Whitewater Rafting - Class IV rapids!

Last weekend, my friend Eric Gaertner, who currently is co-oping at Apple, came up to Folsom to hang out with me and my roommates. His brilliant plan for an exciting weekend was going whitewater rafting on the Middle Fork American river up near Tahoe.

I was not too excited over going white water rafting for an entire day (the whole trip was about 9 hours), and the price was a lot higher than I expected, but it was well worth it.

Eric booked the trip through All Outdoors California Whitewater Rafting. It was a full day excursion, starting bright and early at around 5:30am to drive up to the site to be there around 8am. We got there a little early, so we went into town for a few Redbulls. I was actually pretty nervous for this rafting trip. I'm not the best swimmer, and I was sure that I would have popped right out of the raft.

We went through some initial training with our guide, Kelly, who was quite the free spirit. She was a lot of fun to talk to through the rafting trip - she sounded like she had quite an adventurous life.

We made it through some pretty intense rapids throughout the day, especially during the beginning of the trip. We went through one chute that was definitely frightening...we spun completely around - even our Kelly had to get down in the raft with us to keep from flying out!

Entering the chute.


Getting down into the raft as Kelly navigates through the chute.

Everyone's settled in with paddles up to go down the chute!

We accidentally hit the rocks in the chute and it spun us around! I am the second person from the right, we are all trying to get away from being sucked into the water!


Definitely spun around, trying to stay in the raft.


Getting sucked into the rapids.


I don't remember going completely underwater!


Kelly to the rescue to turn us back around.


Time to get back up and navigate the raft again.


Heading towards a tunnel that was dug out by miners during the gold rush.

There were a lot of historic sights along the rafting trip that had to do with the gold rush. It was interesting to see all the old machinery and hear the stories of the river.

We were given a delicious lunch by the raft guides as we relaxed for an hour on a beach. It was nice to take some time off from rowing, and to get some good food in the belly. It was a little hot, so we tried to stay in the shade and stand in the water as much as we could.

The rapids towards the end of the day were pretty exciting too; it was cool because the guide told us all the names and the stories to each of the rapids. We were able to surf some of the rapids too, which involved us paddling towards some rapids and getting caught in them.

Towards the end of the trip, we all decided to jump off a sweet rock into the freezing cold water. Only one person in our raft didn't jump in, Bruno, but he was a boring kid anyways. He won the Pocahontas award for the day!

I was so happy that Eric came to visit! I know he had a blast staying with us in Folsom.