into massive rocks under the water. One second the boat looks like it is about to smash into an impenetrable wall of water, the next it curls up the bottom of the wave and faces straight up in the air. Cresting the top happens so fast it is nearly indiscernible before the boat slams forward like when your friend in 3rd grade jumped off the seesaw with you in the air. Now churning water fills your entire frame of vision as you look straight down into the trough of the wave.
A series of four, five or more of these monsters run properly are a guaranteed adrenaline rush. If the river is really cranking, as in the beginning of the season when the snowmelt is healthy, companies will often pull out after these sections, run the boats back upstream and put in above the
fun.Before you know it, the guy or girl in the back who has been yelling at you like a drill sergeant on day one of boot camp points the nose towards the shore and ties off the boat, and begins to engage in what separates the good guides from the rest: lunch preparation.
Everyone knows that everything tastes better outside and even Cheezits taste like an hor d’oeuvre from a five-star restaurant when accompanied by water spray and the indistinguishable aroma of 2-season-old life jackets. Here is where you see what purpose the knives clipped to your guide’s vest really serve: while they stand by to cut trapped swimmers free of boats and ropes, they almost exclusively spend their stainless steel lives spreading peanut butter and dicing tomatoes for river burritos.
The last rapid disappears as you curve down the river and the adrenaline high that has swept you along all day suddenly drops you like you went off of a waterfall. Feeling like you’ve run a marathon, you peel off your wetsuit and booties and pile them up with your jacket and paddle.
Squeezing into the van for the ride back to civilisation, you are convinced the clocks you see stopped working 4 hours ago and your eyelids can hardly stay open.
In spite of this, you find yourself in the middle of a group story- tell as you share how you nearly fell over the side of the boat to your death and hear how the person behind you was knocked into the rapids when the oaf in front of them fell backwards and cue balled them overboard.
With untold stories on queue to share, you fall asleep that night, the rolling floor of your rubber boat still beneath you. Never has slept come so fast nor been so deep. This is the effect that venturing time after time into the unknown with the inability to return has.
SPORTS
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