Sat, Jul 18 2015 - Whitewater Rafting on the Kicking Horse River (View Original Event Details)
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Where to start? I suppose with the COC banner ads that triggered the idea and with thanks to Alpine rafting for both advertising on the COC website plus for giving us the discount.
Next I would like to thank everyone who joined me on an excellent adventure over the two days. I met some folks for the first time, I had some folks along who I'd met previously, and we had friends of mine and other members who joined (or rejoined) the COC in pursuit of wet camaraderie.
The carpool list proved to be almost as fluid as the Kicking Horse river, but with Greg and Pam departing town for the campsite the afternoon before everyone else, we all had photo updates on getting there and the road condition. It didn't help we had a freshly broken down RV blocking the highway exit which probably contributed to a couple of guys missing it and meeting us at the office where three busloads of other rafters were assembling. Waivers signed, gear issued, we got split up on each of the buses however it was only the folks on the bus with me who had to endure some stranger singing "wheels on the bus go round and round...".
The next challenge was trying to get the second GoPro working, alas it wasn't until half way down the river at the snack spot where someone figured out that the bright spark owner had omitted to bring the memory card... DOH!!
Around the same time we discovered one of the group was still a kid at heart that loved jumping in muddy puddles. I loved the confused looks he brought from bystanders.
So how was the rafting? Well I think it's fair to say everyone enjoyed the trip but I'm going to leave the spoilers out for anyone reading this who might be thinking of trying the rafting. What I will say is that we had a couple of suggestions for pubs from our raft guides but one of our team really wanted to check out the pub with no beer (oops). I suppose that isn't quite the reality because while their draught fridge was out of commission, the bottle fridge was quite cold and they had bottles of craft beer that were considerably bigger than their pints of draught. The food all looked excellent, and the server did a great job albeit a while before the food arrived.
Despite the campfire ban, we had an "approved" propane campfire to sit around and the event coordinator got to both chat about ice climbing, and have a fireside snooze.
Day 2 saw the members dwindle as people hit the road, or head to other venues for an outdoor fix. However six of us made our way to the Canyon Creek area where two explored on foot, four explored mostly on wheels with a wee bit of "on foot" and all of us tried to evade small winged vampires. "I vant to suck yar bluud". For the most part we were blood free during the biking although the only crash was more of a pile up.
#1 stops to review the upcoming switchback. #2 pulls up quick ahead of #3. #3 (me)nails the brakes hard and stops barely in time. #4 attempts to stop, nearly makes it, then manages to make a slow motion entanglement with the rear wheel of #3. Where's that GoPro when you need it?
I'll be so bold as to say it was a good weekend. I think you'll agree the stats attest to that-
Some random stats
4 = new members
4 = people new to whitewater rafting
50% = participants with 2 events or less before this event
1 = new premier club member
24 = km rafted
15 = km biked
3+ = rafters lost overboard (intentional)
1 = rental bike
1 = biker new to MTB trails
1 = three stooges incidents whilst biking.
1 = minimum number of coordinators with aching muscles
1 = minimum number of bug bites on 80% of day 2 people with a 2/3 accuracy of estimation.
See you all soon
Grant