unconscious endeavours

RAFTING AT RED RIVER, OTTAWA

May 20th 2006- I went with a bunch of dragonboat people to whitewater raft at Red River, Ottawa.

Two weeks after, I can still painfully recall the cold and how I was continuously shivering and chattering my teeth to produce more heat energy. I was shivering so much that I wondered if I was scared of the rapids or the cold. The rapids were afterall a "grade 5" rapid. Not to mention that it had been raining for the past few days and that very day, the rain had definitely "helped" to build up the water level.

So, with nine of us to make up a raft and our garang female instructor to lead us, we began our peddling slowly...until..

we came across this first rapid area-the canyon. the waves were so high that it too brought us up high. HT and I who were sitting right at the back had such luck to experience the first thrown-out from the raft! No doubt that the rescue was pretty fast, but at that brief instant it just seemed like an impossible 90 secs!

There were two other major rapids after this and everyone in the raft (excluding the instructor) actually got thrown out into the river! The rescue job for that actually took up quite some time for us and the other rafts ahead of us actually had to help out too!

We went on for a second run on the same route and this time round with a bit more experience, we managed to steer our way through the big rapids and remain safe in the raft!



Watch the Video

posted by shuugi @ 4:26 PM