July 08, 2005

White Water Rafting...
Today I went white water rafting with 6 other guides (Monic, Mélanie, Marc, Meena, Shannon, and Graham). We were picked up around 7:15 in the morning, and were driven up the Ottawa River (Rivière de l'Outaouais). We spent about 2.5 hours in the morning rafting through various rapids (the largest being a class 5), before having lunch. After lunch, we spent another 2 hours rafting and we even did a cliff jump.
It was tonnes of fun and I`d go again, though on a different river.
On one of the rapids our whole raft tipped, spilling everyone into the river. This was fine (we were all wet anyway), except that I was wearing shoes which made it almost impossible to swin -just think of lead balloons attached to your feet. I ended up going through the next, yet much smaller, set of rapids on my own, holding my breath. I fared OK, apart from a gulp or two of water, but Graham didn`t. He got a deep gash just above his knee that was quite deep, and had to be treated. If they were closer to town they would have given him 1-2 stitches, but they had to use a temporary treatment since we were in the middle of no-where. It`s all part of the adventure, and I guess that`s part of the reason why we signed the liability waver at the start of the trip.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

rafting is soo much fun. the squishy shoe feel is nasty though ech.

Stephen said...

Yah, I should have packed sandals when I left for Ottawa. I thought that I did, but I guess in the last minute packing rush I forgot. I did all of my packing about 40 minutes before leaving for the airport... I won`t do that again.

Anonymous said...

A class 5? Wow. That is as high as you can do. Sounds like a riot. Good way to keep cool, go on the river and get soaked!