Rapid Recovery, Continued...

Rollin' on Downriver

The morning on the Lower Gorge South Fork would be fairly mellow, Randy promised, and that indeed proved true. We launched the rafts from a shallow beach and began our voyage downriver. The water was quiet, the sun not yet hot. Along the riverbank, bushes with vivid red flowers had sprouted between green serpentine rocks. Our paddles splashed gently. We passed derelict gold dredges and learned that people still pan for gold here.

We practiced our techniques for ducking into the boat when we hit the rapids. We practiced our fast paddling, our back paddling. We became confident. There were five boatloads of us, with five river guides: Rod, Randy, Janeen, Tony, and Josh. Rod, the veteran guide, was in our raft. His son Josh headed up a much rowdier vessel whose occupants already showed signs of wanting to get into water fights. The people in our raft were too mature for such goings-on, and that suited Suzanne and me just fine. We crossed one or two mild stretches of rapids, but nothing to make the jaws clench. The growing heat of the sun combined with the sharp shock of cold water when we hit turbulence provided enough excitement for the morning. By the time we stopped for a picnic lunch on the riverbank, we felt well acclimatized.

We were surprisingly hungry, and the assortment of cold cuts, salads, and cookies disappeared with impressive speed. Then we put on helmets — the signal that the river was about to get serious. Suzanne looked at me and smiled bravely: no turning back now! We set out on the river again and hit our first Class III rapids. The rapids all have picturesque names designed to instill respect and even fear: Satan's Cesspool, Bouncing Rock, Hospital Bar Rapids. It was at Bouncing Rock, where the rock doesn't bounce but the boat certainly does, that we encountered a whirl of white water and careening spins, and Suzanne almost fell out of the raft. I was in the front, and she was in the back, so I hardly noticed what had happened until afterward.

She later said, "I just began to float out of the boat. I was practicing everything Randy said: Hold onto your paddle, stay on your back, keep your feet up and forward! Then I felt this hand reach out and grab my life jacket, and I knew I was okay." It was the ever-alert Rod, and we respectfully refer to the experience as the Hand of Rod.

At Satan's Cesspool, one of the men in Janeen's boat actually did start floating away; the look of stunned surprise on his face made us all laugh. Oh, the relief! It wasn't us! Rod extended a paddle and pulled him aboard our boat. On a quieter stretch he rejoined his friends, too much teasing. But we all knew it could have been any of us.

Waterworld

Dinner that night, steaks and chicken and salads prepared by the guides, tasted like food from heaven, perhaps because the afterlife had been so close to our thoughts. Afterward, sitting under the trees, relaxed over wine and microbrewery beer, we watched a slide show of "crash and burn" moments from the day's rafting, captured by a photographer for our amusement. One slide showed the man's slow exit from Janeen's boat. Everyone else on the boat, except for the man's son, was oblivious as he went overboard. There was a shot of Josh elevating high out of his seat as he bounced through Satan's Cesspool, then landing back in the raft like a ball in a basket — maybe not graceful, but solid. Most of the shots came from the Middle Fork, where Suzanne and I would be the next day. I studied the images carefully: I wanted to be prepared for those Class IV rapids. We saw shots from the notorious Tunnel Chute, a chute and cavern created in the 1890s by miners blasting through the rock to divert the river. The shots were mainly of white water, the people barely discernible, but I did see that the fronts of the rafts were completely submerged as they went through the rapids. The back of the rafts lifted high above the water — that's where people get bounced out. I noted the fact.