Fun on the River

Last Friday there was a YSA rafting trip. I think it was officially for the Salem/Corvallis folks but I flew under the radar.


I rode up there with some people I met recently. We decided it would be faster to leave our car at the bottom and try and hitch a ride to Harpham Flats where we were putting in. While we were slathering on sunscreen, a Jeep Grand Cherokee picked up a few guys and it looked promising.

I got nominated to go talk to them and get us a ride. They were really nice and gave us a ride although I had to sit in the back. We heard some good stories of drunken camping and midnight runs down the river on our way.

Annette, Ryan, Matt, Anna, Jessie, Scott

At Harpham Flats, my friend Matt offered to be a "guide" and we picked out the raft that we thought would give us the best ride. We convinced 3 people from Corvallis to go along with us and waited around for everyone to be ready to shove off.

We had a great time jumping in, "riding the bull," boarding other boats and pushing everyone out, etc. There was one really big guy that claimed that we could not knock him out and that made us want to push him out even more. We snuck up behind them and I was the first one to jump over. The guy quickly sat down in the raft wedging his legs in. I was basically wrestling with the guy. Matt jumped over to help and was pushing from the back. I grabbed the top of the guy’s life vest thinking if I used my body weight, I could pull him partway out as Matt finished him off. Holding his vest, I flung myself over the side into the water. The guy did not move. We gave up and swam back to our raft. He later yelled out that his “legs were jelly.”

Here we are going backwards down Boxcar.

Oak Springs was a blast. It was so fun that we pulled our raft out and went through a second time.

Attempt 1

Attempt 2

We parked the raft and walked up White River to the “natural water slides” and then headed to Elevator to swim that one a few times.

By the time we got to the takeout point, the rest of the group was gone. The guys from the rental company were just standing around waiting for us.

On the way home, we had dinner at Calamity Jane’s. It was even better than I remembered.