We travelled by day in seventeen-foot rafts, with all of our gear wrapped in black rubber bags and lashed them to the rafts. Each raft had a boatman who sat in the middle and steered with a set of oars. The passengers, two in the front and two in the back, bailed the raft after each rapid.
We had four rafts in our group altogether, and we kept in sight of each other, always waiting after a rapid to see if the other rafts made it through, watching to see if we need to pick up any passengers who had been tossed into the churning water.
10 comments:
Yowza. It looks like you're riding on a river of frothy chocolate milk.
Did you ever get tossed into the water??
how does the camera not get wet?
looks like so much fun.
Phantom: The river was clear for the first day, because of Glen Canyon Dam, which filters out all the silt, but then lots of side canyons were flashing because of thunderstorms so the rest of the way, the river was muddy and full of silt. It looked just the way I always pictured the river in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.
No, I didn't fall out, although I did jump out to swim during a calm stretch of the river. We also had a two-person inflatable raft that the guides let us use in small rapids. I was on the small raft when we hit some waves and the other passenger went flying out. He hung onto his paddle, though, grabbed the raft, and managed to climb back on once we were through the waves.
Timna: Most of the time my camera was sealed in a dry bag. This shot I took standing on shore. The man at the oars, by the way, is a colleague, the literature professor who set up the trip.
And yes, going through the rapids is lots of fun.
What a beautiful picture. I am a chicken, this would scare me, although it looks like a lot of fun!
Jo(e) is back! Jo(e) is back! Yippie!
I great your return like a hyperactive puppy locked in the house all day, only with more parentheses.
I just want to know who is going to play you in the movie.
Welcome back. Hope your re-entry to "ordinary time" is going well.
Yikes! This is amazing looking. You must be fit and tan!
That looks so amazing! I've never been rafting but always wanted to go. Beautiful.
That was some pretty rough water. I could imagine how hard it would be to find someone overboard.
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