I have now gone white-water rafting with friends several times. This is the report of how it happened during the third year (1999).
All was set for a long time, until the state of California decided to turn down the flows in the river we wanted to run on day one of a two-day weekend. So, in the end All Outdoors worked with us to get a single day run on the Goodwyn Canyon part of the Toulome and some hiking and playing at a lake on the other day (for most of us - 3 ran it both days). Tony, one of the folks who made every trip so far was kind enough to write up a summary - Tony's summary...
It is once again that dreaded time of year when I bombard my unsuspecting friends with a garrulous e-mail about our annual whitewater rafting trip from which Wendi and I just returned!
No, wait, let me start over. It's that eagerly anticipated time of year when our dear friends finally get to hear about our most recent adventure on California's whitewater classics! O.K., that's more like it.
For those of you [un?]fortunate souls who trudged through my narrative about the Tuolumne last year, you may remember that Wendi and I have been going on annual rafting trips, each time on a different river, with a group of friends whom Wendi knew at Pomona. (Collectively, we all span 11 years of Sagehenhood, with Amy the youngest and I the gerontological token). This was our third such trip, and this time we went on the Stanislaus River. As always, the trip was organized by Vadim, who signed us into the trustworthy hands of All-Outdoors, the same professional outfitter which led us down the previous two rivers.
Our original plan this year was to do a two-day trip down different sections of the Stanislaus. This long river begins in Tuolumne County in the high Sierras and winds its way down into the Central Valley in the direction of Modesto. We were supposed to raft one day on the North Fork of the river up in the mountains, then drive to our campsite near the put-in point of the second day's journey, and then raft the second day in the "Goodwin Canyon" section of the Stanislaus in the Central Valley. We had planned for a diverse range of rapids, scenery, and activities. Wendi's friend Lauren Oliver from southern California (also a Pomona alum) was intrigued enough to travel all the way up north, where she stayed with us and shared the ride to and from the Stanislaus. Since the three of us knew we would be driving together, we arranged to stay at the Dorrington Hotel, near what was to be the put-in point for the North Fork. We were all signed up with All-Outdoors; we had our hotel reservations; Lauren had her plane tickets; Wendi and I arranged to take a half-day off from work on Friday afternoon (actually a whole day in Wendi's case); and we were rarin' to go!
Then, on Thursday night, Vadim sent us all an e-mail with some upsetting news: All-Outdoors had just found out that the North Fork of "Stan" was unrunnable, since the power company that controls the flow of that portion of the river had suddenly drained it to a prohibitively shallow level and had neglected to inform All-Outdoors until just then! This was not AO's fault at all, and they were extremely apologetic, offering us a number of options ranging from full refunds to a one-day trip on Goodwin Canyon with a partial refund. Vadim & Co. opted for the latter, but Wendi, Lauren, and I had yet another idea; since we had already reserved a hotel in the high Sierras (and it was too late to cancel at that point), and since Lauren was coming all the way from Newport Beach, we wanted two days' worth of rafting, even if it meant doing the same stretch of Stan two days in a row. AO was amenable to this option, and they were nice enough to give us a partial refund even so. They only thing we lost, really, was AO's participation in the overnight camping before the second day of the trip. But they DID reserve enough places at the campsite for everyone. So, the hastily revised itinerary was this: Wendi, Lauren, and I would drive to the high Sierras on Friday afternoon and hang out at the hotel there; on Saturday morning we would drive 90 minutes to Knight's Ferry, the put-in point for Goodwin Canyon; we'd meet up with everyone else at the campsite in the evening; and then all of us would do the second day of Goodwin Canyon together. It wasn't what we had anticipated, but hey, you pays your money and you takes your chances.
Another complication, which fortunately turned out to be nothing to worry about: Wendi has had a bad knee for the past month, due to a repetitive stress injury sustained during various workouts and hikes, and she started a program of physical therapy for it a week before our trip. She wanted her doctor's approval for going rafting, and happily it was given.
When I arrived home from my half-day of work on Friday, Wendi and Lauren were packed and ready to go. We lugged all of our stuff in the car, and after a 3 1/2 hour drive we were in Dorrington. The mountains in Tuolumne County, above Angels Camp, are in my opinion one of the truly underrated areas of California. Wendi and I will not soon forget the charm of Groveland, where we had stayed last year en route to the Tuolumne River. Dorrington is a tiny little town with a population of 75. Our hotel was built in 1860, and it still had very much of a rustic Wild West look to it. We had a fancy dinner there -- what IS it about the juxtaposition of decadence and "roughing it" that appeals to me so much?-- and we checked out the next morning. We were lucky to wake up with the sunrise, for there were no phones in our rooms for wake-up calls, and none of us had thought of bringing a travel alarm clock with us. We were on the road at 7:15, racing towards Knights Ferry to get there before the appointed meeting time of 9 a.m. As it turned out, we would not have had a much longer drive had we simply stayed at home on Friday night. From a practical standpoint, our stay in Dorrington wound up defeating its purpose after the last-minute change of plans, but we were glad we stayed there anyway. It really is beautiful country up there.
As we approached Knights Ferry, we noticed the scenery becoming dryer, more typical of the savannas that dominate the Central Valley. Somehow, the area didn't look like the kind of place where there would be a wild river. We parked our car in a lot that was specifically designated for rafters, and we went through a procedure that was by now familiar to us. Meet the AO guides, sign away our lives on their boiler-plate contract forms, crowd on to a bus destined for the put-in point, slap on our sunscreen, use the outhouse one last time, and listen carefully as our guides go through the orientation process.
We were delighted that our guide on that day turned out to be Jamie, the same guy who led us down the Tuolumne a year ago. (He had read a narrative of that trip on Vadim's web page, but he didn't remember whether it was mine or Jeremy's). As always, the rafters themselves turned out to be a diverse group of people. One boat contained a bunch of guys on a bachelor party (I guess it could be called a wholesome alternative to strip clubs); we shared a boat with a nice couple from Santa Clara who were taking a break from their kids; another boat included an ornithologist who worked for the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory (which meant a great deal of collective bird knowledge on the river, since Lauren had once worked for a raptor rehabilitation center while at vet school at Davis). We were to see lots of raptors during our excursion; turkey vultures who colonized in the high cliffs above the river canyon; various different kinds of hawks, including a red-shouldered hawk. The river itself looks quite a bit different from any other we had rafted before. It is much narrower than either the American or the Tuolumne, and the four-mile (as the crow flies) stretch we rafted took us on a meandering slalom course through boulders and overhanging branches. The Goodwin Canyon section of the Stan is Class III-IV, with one run that is almost a V. What I noticed immediately is how incongruously lush the vegetation was on the river banks. From the river itself, you would never know you were in Central Valley savanna territory; it looked much more like what you'd expect in the high Sierras.
After our verbal orientation, we put our boats in the water, hopped on board, and immediately started refreshing our paddling skills. (This was Lauren's first rafting trip, but she has done a lot of sea kayaking, so this was nothing all that new). I don't believe there were any first-timers in our group. Anyway, after practicing in placid waters, we boldly paddled through our first two rapids, which gave us quite a confidence boost.
The first, and biggest, challenge was a run called "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride". Yes, many rapids on the Stan are named after Disneyland rides. [Gus and Phil, I can see you shaking your heads in bemusement!] Mr. Toad is almost a Class V in a river of mostly IIIs, so our guides gave us an opportunity to see what we were getting into before giving us a choice of rafting or hiking around this rapid. We disembarked on a river bank and climbed a bunch of rocks to get a good view of Mr. Toad. Most of us stayed there long enough to watch the first boat (the foolhardy bachelors party) give it a go. What we saw was not encouraging. In attempting to manoeuvre a narrow strait between two huge rocks, the boat flipped on one of them, probably because the rafters took too long to heed the guide's command to "highside" to the right side of the boat and shift the boat's weight accordingly. Most of the rafters were thrown out of the boat and wound up swimming the remainder of a dangerous rapid. One of those guys wound up reopening a stitch that had just been sown on his arm from an injury a couple of weeks back. He didn't make a big deal out of it, though, even though it looked like it had to be painful. The guide rode on top of the now-upside-down raft, and one guy held onto the strap on the back until the boat reached a calm eddy. The biggest problem, though, was that one of the guys was stranded on the same rock on which the boat had capsized, and it was not advisable for him to attempt to swim in any direction from it. The guides had to team up for a rescue plan; before letting anyone else back onto their boats, two guides boarded an empty boat and manoeuvred it near the rock; one of them went on to the rock with a rope and helped hold the boat steady while the stranded fellow was being boarded to safety.
While all of us onlookers had the option of hiking around Mr. Toad, this surliest of amphibians, we were driven on by our valor and (mostly) by the fact that the continuation of that rocky hike looked even more intimidating than the rapid itself! In Wendi's case, hiking is not the best thing for her knee right now, and making her way downhill from our lookout back to the boat caused a few moments of knee pain (thankfully the only such occurrence on our trip). So, after the safety of the bachelors partiers was ascertained and their boat was right-side-up again, the rest of us all followed them down Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
Our boat was the last to go. I wish I could say, for the sake of dramatic effect, that our ride on Mr. Toad was as wild as that of the first boat, but actually all the other boats (including ours) made it intact. We heeded the lesson of the debacle we witnessed by highsiding to the right of the boat within a split second after the command was given. After paddling furiously to set ourselves up for the best possible trajectory, we hunkered down in the raft, held on to the center straps to keep us from getting swept out by the hydraulics, and when we reached the bottom we realized we had all stayed in the boat. A huge sigh of relief, followed by symbolically raising our paddles together with Jamie's.
The rest of the trip seemed almost anticlimactic after this. Basically, though, most of the runs were smaller-scaled versions of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, which is to say that they involved maneuvering into narrow spaces between boulders, at just the right angle to avoid capsizing, or getting stuck. A particularly thrilling rapid was Haunted House, though nobody fell into the drink on that one.
After an hour for lunch, which our guides prepared for us on a river bank, we negotiated the remainder of Goodwin Canyon. On one rocky rapid, as soon as we reached the bottom, we were given the option of climbing from our boat, through a series of rocks, to the top of the rapid, and jumping in for a swim. I knew the water was cold, but I had no idea how cold until I actually jumped in. Unlike our trip last year, we weren't wearing wetsuits this time, and to me it felt pretty freakin' freezing! Eventually, we all returned to our boats, amid shivers from some of us, "glad-I-stayed-in-the-boat" looks from others, and Seinfeldesque "shrinkage" jokes from the bachelors party rafters.
One last landmark before the end of our journey: a bridge dating from the 1850s which was supposedly designed by General Ulysses S. Grant.
Our take-out point was within walking distance of where we parked our cars. Jamie wasn't coming back for the next day, so we said goodbye and told him what a pleasure it was to have him as a guide for the second year in a row (in a ROW? That should read, "...in a PADDLE."). We then drove through the town of Knights Ferry, towards the campground where we met Vadim and the Peninsula crowd who had driven there earlier that day.
It was great to see Vadim and the rest of those guys! Jeremy and Amy were back, as was Pam (who had just finished a bike trip across the U.S., as part of a fundraiser for cancer research). They all brought friends and coworkers with them, who were entertaining company and whom Wendi and I were glad to get to know. Neither Wendi nor I had gotten to see this set of our friends since the last rafting trip in '98! We have all been incredibly busy in the intervening time, some even much more so than Wendi or I. We regret that we didn't all have more of a chance to "catch up" with one another, but by the time we were all gathered at the campsite, Wendi and I were pretty dead tired, and we retired to our tent for some shuteye. This campsite, by the way, was not nearly as makeshift as the ones on riverbanks on our previous two trips. It was an organized campsite where we all parked our cars next to the grass, so it wasn't really "roughing it." But the river was nevertheless in full view (the camp was on the cliffs overlooking the canyon), and the sound of the rushing waters lulled me gently to sleep.
On Sunday morning, we hastily ate some breakfast (some of which Vadim and his friends had brought with them the previous day and were gracious enough to let Wendi and me share), packed up our stuff, and drove to meet our All-Outdoors guides for the second day (for Wendi, Lauren, and me only) on the Stan. Stan Squared for the three of us, a new adventure for everyone else.
There are actually many pleasures in rafting the same stretch of river two days in a row. It offers a chance to practice, a chance to soak in (both literally and figuratively) what may have gotten lost in the novelty the first time around. I, for one, was a far more confident paddler on Sunday, having Jamie's excellent pointers from the previous day still fresh in my mind, and my body seemed to have gotten somewhat used to the cold temperature of the water. Wendi, Lauren, and I shared a boat with three people who were not connected to our group but who were quite interesting people just the same. The guy who sat next to me on the raft seemed like a happy-go-lucky surfer type, but quite articulate for all that; his line of work was writing and coordinating the nationally franchised "What to Do" guides, for San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, which one frequently sees distributed in hotels and other public places.
Our guide on Sunday was named Adam. His mellow style put everyone at ease, and he told some funny jokes. Sunday went far more smoothly than Saturday for everyone involved in either or both excursions, though some of this was pure luck. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride still fulfilled our collective daily adrenaline quotas, but this time there were no mishaps. All boats made it intact. When we were given the option of swimming later on, I found that experience far more enjoyable on the second day, since the cold water was no longer such a shock to my system. It felt exhilarating, actually.
But the river gods did have one last ego-deflating, albeit thankfully not raft-deflating, experience in store for me. Just below the same rapid where we all had our optional swim, our guides showed us some fun by having us "surf" the rapids with our boat. This involves paddling towards the bottom of the rapid, so that the hydraulics send our boat shooting in the opposite direction. This is usually a harmless diversion in which nothing is likely to go wrong, but on this particular occasion the "surfing" made quite a spectacle of me. When the rapids propelled us away, our boat lurched to one side, and two of us guys were thrown overboard. But it wasn't quite that simple. Somehow, one of my shoelaces got tangled on a rope that held a water jug to the bow of the raft, and when my torso was knocked into the water, my left foot was stuck to the water jug rope. For a few seconds that seemed like an eternity, I was dragged through the water with only one foot in the boat, before my neighbor and I could both be pulled back in the raft. To the intrigued onlookers, it first seemed like I was rescuing the other guy by fishing him out of the water, while daringly hanging on by my foot. When everyone found out the real story, a good laugh was had by all.
Soon enough, the voyage was over, and we all went back to our cars. One final "adventure," if one could call it that, was helping to jump-start the car that Vadim and his friends were driving, after its battery turned out to be dead. After that, an uneventful drive home.
We hope to see many of our fellow-rafters more often after we move to the Peninsula in a few weeks. We definitely hope to go on another trip next year. Until then, we have our excursion to the Goodwin Canyon stretch of the Stanislaus River to add to memories.
For those of you who made it to the end of this narrative, thanks for your patience, and take care!