A Great Rafting Adventure
Abhainn Bajus & Ben Graham
September 15, 2023
“Paddle, paddle! All forward!” hollers river guide Mo. She is maneuvering one of our two rafts into a hydraulic, a submerged waterfall where, instead of splashing and flowing downstream, the current flows back on itself, converging with the downstream flow. This creates a limbo space on the surface where the raft is suspended for a moment in the middle of a rapid. On the river this maneuver is called surfing.
Mo’s next command rings out: “All pile in the front!” The weight of six Arcadians submerges the bow momentarily, and Mo expertly maneuvers the raft sideways across the hydraulic. We are side-surfing! Darlenne uses Cooper as a spray-shield to avoid gulping too much water. Suddenly, the side of the raft is sucked under, and Ben, Callie, Amelia, and Campbell are dumped into the Hudson River. As they are yanked back into the raft by ex-river guide and current Adirondack Semester director Jacob McCoola, the Arcadians check on each other, counting heads and paddles. Besides the integrity of Ben’s knee, there are no casualties on raft 2.
***
An important element of the Adirondack Semester is place-based, situational, and experiential learning. This
learning is facilitated through hands-on classes and numerous field trips. Most Saturdays we embark on an epic Arcadian adventure. Piling into the van, we fight for the honor of driving each other into the great unknown. This past weekend the great unknown was whitewater rafting on the upper Hudson and Indian Rivers with Adirondac Rafting Company.
After a 6:30 a.m. departure and two hours of listening to ABBA, Mt. Joy, and Simon and Garfunkel CDs; hearing Sam and Meg talk feminism over Cooper’s antagonistic pleas to drive; and stopping one too many times for Sam to pee; we arrived at Adirondac Rafting Co. As we piled out of the van, we soon realized that we were not the only ones rafting today. We had parked between two small cars overflowing with ten jacked groomsmen. As we prepared for our adventure by donning wetsuits and selecting helmets, we chatted with the groomsmen. Ben soon realized that the groom was a fellow Maine native, and they exchanged phone numbers in case of a future adventure.
After a safety debrief, we stuffed ourselves and our gear into an old painted school bus and drove to the famous Indian River, which is a tributary of the upper Hudson. We carried our rafts to the water and launched alongside whitewater kayakers and a number of other rafting companies. While waiting to paddle out of the launch eddy, we practiced paddling in unison. This teamwork was important because, according to Adirondac Rafting Co. founder Bob Rafferty, a guide has the most control when the raft is moving faster or slower than the current.
***
“All ahead!” call our guides Mo and Bob. It’s finally our turn in the queue, so we paddle out of the launch eddy and begin our journey down the Indian River to join the Hudson. Mo, the guide of raft 2, has twenty-three years of experience and started out in Colorado, guiding fly-fishermen to “honey holes,” spots with good fishing hidden between patches of rapids. Bob, the guide of raft 1, is technically retired, having passed the rafting company down to his son. But after forty years on this river, he would rather not give up guiding and says that it is the best retirement gig he could ask for.
Excitement mixes with anxiety as we paddle towards our first rapid. Our seating is strategic. We know that those sitting in the front of the raft will get the most spray every time we hit a rapid. Though some have chosen to sit farther back until they see what the rapids look like, others wait for their turn up front with eager anticipation. Not a minute after we leave the launch, we hit our first “pillow,” a little bump in the flow of the river, a solid, singular rapid. It is glorious. The bows of our rafts dip over the drop and hit the whitewater with a splash. We shriek and laugh. “That wasn’t so bad after all,” some think. “What’s next?”
The initial anxiety begins to ease as our rafts spin and hop and dip down the river. After a few patches of rapids, Bob points out a rough hydraulic. He explains that it is like a sideways whirlpool and that the big ones are dangerous to get caught in. Rafts can flip, and because of circulating current, swimming out is nearly impossible. Small hydraulics and little submerged waterfalls are fun to surf on. We see many whitewater kayakers paddling into these and getting spat back down the river, only to paddle back up to surf again.
Soon we reach a stretch of calm where the river meanders slowly between steep wooded banks. Here, our guides tell us we can swim. Whooping and hollering, we jump in feet-first for safety. For a long time, we float, just us, our rafts, the trees, and the river. If we lay on our backs, feet downstream, arms relaxed, the lifejackets and wetsuits support our weight, and with no effort of our own, the sky and riverbanks roll by, waving us on. Then we are called back into the rafts to paddle once more. Around the bend, we see a huge rock towering out of the water. We paddle the rafts to the rock, and once one person scrambles on and holds the bowline, the rest of us scrabble up the rock. At the top, the river looks deep, dark, and cold. But we have an ironic saying, “It’s not peer pressure, it’s just your turn,” and so far all has been exhilarating fun. So we jump, one after the other, hovering in the air for a short eternity before crashing into the current below. Drifting slowly downstream, we look back to see fellow Arcadians and burly groomsmen flipping, backflipping, and cannonballing into the flow like circus acrobats. We are living the dream.
Back in the rafts, we trade places, giving everyone a chance to experience the splash zone. The river is endless, always opening on another rush of rapids and always curving around yet another bend, prompting another call from our guides: “Paddle forward! Aaaaand rest!” We talk geology and politics with Bob and roughhouse in the calm sections, jumping out whenever the guides say we can. Once, right after a rough patch of rapids, we swing around a rock and, jumping out onto it, the guides hold the raft steady so we can jump into the last rush of water before the river widens into calm again. It feels like a rite of passage as we jump into the current and pop out ten feet downstream.
After lunch, we navigate the narrows, the fastest rapids yet, and the bachelor party swirls around a rapid, tipping out a few rowdy bachelors. They laugh as they haul each other back in, and we try to guess who will fall in next. And then we reach the sandbar, a very calm shallow stretch of the river where, according to our guides, the best sand in the ADKs accumulates. Here, we take a long break, splashing and play-fighting in the shallows. Sam and Cooper throw Darlenne into the deep water, and Campbell shows off her expert leg sweep. Berit even finds a new fern on shore and collects a sample to stash in our raft alongside the cedar branch we grabbed earlier. Our Ecology professor will be proud. For a long time, we play like otters, laughing and ducking under the water dramatically.
And then it’s time to go. The last leg of our journey has some good surfing spots, and we make sure to try to side-surf at least twice. Raft 2 nearly gets it, then dumps four Arcadians in the river, and we decide to continue on again.
We reach our pick-up spot by 3:00 p.m. and make good haste hauling our rafts up the bank to the bus. We tip them against the bus, then pick them up and—all together now!—throw them up, up, up! The guides catch and strap them onto the roof, and we load ourselves onto the bus. Back at the outfitters, we sort our wetsuits and lifejackets, say our goodbyes to the guides and the groomsmen, and buy a souvenir or two. Finally, with only a little less bickering than before, we load up into our trusty van and head home.
The ride home is quieter than the ride out. Tunes are played more softly, and soon conversation fades out. We entrust our sleepy, snoozing selves into Meg’s care and don’t wake up until Tupper Lake. Jake orders about a million pizzas, and we chow down in the outdoor concert area at the public park. Ben and Meg dance on the stage, and Amelia runs off to collect tree samples. We laugh, lounge, and tell each other the stories of the day—our highs, our lows, and our most memorable moments. As we ride the rest of the way back to Arcadia, ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” rings out, and we sing (and yell) along. It’s been a good day.