(no subject)
If you would like to read all about my rafting adventure, and if I can figure out how to do what I want, you should be able to click .
So, the big news is: we went on a four day rafting trip from July 31st to August 3rd. It was pretty much the same group that went last year - all college/career people from the gang here - and on the same river as last year. We just did a four day trip this year instead of three days. We just camped the first day and the last day and then rafted the two middle days. Towards the end of the river is a rapid called Oak Springs - it's a class four on a scale of five. On our first run on Tuesday morning we hit Oak Springs straight on... and flipped our raft. All nine of us in the water. We were all wearing life-vests and rode the river for about two hundred yards before we all managed to get out. That makes it sound like it was easy, but it wasn't. Three of us were trapped under the raft for a little way, one of my cousins was under the longest. I fell in head first and spent what felt like a long time under the water before I came up and bumped into the raft. I was able to grab the rope around the outside of the raft (called the 'chicken line') and got basically dragged down the river. I'll admit that I started panicking after I came up out of the water and so I am very glad that my cousin Abbie made it out from under the raft and was hanging on behind me and able to talk to me. I think we got dragged/washed over about eight huge rocks. You know how they tell you to put your feet out in front of you and hold onto your life vest at the neck (so your limbs don't get broken or stuck on anything), yeah, well guess what that leaves lowest in the water... yeah. So I was freaking out, because I was having trouble timing my breathing in between the waves and because I was in shock because I was totally not expecting the whole raft to be flipped and I had no idea where anyone else was but my cousin and I was getting beat up by these huge rocks and all I could see was more rocks and more water.
But finally we with the raft started going towards the shore. Then I suddenly found myself being pulled out of the water. It turns out that our paddle captain, Robin (the guy who sits at the back of the boat and rudders and tells you all when to paddle), had been able to climb up on the bottom of the raft (now the top) and he pulled me up onto the raft. I had no idea he was there till he grabbed my life-vest and hauled me up out of the river. I laid down flat on the bottom of that raft and never wanted to move again. But then we reached the shore and I had to get off so that we could flip the raft back over. Honestly, Abbie and Robin did most of the work. Then I stood there on the rocks and held the rope to keep the boat from floating away while Robin went to see about getting to some of the other people. At that point I thought to myself 'I had better find a place to sit down before I fall over' because I was shaking so hard from the adrenaline reaction. Then I thought 'oh, the other people! Where are they all?' I looked around and found my cousin Katie clinging to a rock out in the middle of the river with two of the oars and watching another one float by that she couldn't reach. I could see across the river that Cassondra (who is a life guard) had somehow gotten out on the other shore. The other four people in our group I couldn't see at all. Two rafts that came through Oak Springs after us safely were willing to help us out. One of them picked up Cassondra from the other side and ferried her over to us. The other picked Katie up from the middle of the river and also picked up two of our other girls, sisters Candice and Michelle, from the rocks they were hanging onto just offshore (but around an outcropping from us so I couldn't see them). A lady who was driving by had seen us flip, squealed to a stop, grabbed a rope from the back of her car and rushed down to help. I remember catching a glimpse of her running between the waves splashing my face. She pulled our other two rafters out of the water, Jason and Heidi, and they walked back to where we had pulled out. So finally we had all nine of our people back in the raft, but we were missing two oars. I had actually grabbed one as I was hanging onto the raft - it bumped into my elbow and I just latched on - and Robin had ended up with four, plus we had the two Katie had. So after we determined that nothing was broken we got back on the river - with Heidi and I sitting on the bottom of the raft not paddling - and went down about twenty yards to where one of the other rafts had pointed out our oars stuck on the rocks. We pulled over again to get them and then sat there for about ten minutes with nearly everyone talking at once. We decided that none of us will ever complain about wearing life-vests again. Between the talking then and much more that night and the next day we figured out what had happened to each of us.
The right side people mostly went underwater right away. That is the side the water came piling into, which flipped the raft. Cassondra, Katie, Heidi, and Abbie were on that side. The left side people went flying in various directions. Three of us - Jason, Michelle, and I - went into the bottom of the boat before we flipped over and the fourth, Candice, just fell clear of the boat altogether. She actually got stuck in a 'hydraulic' or 'backflow' or whatever you call the back-current sometimes created by a lot of water going over a fairly large drop and had to swim hard to get out of it. Katie was with the raft for a little while, she was there when I popped back up, but then she got pulled away. Cassondra has no memory of how she got most of the way to the other side. But Jason, Michelle, and Abbie all got stuck under the raft when it flipped - Jason and Michelle were in the raft all the way over and Michelle said she never realized the raft had flipped until she opened her eyes and saw she was underneath it. Jason bounced his head off a rock on the way out from under the boat and ended up with a minor concussion. Michelle got out from under the raft fairly quickly and then got caught up in the current behind Candice (her sister). She noticed that Candice was panicking - because she had fallen out at Oak Springs before and hadn't been very secure about going down it again anyway - and so was able to catch up to her and help. Heidi, for who this was her first time down this river, latched onto Jason and the two of them rode the rest of the rapids together until the lady who was driving by pulled them out. And you already know how the rest of us got out.
We were all in pretty sorry shape when we finally decided to push out from the shore and finish going till the place to get out. I personally was still shaking somewhat and Jason and Abbie were both suffering from their concussions. We were all bruised, shaken up, and scared. But we knew that we were all lucky to not have been injured more - and blessed to be alive. We finally got back under way and made it down the rest of the river (about half an hour) without losing another person. We were all leaning into the boat, though, cringing from the rapids. After we pulled out and loaded the raft onto the truck, we piled into the car and headed back up to the campsite (about twenty minutes). Some of us were already bruising and all of us were in pain. I rode in the truck and Katie, with the car, stopped and bought ziplock bags and a bag of ice so we could have ice packs when we got to camp. It was actually a fairly humorous sight, five or six of us sitting around in camp chairs with towels and bags full of ice, some of us with multiple bags.
Wow. I'm keeping a copy of this in a Word document while I write (just in case this thing decides to mess up again) and I just checked it and it's 1,500 words already. I think maybe I'll try putting a shorter blurb in my blog and then linking to the longer version, but we'll see. Anyway, we had lunch and then five of us - Robin, Katie, Cassondra, Michelle, and Jason - decided to go for a partial second run down the river. The whole idea with having a four day trip this year instead of three days was so that we could get in two river runs a day - last year we could only get in one run the first day and then two the second. So some people who had had a little less rough of an experience during the disaster, or who just felt like it, decided to go for a second run. But they pulled out well above Oak Springs. Then we went around to the picture places in town and looked at our pictures. There are several places that set up on rocks next to the major rapids (Wapinitia, Boxcar, and Oak Springs) and take several pictures of you on your way down and you can go look at the end of the day and pick your favorite to have them print for a tourist-like sum of money. So we had fun looking at our pictures and bought a CD with the whole Oak Springs progression. It looks a lot different from the side then from being in the middle. But I actually got a copy of the CD at the barbeque tonight, so I would be happy to share with anyone that wanted to see. They're pretty impressive, I think.
We had three more people arrive that night, who couldn't get the earlier days off work, so we had to tell them all about it, of course. Sleeping that night was a little rough as pretty much any position hurt. I got bruises all down my left shin, both knees, the right side of my jaw, my left elbow, and my backside. I also scraped both knees and sunburned the tops of my knees and my shoulders. I must say, though, that Abbie's bruises are much more impressive than mine. The next morning we all had a decision to make - to go for Oak Springs again or not? We ended up having all but two of us decide to make the run and two more who wanted to do everything but Oak Springs. So we put ten of us in the boat (we rented a new raft, different size) and headed down the river. I had been oddly calm when thinking about it the night before, but found when I actually got on the river that I was scared. When Boxcar (a relatively minor rapid) was coming up, I found my palms sweating, my mouth dry, and that I was breathing hard. So when we got to Oak Springs and decided to pull out to take a look (which we hadn't done the day before) I had to try to decide. I was honestly scared stiff - and worried that if I decided to go down I would freeze up partway through and be useless. Going down something that big, you need all your paddlers. Abbie and Heidi had already decided they were not going down Oak Springs again - it was not something they were emotionally prepared to do, which was fine because it was their decision. But Cassondra, Michelle and I were still trying to decide. I finally made the decision that I needed to just face my fear - like the old adage of getting back on the horse after falling off. We had all decided that God's hand was obviously on us during the disaster the day before in so many ways - the number of people willing to help, the way that people who needed help because of panicking were paired up with people able to help them, the fact that Abbie and I who feel the least confident in our swimming were both with the raft, the fact that we were all able to walk away and didn't even lose any of our oars. So I knew that God would be with us again going down, whether that meant going safely through or flipping again. The last thing in the world that any of us wanted to do was flip again, but I knew that if it happened, God would still be with us. Michelle and Cassondra ended up deciding to go down as well and so eight of us braved the tempest again. We came through perfectly and it was an incredible relief.
We stopped at roughly the same spot we had pulled out the day before - about two hundred yards down - and collected Abbie and Heidi again and then finished the rest of the river in high spirits. We nailed one of the minor rapids a little way down and it was such a rush. I know personally that I was just so relieved to have faced my fear and come through fine that just about anything would have been fun. *smile*
Well, wow, that turned out to be a lot longer than I thought it would be. I'm definitely going to try to compress this so that interested people can read the whole thing and the rest of you don't have to waste your time. We stopped for lunch again and then most of the people went for a second run. I was too tired and didn't want to run out of energy partway down, so I opted to stay at the camp and lay in the sun. I had done what I needed to do and two runs were enough for me. Abbie also chose to stay at camp, so there were just eight on the boat. They had fun and didn't lose anyone at all - they even went through Oak Springs again safely. The majority of the group left that night to drive home (about three hours) because of having to work the next day, but four of us (Katie, Jason, Michelle, and I) stayed the night and left the next morning. My sunburn feels much better now, as do my sore muscles, but it still hurts anytime I bump my shin and sitting is still painful. I honestly don't know how I will feel the next time I get on a river. Will I always have some shred of that fear with me? Or has it been resolved by my safe run through Oak Springs the second time? I don't know. I do know that we all now have quite the story to tell and I am still in awe of the feeling of God's awesome hand on all our lives.
Be warned that it's long, though. For the supershort version, you can click here. :-)
So, the big news is: we went on a four day rafting trip from July 31st to August 3rd. It was pretty much the same group that went last year - all college/career people from the gang here - and on the same river as last year. We just did a four day trip this year instead of three days. We just camped the first day and the last day and then rafted the two middle days. Towards the end of the river is a rapid called Oak Springs - it's a class four on a scale of five. On our first run on Tuesday morning we hit Oak Springs straight on... and flipped our raft. All nine of us in the water. We were all wearing life-vests and rode the river for about two hundred yards before we all managed to get out. That makes it sound like it was easy, but it wasn't. Three of us were trapped under the raft for a little way, one of my cousins was under the longest. I fell in head first and spent what felt like a long time under the water before I came up and bumped into the raft. I was able to grab the rope around the outside of the raft (called the 'chicken line') and got basically dragged down the river. I'll admit that I started panicking after I came up out of the water and so I am very glad that my cousin Abbie made it out from under the raft and was hanging on behind me and able to talk to me. I think we got dragged/washed over about eight huge rocks. You know how they tell you to put your feet out in front of you and hold onto your life vest at the neck (so your limbs don't get broken or stuck on anything), yeah, well guess what that leaves lowest in the water... yeah. So I was freaking out, because I was having trouble timing my breathing in between the waves and because I was in shock because I was totally not expecting the whole raft to be flipped and I had no idea where anyone else was but my cousin and I was getting beat up by these huge rocks and all I could see was more rocks and more water.
But finally we with the raft started going towards the shore. Then I suddenly found myself being pulled out of the water. It turns out that our paddle captain, Robin (the guy who sits at the back of the boat and rudders and tells you all when to paddle), had been able to climb up on the bottom of the raft (now the top) and he pulled me up onto the raft. I had no idea he was there till he grabbed my life-vest and hauled me up out of the river. I laid down flat on the bottom of that raft and never wanted to move again. But then we reached the shore and I had to get off so that we could flip the raft back over. Honestly, Abbie and Robin did most of the work. Then I stood there on the rocks and held the rope to keep the boat from floating away while Robin went to see about getting to some of the other people. At that point I thought to myself 'I had better find a place to sit down before I fall over' because I was shaking so hard from the adrenaline reaction. Then I thought 'oh, the other people! Where are they all?' I looked around and found my cousin Katie clinging to a rock out in the middle of the river with two of the oars and watching another one float by that she couldn't reach. I could see across the river that Cassondra (who is a life guard) had somehow gotten out on the other shore. The other four people in our group I couldn't see at all. Two rafts that came through Oak Springs after us safely were willing to help us out. One of them picked up Cassondra from the other side and ferried her over to us. The other picked Katie up from the middle of the river and also picked up two of our other girls, sisters Candice and Michelle, from the rocks they were hanging onto just offshore (but around an outcropping from us so I couldn't see them). A lady who was driving by had seen us flip, squealed to a stop, grabbed a rope from the back of her car and rushed down to help. I remember catching a glimpse of her running between the waves splashing my face. She pulled our other two rafters out of the water, Jason and Heidi, and they walked back to where we had pulled out. So finally we had all nine of our people back in the raft, but we were missing two oars. I had actually grabbed one as I was hanging onto the raft - it bumped into my elbow and I just latched on - and Robin had ended up with four, plus we had the two Katie had. So after we determined that nothing was broken we got back on the river - with Heidi and I sitting on the bottom of the raft not paddling - and went down about twenty yards to where one of the other rafts had pointed out our oars stuck on the rocks. We pulled over again to get them and then sat there for about ten minutes with nearly everyone talking at once. We decided that none of us will ever complain about wearing life-vests again. Between the talking then and much more that night and the next day we figured out what had happened to each of us.
The right side people mostly went underwater right away. That is the side the water came piling into, which flipped the raft. Cassondra, Katie, Heidi, and Abbie were on that side. The left side people went flying in various directions. Three of us - Jason, Michelle, and I - went into the bottom of the boat before we flipped over and the fourth, Candice, just fell clear of the boat altogether. She actually got stuck in a 'hydraulic' or 'backflow' or whatever you call the back-current sometimes created by a lot of water going over a fairly large drop and had to swim hard to get out of it. Katie was with the raft for a little while, she was there when I popped back up, but then she got pulled away. Cassondra has no memory of how she got most of the way to the other side. But Jason, Michelle, and Abbie all got stuck under the raft when it flipped - Jason and Michelle were in the raft all the way over and Michelle said she never realized the raft had flipped until she opened her eyes and saw she was underneath it. Jason bounced his head off a rock on the way out from under the boat and ended up with a minor concussion. Michelle got out from under the raft fairly quickly and then got caught up in the current behind Candice (her sister). She noticed that Candice was panicking - because she had fallen out at Oak Springs before and hadn't been very secure about going down it again anyway - and so was able to catch up to her and help. Heidi, for who this was her first time down this river, latched onto Jason and the two of them rode the rest of the rapids together until the lady who was driving by pulled them out. And you already know how the rest of us got out.
We were all in pretty sorry shape when we finally decided to push out from the shore and finish going till the place to get out. I personally was still shaking somewhat and Jason and Abbie were both suffering from their concussions. We were all bruised, shaken up, and scared. But we knew that we were all lucky to not have been injured more - and blessed to be alive. We finally got back under way and made it down the rest of the river (about half an hour) without losing another person. We were all leaning into the boat, though, cringing from the rapids. After we pulled out and loaded the raft onto the truck, we piled into the car and headed back up to the campsite (about twenty minutes). Some of us were already bruising and all of us were in pain. I rode in the truck and Katie, with the car, stopped and bought ziplock bags and a bag of ice so we could have ice packs when we got to camp. It was actually a fairly humorous sight, five or six of us sitting around in camp chairs with towels and bags full of ice, some of us with multiple bags.
Wow. I'm keeping a copy of this in a Word document while I write (just in case this thing decides to mess up again) and I just checked it and it's 1,500 words already. I think maybe I'll try putting a shorter blurb in my blog and then linking to the longer version, but we'll see. Anyway, we had lunch and then five of us - Robin, Katie, Cassondra, Michelle, and Jason - decided to go for a partial second run down the river. The whole idea with having a four day trip this year instead of three days was so that we could get in two river runs a day - last year we could only get in one run the first day and then two the second. So some people who had had a little less rough of an experience during the disaster, or who just felt like it, decided to go for a second run. But they pulled out well above Oak Springs. Then we went around to the picture places in town and looked at our pictures. There are several places that set up on rocks next to the major rapids (Wapinitia, Boxcar, and Oak Springs) and take several pictures of you on your way down and you can go look at the end of the day and pick your favorite to have them print for a tourist-like sum of money. So we had fun looking at our pictures and bought a CD with the whole Oak Springs progression. It looks a lot different from the side then from being in the middle. But I actually got a copy of the CD at the barbeque tonight, so I would be happy to share with anyone that wanted to see. They're pretty impressive, I think.
We had three more people arrive that night, who couldn't get the earlier days off work, so we had to tell them all about it, of course. Sleeping that night was a little rough as pretty much any position hurt. I got bruises all down my left shin, both knees, the right side of my jaw, my left elbow, and my backside. I also scraped both knees and sunburned the tops of my knees and my shoulders. I must say, though, that Abbie's bruises are much more impressive than mine. The next morning we all had a decision to make - to go for Oak Springs again or not? We ended up having all but two of us decide to make the run and two more who wanted to do everything but Oak Springs. So we put ten of us in the boat (we rented a new raft, different size) and headed down the river. I had been oddly calm when thinking about it the night before, but found when I actually got on the river that I was scared. When Boxcar (a relatively minor rapid) was coming up, I found my palms sweating, my mouth dry, and that I was breathing hard. So when we got to Oak Springs and decided to pull out to take a look (which we hadn't done the day before) I had to try to decide. I was honestly scared stiff - and worried that if I decided to go down I would freeze up partway through and be useless. Going down something that big, you need all your paddlers. Abbie and Heidi had already decided they were not going down Oak Springs again - it was not something they were emotionally prepared to do, which was fine because it was their decision. But Cassondra, Michelle and I were still trying to decide. I finally made the decision that I needed to just face my fear - like the old adage of getting back on the horse after falling off. We had all decided that God's hand was obviously on us during the disaster the day before in so many ways - the number of people willing to help, the way that people who needed help because of panicking were paired up with people able to help them, the fact that Abbie and I who feel the least confident in our swimming were both with the raft, the fact that we were all able to walk away and didn't even lose any of our oars. So I knew that God would be with us again going down, whether that meant going safely through or flipping again. The last thing in the world that any of us wanted to do was flip again, but I knew that if it happened, God would still be with us. Michelle and Cassondra ended up deciding to go down as well and so eight of us braved the tempest again. We came through perfectly and it was an incredible relief.
We stopped at roughly the same spot we had pulled out the day before - about two hundred yards down - and collected Abbie and Heidi again and then finished the rest of the river in high spirits. We nailed one of the minor rapids a little way down and it was such a rush. I know personally that I was just so relieved to have faced my fear and come through fine that just about anything would have been fun. *smile*
Well, wow, that turned out to be a lot longer than I thought it would be. I'm definitely going to try to compress this so that interested people can read the whole thing and the rest of you don't have to waste your time. We stopped for lunch again and then most of the people went for a second run. I was too tired and didn't want to run out of energy partway down, so I opted to stay at the camp and lay in the sun. I had done what I needed to do and two runs were enough for me. Abbie also chose to stay at camp, so there were just eight on the boat. They had fun and didn't lose anyone at all - they even went through Oak Springs again safely. The majority of the group left that night to drive home (about three hours) because of having to work the next day, but four of us (Katie, Jason, Michelle, and I) stayed the night and left the next morning. My sunburn feels much better now, as do my sore muscles, but it still hurts anytime I bump my shin and sitting is still painful. I honestly don't know how I will feel the next time I get on a river. Will I always have some shred of that fear with me? Or has it been resolved by my safe run through Oak Springs the second time? I don't know. I do know that we all now have quite the story to tell and I am still in awe of the feeling of God's awesome hand on all our lives.
Be warned that it's long, though. For the supershort version, you can click here. :-)