Rafting On The White Salmon River

I have been rafting a few times in my life but each time I get ready to go I get scared that I will fall out of the boat, hit my head on a rock and die. But if you do all of the things that your guide tells you to do you will be perfectly safe, right?

All geared up to head down to the river

The Group: Andy (Ali's friend), Ali, Woody (our guide), Dad and I

Having a good time on the river and still in the raft =)

At first some parts of the river look pretty scary but you actually only get bounced around a little so those weren't so bad. I tried to not think too much about the big class 4 rapids we were going through and just did what our guide, Woody, told us to do. Ali and Andy were in the front and they were getting soaked. Come to find out that there is this nice waterfall right in the middle of the river. Great. It was a 14 foot drop so you had to paddle really hard and then get down and sit on the bottom of the raft into a little ball and hold on for dear life. Lucky for my, and a few other people, we could opt out and walk down the side of the river. Woody gave us enough information so that we could make an informed decision and he did say that you could be underwater for about 30 seconds. Now that doesn't sound like a long time but when your underwater it probably feels like an eternity. Ali and Andy decided to go on this fun little adventure and they did great. There were only 3 of them in the raft, so there wasn't to much weight, and once they went down they popped right back up. The raft behind them had 6 teenage boys in it and once they went down the blue raft totally disappeared for 3 seconds and then came back up. They all had very surprised looks on their faces that they all stayed in the raft. Overall it was a great experience and by the end I didn't want to get off of the river =) After getting all of the gear off we went up to out cabin on Mt. Hood and had a great dinner and relaxing evening.