Whitewater Rafting in CO.

Whitewater Rafting

San Miguel River
Teleride, CO
June 2011

“What do you have for chicken shits because deep down I am a chicken shit”, I asked the guy at the adventure store, Telluride Outdoors.  He schedules adventure trips for people with skills, talent, courage, strength and common sense and also for me.

Me.  I don’t swim and I don’t have any upper body strength and I am afraid of drowning.  But I am lured to the water. It owns me.  And I get sucked into one water adventure after another and with most, I leave the experiences exhilarated and recognizing that my water game of Russian roulette is someday going to catch up to me.  I am working on borrowed odds against me. I have got to learn to swim.

But I am in Colorado and the rivers are raging with rapid whitewater and the mountains are snowcapped and gorgeous. So I just had to go white water rafting.  And surely this company has to offer safe trips because you couldn’t maintain a business if people were falling out and drowning.  So it had to be ok to do this.  And this is the self-talk I go through every time I decide to throw caution to the wind and jump in to something without enough thought.

I reserved a morning trip, thinking the afternoon sun would be too, too intense.  But when I wake up at 730 AM and the sun is barely up and it was still cold, I wish I had reserved an afternoon slot.

We are on the San Miguel River by 9:00 AM and I am outfitted in neoprene booties, water pants, water jacket, no hat, no sunglasses and a ton of anxiety.  I let it be known immediately that I was a chicken shit.  I tell everyone that I am afraid.  I get a few looks but no one tells me to stay behind, so I take that as some sort of sign to continue on my plight. We have to break up in to teams of six and I immediately hook up with five 22 year olds.  They are all friends and looking for a good time. I figure they have strength and no fear: two ingredients that are going to help me get through the next three hours of this cold, wet, dangerous adventure.

My teammates had all choose to limit their use of the protective gear and less than a minute on the river, we hit a rapid with head on force and were baptizes to the harsh, freezing cold water.  They yelp at the cold, brutal shock.  And the men make comments about shrinkage.

We sit on the very edge of the raft, our rear ends positioned slightly on the side.  Our feet are to be locked in, tucked firmly in the along the walls of the raft.  My feet are tucked in so tight that I worry what would happen if we capsized.  I wouldn’t be able to get myself loose.

So now, I worry about drowning by (1) capsizing and getting stuck, (2) by being thrown overboard and getting stuck under the raft, (3) going overboard and hitting my head on a rock and dying instantly, and (4) trying to rescue someone who fell out who pulled me in the water and then drowns me in his panic. Other than those scenarios, nothing else is on my mind.

I don’t know what any of the scenery looks like because I am too, too focused on my paddling.  I have a one-track mind.  I am focused on the river in front of me and nothing else. The guide tells me that my safest way to avoid falling in is to paddle.  So I want to keep paddling whether it was necessary or not.

Our guide sits on the back of the raft and gives command:

“Paddle forward, everyone”!

“Left back; right, forward!”

“Stop.”

“Forward, forward."

"Keep paddling forward, through the rapids, don’t stop. 

"Paddle, Keep paddling!!!”

“Right side, I need more effort from you” (I was on the left side and I was pretty proud of us).

Our guide is a young, handsome, charismatic man who knows what he is doing and he gives us commands in a calm voice which helps calm my nerves.

“That one wasn’t so bad”, he would comment after we ride through a rapid, “you’re still alive, he would joke.  I appreciate his effort to keep the moment in a healthy perspective but I am not in the mood.  I have more important thoughts on my mind. I am too focused on the task of not dying.

 I never approach a rapid with any confidence.  But after a while, I approach a rapid with the determination to paddle my heart out to the best of my pathetic ability.  I am not going to fall out.

We hit a rock once, on the right side and I think we are going to capsize.  Sheer panic surges through me.  We don’t capsize but we come pretty close. “Right side, I need more from you.  Paddle harder”, shouts our guide. That comment just fills my determination to paddle with even more gusto.

We travel nine miles and there is never a moment to relax because rapids are everywhere.  And when we aren’t paddling, I am holding on for dear life to the panic rope (AKA the OH SHIT rope) to my right.  I cling to that rope every chance I got.

And after three hours, we turn a bend and paddle in o a cleared patch and men are wanting for us and the trip is over and I am a little saddened. As I return my paddle and surrender my life jacket, I think to myself, “ Maybe someday, I will get up the nerve to ride the rapids of the Colorado River”.