AWESOME Green River Rafting with OARS

In June/2009, our family did an 18 day Colorado/Utah/Arizona road trip to see the National Parks - Bryce, Capitol Reef, Dinosaur, Zion, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon ... plus zip lining the last day. We started our trip off with a bang with a 4-day rafting trip down the Green river (starting at the Gates of Lodore just Northeast of Dinosaur National Park) run by OARS who did an outstanding job. An overview of the trip is below, and there are even more pictures from Day 1 - Day 2 - Day 3 - Day 4 ... plus a nifty action sequence and some night rafting pictures.

On the last day of river rafting, I had some fun taking some pictures from an unusual vantage point. Fellow traveler Tiffany (who had extensive rafting experience) agreed to paddle the tandem ducky inflatable - see picture above. She sat in the front facing downstream while I lay down in the back on my stomach, wedging my feet under the ducky divider. My arms hung off the rear end holding the camera about a foot above the water. My Canon 50D DSLR with an ultra-wide 10-22mm lens attached was in the waterproof "Shake-n-Bake Bag" along with a flash to provide some fill light.

I had, of course, asked the guides if they were OK with all this ... so I think they watched me closely while I was kayaking with Kyle to make sure I was comfortable in the water - safety is their top priority. So after getting a green light, I asked Bret (who was the guide in our oar boat that had my wife and kids in it) to follow the tandem ducky in the Rapids, coming as close as he was comfortable. Tiffany did an awesome job keeping the back of the kayak facing upstream as Bret did a great job sometimes closing to within five feet ... and less!

Wendy told me afterwards that everyone was just cracking up because here I was going backwards down the river, laying flat on my stomach with upper part of my body hanging out from behind the ducky about a foot above the water. And then we'd hit the rapids and while I felt semi-decently wedged in there, I would get bounced up & down all over the place. I might add that yes, I had no idea of what wave action we were about to hit (Tiffany would say "big waves coming") plus I was looking (via thick plastic) through a small camera viewfinder, so I was tunnel-visioned also.
Too bad nobody took a picture/video of the setup!

The resulting low/close angle results in pictures (see below) that are pretty wild ... how often do you see the bottom of an oar boat closing in on you as it gets tossed in the air above you by the rapids?!? And at one point, I even got dumped out of the Ducky, so I had fun couple minute ride through the rapids as I held on to the Shake-n-Bake bag (with the camera) until Tiffany and Bret were able to fish me out. One bummer is that it was a cloudy day, plus I was often shooting into the Sun, so it wasn't the best light by any means. But the fill flash helped ... along with big smiles on my family's faces! ;-)

A combination of waves held up the ducky and pushed the Oar boat into it despite Bret's best efforts. He did a great job rotating the boat at the last second, but as we crested the next wave, our ducky rotated and got held up The last thing I remember as I looked through the camera viewfinder was seeing the front of the Oar Boat from above at about 30° pitch down and 45° roll angle and thinking I was going to fall into the Oar boat! However, I ended up falling into the Green River.

Fortunately, I held on to the "Shake-n-Bake" bag (which certainly passed the waterproof'ness test!) and after surfacing, rode out a decent-sized wave train into some mildly choppy water. At one point early on, I had a hand on the back of Bret's oar boat, but it slipped off. I was now a couple of dozen feet away, but slowly closed the distance even though I could only swim with one hand. I wasn't that concerned (I've been tossed into rapids before), but in hindsight, I should have given Bret a big thumbs up ... although Wendy said they could tell I was fine/calm because I held the "Shake-n-Bake" bag above the water.

I then realized that Dirk was in the ducky - apparently, he had gotten tossed out too, but only for a brief moment. They transferred him to the oar boat as I got closer, and then Tiffany paddled over and I handed her the camera bag, and climbed on board. And then it was back taking pictures (!) as the one below was shot six minutes after the one above. Note that Dirk is now in the BACK of the Oar Boat ... but he had a big smile as the waves continue!

Even more rafting pictures from Day 1 - Day 2 - Day 3 - Day 4 ... and a nifty action sequence plus Night Rafting pictures.

P.S. I didn't have a waterproof point-n-shoot camera for this trip, but I did take one video with my Canon SD800IS inside a ziplock bag ... so it's a bit fuzzy. But pretty entertaining as I interview Dirk and Kyle as we are about to run Disaster Falls! BTW, the reference to Lava Falls is because they have watched the OARS IMAX Movie where that is the big water in the Grand Canyon - we hope to do that trip on my wife's 50th birthday! ;-)


PPS. I chatted with Bret, our excellent guide, as he prepared eggs for breakfast the last morning) and here's a blow-by-blow of our trip as transcribed from that discussion. We launched into the Green River at the Gates of Lodore, had lunch at Winnie's Grotto (which incidentally was written on my life vest), made it through Disaster Falls, and then camped the first night at PotCreek #1 after rafting about 8 miles. After waking up on day 2, we went through Triplet Falls and Hell's Half Mile, and camped at Rippling Brook #1 after another 6 miles on the water. While there, we did a hike up to a waterfall plus lots of horseshoes and "washer games" on the nice sandy beach. On Day 3, we stopped at Limestone Campground and hiked to that scenic overlook and then continued (total distance about 13 miles) to camp at Jones Hole #2 where we hiked up to Jones Creek and "Butt" Falls. On our final day, we floated through Island Park and Rainbow Park, and then had lunch at Split Mountain where Kyle and I had fun running the ducky through an eddy. We ended our trip at the Split Mountain put-out for a total of 54 miles on our 4 day trip.

If you want to have an incredible rafting experience, check out the great trips at OARS - they were awesome!

5 years later, we went rafting down the Middle Fork of the Salmon River which was also a blast!