My White Water Rafting Experience

Lydia Scaltsas

BANG! Another wave crashed against our little raft and sent it flying through the white waters of the Flathead River in Montana. All of us were paddling frantically trying to keep our raft from tipping over and forever becoming lost in the distance.

Summer was here once more and this year I was going to spend it in Montana with my mother and especially with my whole outrageous American family.

Amongst the main activities and adventures we had planned, while water rafting was one of the more dangerous and thrilling options on the list, so on that breezy Saturday morning seven amateurs set off to brave the waves of the South Fork.

On arriving at the river the first thing to be done was fitting life jackets and then to check the raft was in good conditions. We all ran down to the river and climbed into the boat full of excitement. As we set off a sense of the unknown surrounded us and we wondered constantly if we were going the wrong way. My knuckles were white and my hands cramped from holding on to the link rope that surrounded the raft so tightly.

One hour later everyone was feeling calm and relaxed, there were no big rapids, the sun was shinning and the landscape was spectacular I was thoroughly enjoying myself and at that moment could think of no better way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Then we heard a shout coming from the front paddlers who had spotted some colossal rapids up ahead. Everybody sat up, grabbed a paddle and began to follow the instructions of our leader sitting at the very. front of the boat. We were all focussing exceptionally hard to try to steer away from the rapids as they were too big for our raft to handle. The waves however had their own idea of which direction we should be going and try as we might the raft was sucked into the middle of the commotion. The entire raft in one swift movement was overflowing with water and we were all absolutely drenched. The rapids pushed and pulled at us until the front paddlers half tell out of the raft and lost their paddles. We hastily lugged them in and made a quick grab for the paddles of which one was retrieved. The raft suddenly bounced up and landed again on a mound of rocks and was trapped.

Our leader clambered out of the raft and started to push whilst we all trued to force the raft away using our paddles. At long last it began to edge forward and as it did our leader just managed to jump back in as the rapids once more carried our raft away.

Two hours later and we had almost finished our round of Flathead River. Everyone was exhausted, and our bodies' felt and looked lifeless. We reached our end point and could not find the strength within ourselves to haul our raft up onto the shore.

Half an hour passed and before we knew it we were silting on the shore tucking into cheese, crackers, cookies and many other such delicacies that our group had brought along, we also changed into warm dry clothes which at that particular moment felt like the pot of gold and the end of the rainbow.

My White Water Rafting experience in Montana was one that I shall never forget, it was not comfortable, it was not easy and at some points it was even a little unpleasant but in that little grey and blue raft were all the people who I love and all the comfort and security I could ever find. For those reasons my white water rafting adventure was extraordinary despite the few troubles along the way.