White Water Rafting- The Biggest Crash Ever

In the river biz, you crash sometimes.  No getting around it.  As the saying goes, “There are two kinds of rafters- those that have flipped, and those that are going to.”

Well, we just had a crash.  A huge one.  A group of about 100 people had to cancel their 4th of July white water rafting trip.  We are, to put it mildly, bummed.

In this post, we’re going to give you two things:

1. The special we’ve decided to run to try to make up for our lost business.  We think it’s a really good deal, and we hope you’ll take us up on it.  (We also hope that our lost group can come back when the logistics work for them.  Thanks for trying, guys.)
2. The story of the greatest raft crash ever.

First, the Special:

• 125 dollars and 50 cents (not much, if you really think about it).
• Friday the 3rd and Saturday the 4th (that’s coming up).
• Rafting on the New River (at water levels right now that we consider “perfect”).
  

  This is just a temporary setback

• Party at Songer (oh, it’s on).
• Fireworks (kind of ridiculously big ones).
• Cookout (burgers, dogs… the goods).
• Music (from Djs to bluegrass and everything in between).
• Prizes (super shwag).
• Games (sumo suits, dunking booth… think “carnival”).
• Kids stuff (bouncy rooms, hayrides, and a scavenger hunt).
• Not-kids stuff (drink specials in the High Water Lounge).
• You (we hope)

When you crash, you’ve just got to pull yourself back in the boat, point it at the highest wave you can see, and go big.

Ready to do it?  Give us a call.  Let’s hang out together this 4th.

Second, the Story:

Alright- get comfy.  This is kind of a long one…

When I was training guides on the Gauley, I always took comfort in the fact that I was getting the most dangerous river trips that I was going to take all season out of the way first, right off the bat.  Guiding guests is nothing compared to taking trainees, and here’s why:

Trainees get to drive the boat.

That’s pretty huge.  Because when people train for Gauley season, they’re already guides.  Well, they’re supposed to be.  They come to West Virginia from all over.  Maine to Georgia.  Colorado to California.  Alaska, New Zealand, and South Africa.  If they have what it takes, they get to guide on the Gauley.  If they don’t, they get weeded out.  That’s what the training is for.  Weeding.

So there I would sit, white knuckled, letting someone who didn’t know the river drive my boat.  Each trainee would take turns.  I would gently (sometimes not so gently) suggest where they should take the raft.  Most of the trainees were great.  Some weren’t.

This story’s about one of the ones that weren’t.

When I trained people, I would let each trainee guide a couple of rapids in a row.  On the Upper Gauley, that worked out pretty well.  I could let someone guide 2 or 3 medium sized rapids, and then a big one.  And that’s what I did with California.

I call him California because I can’t remember his name, just where he was from.  And, actually, it goes a little deeper than that.  Rafters have a little “east vs. west” thing going on.  It’s all in fun, of course.  There are great (and I mean great) guides from pretty much everywhere with good whitewater.  But the further west you get, the guides just sometimes get a little more… groovy.  It’s like, they’re more peace & love, and we’re more Budwiser & violence.  Like I said, all in good fun.

Anyway, California took the stick about 3 rapids above the famous, the one, the only… Sweet’s Falls. (If you know the river, you can kind of see where this is going).

Sweet’s is a 14 foot waterfall.  Now, if you run it correctly, it doesn’t feel like 14 feet.  If you run it wrong, though, it’s every bit of 14 feet.  Feels a lot higher, actually.  I’m getting to that part.

Running Sweet’s means that you can’t go too far right.  If you do that, you drop straight down into The Energizer, a nasty hydraulic that sucks birds out of the sky.  If you go too far left, you’ll hit a hidden rock.  The rock has a lot of very colorful names, but let’s call it The Ejector.

Now, you have to remember, you’re going over a waterfall.  Fast.  If you hit The Ejector, the raft stops.  Everyone else?  They keep going.  It’s actually quite fun to watch it happen to someone that’s not you.

So, you can’t go too far right, and you can’t go too far left.  You’ve got to put the raft on this tongue of water that’s about, well, as wide as a raft, and -bloop- you’re down.

The only problem is that Sweet’s Falls is a class V rapid.  The reason it’s a class V rapid is because it’s a blind drop.  You can’t see where you should go.   In fact, there is absolutely no way to know if you’re too far right or too far left until you’re going over the falls.  Newer guides will say things like, “There’s-a-tiny-wave-that-pops-up-every-3-seconds-and-when-it-does-I-put-the-right-corner-of-my-raft-on-the-left-side-of-that-wave-with-a-45-degree-right-hand-angle-and-I-call-all-back-twice-and-spin-around-to-the-left-as-I-go-over-and-that’s-the-line.”

Right.  Sure it is.  Actually, they’re just saying that to hide the sheer terror they feel about what they are going to try to do.

Now, we were way above Sweet’s when California starts to guide. And he had to start our with a pretty simple Class III rapid, which, as someone who has come to train for Gauley Season, he should have had absolutely no trouble with.  Except he crashed.

Trainees fell out of the boat.  We spun off the rocks.  I shouted commands.  And I looked back at California and said, “What the hell are you doing back there?”

“Dude, chill,”  he said.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, bra.  Just chill.”

“Did you just call me ‘bra’?”

“Look.  Bra.  It’s all good.”

“What you just did wasn’t very good.”

“Alright, Bra.  I’m gonna just tell you, k?  You’re really harshing my mellow.”

“I’m what?”

“You’re harshing my mellow.”

“I don’t… I don’t even… know what that means.”

“It just means, y’know, chill.”

“Do know Sweet’s Falls is right up there?”

“Yup.”

“Do you… know what that is?”

“Yup.  Saw it on Youtube.”

O.K., I’m going to leave some space here for you to laugh at me for letting him continue to guide.  Here it is:

Back.

So we came into the entrance to Sweet’s Falls, and right off the bat, we’re too far left.  We were right over The Ejector.  I shouted, “You’re too far left!” and California proceeded to do absolutely nothing.  He’d frozen.  I pleaded at the top of my lungs for all the other trainees to back paddle.  They were digging in as hard as they could.

Meanwhile, I was trying to turn the boat, and I’m just flat-out givin’ ‘er.  I was putting everything I could into the turning strokes that might just have saved us from annihilation.

And nothing happened.  The boat wouldn’t turn.

I took one second, which was kind of feeling like my last, to look back, and I saw California, doing exactly what I was doing.  Just straight-up cranking the turn.

Except he’s on the other side of the boat.  He canceled us out.  We were doomed.

And we actually slowed way down from all the back paddling.  We were still going to hit the ejector, but now we were in slow motion.  And I had some time to think about my life, and all the people I’ve ever loved.  And, also, how beautiful Ejector Rock is, because we were going so slow I could see facets and colors in it and stuff you’re never, ever supposed to see.  I yelled, “Hunker Down!”, a command I didn’t prep those trainees for, but its one they all instantly recognized from the fear in my voice.

Instantly, I grabbed two trainees to pad myself with.   And we hit the rock.

It sounded like when you’re playing pool, and you break.  There was a loud CRACK from all of our helmets hitting together simultaneously.  And I looked up.  Which is when I saw him.

California was directly above me.  Upside-down.  Way, way up in the air.  Looking at me.  He had been Ejected, and was now about 15 feet above the river, rear-over-teakettle, totally rolling down the windows with his flailing arms.  We spun off the rock and went over the rest of the drop backwards, and he flipped over and went feet first, right into the drink.

He was the only one to fall out.

When he finally surfaced (once in front of Box Canyon, and finally again below it, for those of you playing along at home), I had a good idea where he would be.  So I moved the boat right over to where he was, and waited for him to come up.

He broke the surface like Free Willy, gasping and sputtering, eyes like saucers.  And I was there.  I grabbed his jacket and held him along the side of the boat.  Then I looked right into his deer-in-the-headlights mug, and I spoke…

“Well, California… How’s your mellow now?”

Last we ever saw of that guy.

And the moral is, there is no moral.  Everybody crashes.  But rafts float just as well upside down as they do right side up- they’re just temporarily harder to sit in.

Have a happy 4th of July.

Tags: Adventure Vacations, Gauley River Rafting, July 4th, New River Gorge Whitewater Rafting, Songer Whitewater

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Behind the Scenes, New River Rafting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.