Rafting the Royal Gorge

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Rafting is something I’ve always enjoyed and I’ve probably been almost fifteen times. So I decided to get a group together and plan a trip. Andre had been once before with my dad and I, Cassie had been before, but Pierre and Andre’s cousin Marcus had never been. The water levels are always fairly low in July because the snow has been melted for quite some time, but there were still plenty of class IV rapids to get through.

We all rode up together in Pierres Jeep to Canon City, CO. and we barely made it in time for our 9AM Royal Gorge trip… We got our life vests and helmets on, and then hopped in the back of a bus that took us up the river. Here we met our guide, and got some brief instructions on how to raft. We were immediately complemented on our power and timing. Our guide was nice but I personally felt he was a bit annoying, he never once stopped talking which made me feel like he wasn’t always paying attention…but that’s just me.

Anyways, after the first rapid a whole bunch of people fell out of a raft behind us. Our crew had no problems whatsoever, and we got through everything easily. At about the third or fourth rapid the same people fell out of their raft again, we were right behind them at this point and our guide had us pull over to the shore while he and the safety kayaker went to help them. Andre was holding our raft so we didn’t float away and after about the first twenty minutes of sitting there we realized something was probably wrong.

One of the guys who had fallen out had his foot so tightly wedged into the raft that when he fell his foot stayed in, and he ended up tearing a ligament in his knee… So they helped him out, but they had to put him back in a raft in order to take him to a point where he could safely be picked up. They talked about taking one of us from our raft and having us paddle for the guy that was injured, but thankfully the safety kayaker just put his kayak in the raft and took the injured guys place.

So after about forty minutes of waiting for them to get everything figured out we were finally off again. At this point we all had been sunburned, and there were only a couple of rapids left. Our crew annihilated all of the remaining rapids and before you knew it we were done. The trip did seem a lot longer than a usual half-day trip, most likely because we spent so long waiting for the injured guy.

It was still a lot of fun and we were encouraged by our guide to come back during May when the water levels are higher and things are more difficult. I think everyone had a good time and that we might take a similar crew back next year when it’s more challenging. It is pretty expensive, we went through ARK and it was $65 a person which is kind of lame, then at the end they wanted $55 for a CD of photos (which I wanted but could not afford) and we tipped our guide $20.

I did bring my waterproof camera, and we got some good pictures but none of them are as a group, and none of the videos or pictures are of the actual rapids because I was too busy paddling to film…