This is an excerpt from a larger list, where I give various activities a Sober Fun rating of 1-10. Entries from this list are scattered throughout my website, or you can find that complete list HERE.

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WHITEWATER RAFTING: 9

I wish I could say that it was right after this photo was taken that Heather fell in the water, but it was not. That happened much earlier in the day, after a much more treacherous cascade than the one you see.

There are a few things I want to say about white water rafting before going any further. First, it is similar to SKIING (and a few other adventure sports) in that it is not uncommon for participants to combine the day’s activities with a wee bit of light to heavy drinking and/or some weed. Although Heather and I did not partake on this particular occasion, it has made me think twice about who I get in a raft with ever since. Is there a chance any of these people are drinking? High, maybe? Are they paying attention to the safety briefing?

I know I certainly never did -- until after this day, at least. I usually gave it about as much of my attention as I do the stewardess’s seatbelt and safety performances on an airplane. Which is to say, none at all. You think, what are the chances? And even if something tragic does happen, we’re all dead anyways, right?

Well, just so you’re not reading this with undue concern, Heather lived. We had to go to the hospital, but she lived. I now hang on every word of the pre-rafting safety briefing, as if my life depended on it— because it very well just might.

A second important thing I want to mention, for those of you who have never had the pleasure of going down any Level 3 to Level 5 rapids, is that the entire experience is designed with the idea in mind that you never leave the raft. After Heather fell out of the raft, and knowing what I know now about what all she went though, as well as what all is involved to rescue a person and get them back in the freking boat, I thought for sure I’d never raft again. I am not a strong swimmer to begin with, but if you really pay attention to all the survival techniques they tell you at the beginning of every rafting trip— oh my god! They are so complicated and involved!

Even more so when you actually have to do them.

Let’s say that you have accidentally been bucked out of the raft. Okay; now: You are supposed to try and stay calm, and somehow assume a position that allows you to float downstream on your back, with your feet pointed downstream. This is to protect your head. Well, I know from scuba lessons that am INCAPABLE OF FLOATING ON MY BACK, so right off the bat, I’d be screwed.

You want to avoid smashing your head on any approaching rocks, so the thinking is, better your feet get smashed rather than your head. This is assuming, of course, that you didn’t go overboard right after a disorienting waterfall, one with enough force to keep pummeling you under. It could very easily become confusing as to which way is up, down, or sideways, and which way you should go to get out from under the waterfall and swim towards the surface. So: you are being held underwater by force, and confused about which way leads to more oxygen, and yet they also tell you not to dare try and stand up.

They tell you that your feet can become wedged in between rocks and boulders on the river floor, lodging you there, and forever preventing you from returning to the surface for a breath. As a poor swimmer, I know damn well the very first thing I would try to do is stand up. I would try to stand up and make my way towards either the shore or something closer in the middle, which is the second thing they warn you never to do.

I distinctly recall the rafting guide using the example of cheese being pushed through a grater to create a visual picture of what might happen if we swam towards a beaver dam. I’ve learned that safety examples involving cheese never end well, and also, now I’m terrified of beaver dams. Not of beavers, mind you, but of their homes. What an odd new fear to have. Thanks.

Luckily when Heather went overboard there were no beaver dams around. However, if there's something I feel is never adequately conveyed in the safety briefings, it's how fast the raft (as well as the overboard person )will be continuing to move the whole time you are trying to save them. It’s not like the rafting guide can just slam on the breaks and loop back around to collect Heather, no, the river continues carrying us onward at the same rate that it always has. And keep in mind, this was already difficult enough before Heather left the raft! It was a river so fraught with peril that it bucked her out in the first place!

So while Heather is hopefully remembering not to stand up and not to swim to the deceptive safety of the shore (or a beaver's home), and float on her back, feet first, and (ideally, somehow) back towards the raft, everyone on our boat has likewise sprang into action. While continuing to navigate the rapids and deal with our own precarious situation (the rapids were level 4 at this point), we are supposed to find this special lifesaving buoy to throw out to her, located somewhere on our raft. The buoy is attached to a very long strand of rope, the idea being that as Heather floats on her back she will see us throwing the buoy, catch it, and then we reel her back to the safety of the raft. All while moving at a breakneck pace down the rapids.

Everything hereafter is a terrifying, watery, blur for me. This is my best friend we are talking about here, someone I’ve known since second grade, and this is not how we imagined as kids that she would die! We were supposed to grow old together in a beautiful, book-lined study, filled with dark hardwoods, leather, and loads of maroon and emerald-green fabric! Get Heather back to the raft, dammit, we have a study to build!

When Heather had finally been reeled back towards the raft, and reached up for help, I at least remembered one of the (many) important things from our guide’s safety speech, and that is, you are never supposed to try and pull someone up by a limb. No matter how instinctive it might feel or how incessantly they might keep offering up their hand (which is also instinctive), don't do it. That is how shoulders get dislocated, or worse. You are supposed to offer your paddle to them, for them to grab onto, and then once they are close enough to the raft, ignore their outstretched arms and hands, and instead always pull them up BY THE LAPEL STRAPS OF THEIR LIFE VEST. You are supposed to use all your strength to pull them back into the raft, to land in a heap right on top of you. Which is exactly what happened.

Heather was back to safety, at long last, and I remember thinking how grateful I was to have her back in my arms. And also, thinking that now was probably not a good time to ask her if she’d be willing to consider a different color scheme for our study. Maroon and green suddenly felt like the color choices of children, but we were adults now. Like... just now as far as I'm concerned, as of this rafting trip, as of, like, 30 minutes ago! I'm slightly joking, but part of me suspects I morphed into an adult some time in between when Heather's head disappeared into the roiling rapids and when it eventually resurfaced an eternity later.

Heather just almost died, we've been through an ordeal, and all I'm saying is that the fabric colors of our study should reflect that! Our study should be timeless. We can talk about that later, though; Heather's back in the raft! Hooray! Now we have to get her out of this nightmare and directly to the paramedics to make sure she’s not injured, not more than meets the eye, anyways, as there was already a visible trickle of blood mixing with the water rivulets on her leg.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the third and final point I want to make about rafting. It is where my naïveté shines through, the kind of ignorance that comes with being a dilettante in all adventure sports, but a master in none of them:

What paramedics?

There’s no paramedics.

Where are we going to go?

We’re in a raft on a river with sides so narrow and tall that a helicopter couldn’t even land anywhere close enough to be helpful.

No one is coming to rescue us, and we can’t just decide that the rafting trip is over because things turned sour. No, even after Heather’s ordeal, we have to finish the course! We still have many more hours of rafting ahead of us!

Holy F*CK!

When I say that this rafting adventure was harder than any I have experienced before or since, I feel that it might read as an understatement, unless I stop to explain what portaging is; so bear with me.

When a section of the river becomes unnavigable—due to any number of reasons ranging from too much water, to not enough water, to an unsurpassable obstacle, to a section of river that is simply too treacherous -- regardless of the reason, the end result is always the same. You have to get out of the water, and all collectively carry the raft around the shitty portion of the river. This is called portaging, and I’ve had to do it several times with both raft and canoe. It is unpleasant and you always try to avoid doing it, if at all possible, but it isn’t that uncommon.

What was extremely uncommon, is that in the middle of this rafting day, we were told that only a few of the strongest and most experienced guides would be staying behind to portage the rafts, right alongside the riverbank (which is normal). However, the rest of us (3 rafts worth of people, so I’d say about…. 15-18 folks, maybe? Including wounded, traumatized Heather and the exhausted team who rescued her…) would all be going up the side of a cliff.

WTF?

It was steep and wet and as slippery as any ice skating rink. Our “path” was also so high up in the air, that if one of us were to accidentally slip and fall to the craggy rocks below, it would mean either a quick death or a life of horrible disfigurement, depending on how our body hit the rocks.

Both the cliff face and our little “path” alongside it were so wet that it was hard to gain purchase. Luckily, there was a horizontal length of rope that had been bolted into the cliff face. This is what we were supposed to hold on to with our hands as we scrambled sideways over the rocks, but it did little to help the fact that our feet were still in little rubber water boots. We didn’t have on hiking boots, remember, we all just came from a raft! I was shaking slightly, out of fear, and just concentrated on putting one slippery foot in front of the other.

Almost immediately, I had a vertigo-inducing misstep— the kind where a movie camera would have followed some little loose rocks as they tumbled ominously down into the deathly abyss below. “This could be your fate,” is always what that shot seems to be saying.

Although I couldn’t turn my head to see her, I knew Heather was behind me, and I could only assume she was probably hating me right now with every fiber of her being. While I might not have been drunk at this exact moment, it is quite possible that I was drinking when I planned this little adventure for us, because I certainly don’t remember anything in the description about traversing over a slippery cliff face in water shoes while holding onto a rope. No sooner had I wondered how the hell Heather was supposed to do all of this with a wounded leg, I heard a commotion behind me, followed by a scream. Heather had slipped and twisted her ankle.

To avoid going over the side of the cliff, she had been forced to fall on top of herself with all of her body weight. I couldn’t have known any of this at the time, obviously, but it would all be revealed later, as I drove us to the Portland Emergency Hospital. I remember thinking that even if we survived this day, Heather might not want to grow old with me any more in our beautiful study— green, maroon, or otherwise! But first, we still had to get across this cliff, back to the rafts, and finish the river.

Adventure sports are an interesting phenomenon. Ideally, you want them to be crazy, but not too crazy; you want your day to be wild and unexpected, but not so unexpected that the wild outcome of your day is for everyone to end up in a hospital. When things go wrong, and the doctor asks you, “…and why were you all doing this?” And you have to answer, “Well, for fun, Doctor,” there is a certain tendency to blame the victim. After all, no one forced you to go on this wild ride or to put yourself in unnecessary danger— you did this to yourself!

That is why you should always try to verify beforehand that any adventure you sign up for is rated appropriately for your personal level of skill and physical ability. It’s the whole reason most adventure sports come with difficulty ratings in the first place, to help you figure out whether a given activity is within your realm of capability. Furthermore, when you talk someone into doing a dangerous activity with you, you should always make sure that it is also within theirs.

I have come to believe that for most adventure sports and other thrill-seeking activities that explicitly involve an element of danger, the most foolish and irresponsible thing you can do is show up for that activity unprepared. This can include a wide variety of oversights, such as failing to do enough research about the activity beforehand (and finding out what all might be required of you), or it can be failing to adequately fill your pack with the appropriate amount of technical gear, food, and clothing for the day; but it can also include showing up to a given activity drunk or high.

Showing up drunk or high to an already risky activity is not only dangerous, but it is insanely disrespectful. You are telling everyone you’re with, "This is how much I value not only my own life, but also yours. I have decided to show up for this event at half-capacity, and therefore put all of you in unnecessary danger. If things go wrong and I’m called upon to perform, will I be able to? Who knows! I sure as hell don’t, I’m drunk and high."

I’m not going to belabor this point, or get preachy, but I do want to add that even if adventure sports are not your thing and you find all of this totally unrelatable, don’t kid yourself into thinking that drunk driving is any different. It’s not, you are putting everyone in your car and on the road in danger, whether they agreed to it or not.

If you are wondering what became of Heather and how our rafting story ends, then wait no longer: Heather immediately agreed that maroon and green skewed too 90s for our study, and I was able to convince her that we should go with more reds and purples (because I’m going through a MOROCCAN PHASE right now).

Yes, yes, she’s still talking to me.

However, one thing she says I will never be able to convince her of, EVER AGAIN, is going white water rafting.

And I can totally understand that!

However, I feel quite differently. Even after the harrowing ordeal I just described, you may be surprised to learn that I give white water rafting a Sober Fun rating of 9!

Personally, I simply love it, but furthermore, I think it is a great activity for both newly sober individuals and sobriety veterans alike. You can easily choose not only the skill level appropriate for your group, but also the length of the journey. I’m even looking into joining a multi-day rafting excursion that involves rafting all day, and camping riverside each night. How awesome, right?!

To learn how to properly look like you're good at rafting, click HERE or HERE or HERE.

I know I usually give lower SF ratings to activities in boats due to the fact you are trapped there and can’t end the activity whenever you see fit, but Heather proved that you can actually leave a raft whenever you want! (Haha...kidding Heather!)

In all seriousness, the last rafting trip I was on (in TELLURIDE) was only a Level 3, but the guy in charge of the raft still managed to somehow fall out of the boat and into the rapids. It was scary, manning the watercraft without him for a spell, but he was able to perform everything from the detailed safety speech correctly (the safety he speech he gave us, by the way) and get successfully back in the raft with the speed and efficiency you’d expect from a seasoned professional. No buoys ever needed to be deployed, thank God, because I’m still a little hazy about how to do that, plus, as a gay, I DON'T REALLY THROW THINGS.

Even though our guide was able to quickly right the situation, all the other rafting guides were very aware that he went overboard while on duty, and rather than seeming concerned, they all seemed a little too excited about this fact. He told us that was because later that night, as a punishment for falling out, he would inevitably be forced to drink a beer out of each of their dirty, wet, rafting booties. Apparently its "a thing."

Well. I never thought I’d say it, but finally here was a way to responsibly combine rafting and drinking that I can get behind.

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So far, I've yet to ever fall out of a raft; canoes, however, are an entirely different story! Read about the Dreaded Canoe HERE.