Went white-water rafting for the first time this past weekend. I LOVED it. Outdoor sports are understandably huge in Southern Oregon and anything having to do with water, given the location, is very popular. I've done sea kayaking, but never white-water, so I was really looking forward to trying it out. This was just an intro course, so we started out with easy stuff and ended with a couple class IV rapids--the Powerhouse and Gold Nugget Run.
Noah's Rafting did a great job--very professional and friendly. Exactly what you want for these kinds of trips. We rafted the Rogue River--the section right below Gold Ray Dam and Gold Hill--just a half hour from Ashland. The Rogue flows 215 miles from Crater Lake to the Pacific Ocean and was one of the original 8 rivers included in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968. (Fun bit of trivia: The movie The River Wild with Kevin Bacon and Meryl Streep was filmed on the Rogue.)
There were over 35 people on our trip and we had 6 rafts with a guide in each one. We ended up on a raft with just another couple--a mother and daughter visiting from the Willamette Valley--so we didn't have as much weight as that of the other rafts which had at least 2-3 more people...this would end up being important later on.
It was a perfect day for rafting--hot sun, warm breeze, cool refreshing water. Definitely got a little bit of a rush when we went backwards through one of the tougher rapids and there was a section where you could "surf" the current which was really fun. Near the end when we went over this big dam, we were 5th in line and we could see each raft going over almost vertically at one point. Our guide told us to paddle hard and then lean back, hold on to the grips inside the raft, and brace our feet on the front of the boat so we wouldn't flip. When it was our turn, I was ready.
As we go over the dam, I can tell something isn't right. There was a domino effect when the woman behind Jeff fell on top of him and the guide fell on top of her. The boat stays upright with me in it lying completely flat (nothing could have pried my fingers off that grip), but the raft was a lot lighter than it was before because everyone else had been thrown out! Oh well, no one was too hurt and it made for some extra excitement. After that, the remaining class IV rapids were no big deal. :)
Hoping to squeeze in one more trip this year--most likely will raft the Upper Klamath River's 7-mile "Hell's Corner Gorge" which is the nation's newest federally protected "wild and scenic" waterway. It's located right on the Oregon-California border and has 47 class III-IV+ quality, named rapids on the one-day run.
For more pics of the trip I took (although, thankfully, no pictures of me looking like a drowned rat), click here.
