Rafting trip on lower clackamas river

Ceci, Jose and I bought on a Livingsocial deal on a rafting trip in Oregon City, 15-20 min south of downtown. We called to reserve the trip for this Saturday, which turned out to a perfect day. There's not a wisp of cloud in the sky. The temp was in the low 80s.

After 15 min of trying to figure out the logistics and another 15 min of getting stranded on the highway and almost getting lost, we managed to get to the starting point of the rafting trip, which is not where we were told to meet the group. At one point, I was thoroughly confused and decided to just follow Jose and Ceci. The company that organizes the trips, Northwest River Guides, seemed overwhelmed by the responses from livingsocial deal that they were struggling to get things organized. So we didn't get off a good start.

Our guide was a young guy named Ben, who was trying to make witty remarks that fail to solicit any response from the rafting crowd. Everyone was still a bit pissed by the start and couldn't wait to get in the water.

Unfortunately we were told to leave all things behind, unless its water proof, I couldn't bring the camera with us. These were the only photos I was able to get before leaving it in the car. We also had to put on life jackets, the only reason I agreed to do the trip since I don't swim.

that's our raft

lower clackamas river

Jose and Ceci having a talk with our guide Ben, the buy in yellow

Once on the water, the mood of the crowd lightened up. Something about floating on cool water just calms you down. Everyone was also busy trying to memorize the different paddle commands and various paddling strokes. Jose volunteered as the stroke captain and took the job seriously. Whenever the guide said "all forward", Jose would go "stroke, stroke, stroke..." It cracked me up.

It may look easy, but paddling is a serious core workout. It's a small raft that held three people each side. We got a 12-yr old boy on my side who's more interested in riding the bull on the front of the raft than paddling. That means me and the other guy behind me had to work extra hard.

We weren't paddling the entire time, as we were going down the stream. There were a few rapids during the trip, level I and II. Nothing spectacular for seasoned rafters, but for people who've never rafted before, like myself, it was super fun. Dotting the side the of river are little rocky beaches where people sunbathing and chilling off.

Midway through the trip, we came to a spot called the "High Point", which is a stretch of the river with tall rocks on either side. Local teens were jumping off the rocks into the river. Some jump-off points were 30 feet tall. We were taking a break at the High Point. Jose and Ceci were both going to jump off the tallest one. I wasn't. Did I mention that I don't swim? Although I was standing up there with them from the rocks. It looks scarier from up here. They both jumped and came back up with a huge smile on their faces. That's when I was talked into jumping from a lower rock, which was still 15 feet above the water. Jose and Ceci are now in the water waiting for me to join them. I was having second thoughts. I heard Jose say "don't think, just jump".

And I did just that.

I stepped over the edge and immediately the feeling of free fall kicked in, followed by "when is the water going to hit? damn this is high!", followed by water rushing into my nose and vision blurred by white foam. I wanted to breath, but wasn't sure if I was still submerged in water. All of the sudden, I could hear Ceci and Jose laughing and screaming, and realized that my head is indeed above the water (remember the life jacket?).

That's when it hit me. The water was cold.

I wish I had my camera with me. It was so fun. So we did it again. They from the tall rock and I from the short rock. I even fantasized about a fancy pose when I leap off the rock. But all I could manage to do was simply stepping off the rock. Then the same sequence of sensations cycled through, the free fall, the fear, the water impact, the blurred vision and finally the cheer from Jose and Ceci.

When Ceci said she wanted to come back here soon, I agreed. That was really the highlight of the trip. The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. When we were not paddling, we could look up to see the houses on the side of the river. We could see ospray resting on shore. We played splash war against the kayak team.

It was an awesome trip. I'm proud of myself for jumping off a short rock.