River rafting on the Thompson
On Sunday there was a company outing to Lytton to go rafting on the Thompson River, a service provided by Hyak River Rafting. There was the option of camping the night beforehand, which I did not take up because I’ve lost interest in camping. It sounds like I made a sound choice though, as it turns out the campground is near some train tracks, which had trains going by about once an hour. All. Night. Long. The downside to my choice was needing to get up at 5:30 to carpool with some co-workers up to Lytton. It’s normally a 3 hour-ish drive (we had to be there before 9:30), although if you are of lead feet, you can make it under two and a half hours.
The day was split into two secstions: in the morning was the powered raft and in the afternoon was paddle rafts. For the powered raft, you’re sitting on a raft with about 15 other people with a 20 horsepower motor strapped to the back. It’s difficult to tell how much of the speed is due to the motor and how much is due to the river’s current. Still, it was fun heading into the rapids. The downside was the wind that was channelled through the canyon. Normally the temperature in Lytton this time of year is about 30 degrees, but it didn’t even hit 20 until sometime near noon and didn’t get any warmer the rest of the day. This meant it got a little chilly on the morning run, even through the windbreaker jacket and pants I was wearing. If it were about 30 degrees, the water would have been very cooling, but alas, it was almost like a slap in the face. Of course, if you weren’t awake before getting on the raft, you were certainly awake after the first rapid. This part of the trip took about two hours and went through such playfully named rapids as The Green Monster (of Death), The Witch’s Cauldron (of Death) and The Fluffy Bunny (of Death). Notice a trend? The website doesn’t add the “of Death” suffix to each rapid, but the guides always seemed to emphasize it, so who am I to argue?
The second part of the day took place after lunch, which was the paddle boat part of the trip. Whatever fun we had on the powered rafts in the morning increased exponentially on the paddle rafts. These were smaller rafts; most were about 10 people each, but there was one or two larger rafts holding 10+ people. Couple the slightly warmer temperature with the fact that the only locomotion of the raft was the act of paddling and there was no shivering to be had. Cresting the rapids in the smaller boats was pretty awesome, especially at the front where there isn’t anything to lodge your foot into and you have to lean way over to dig into the water. If the people in the raft don’t paddle, you don’t make it through the rapid and you are in the water. Still even then on some of the bigger rapids it felt like I could fly off at any second, but it was great fun powering through them. The best rapids to go through for me were The Green Monster and The 18th Hole. We switched positions a few times during the trip and I was at the front for The Green Monster. There’s nothing like cresting over the rapid, leaning over to dig into the water and waving at nothing because your oar doesn’t reach that far. You can’t stop though, because pretty soon you’ll be at the valley of the wave and need to dig in to paddle over the next one. My shoulders are sore as all hell at the moment and my hip flexors don’t feel that much better either. It was completely worth it though, and I highly recommend it to anyone who doesn’t have serious motion sickness. This was even more fun than zip lining.
My only regret of the whole trip is that I don’t have a waterproof camera. Some of the landscape along the Thompson River is very picturesque and there was various amounts of wildlife along the river banks. I saw a bald eagle, a couple of ospreys, a blue heron and a black bear. Even the rapids would have made for some great pictures if I had a camera. One of those waterproof, shockproof little cameras would be a good thing to tote around in any case as I won’t be able to lug around my DSLR all of the time.