White Water Rafting on the Wind River

We went white water rafting on June 27th on the Wind River through Wind River Canyon. What an experience! AMAZING! The river is the highest it has been for a decade, so this was the perfect time to go. From our family, my husband, myself, our oldest two girls and our youngest boy went. Our family was split between two rafts. (we went with a group of people and counting the entire group, there were 3 rafts) Our daughters were on one raft with most of the other teens and our Parish Priest. My husband, youngest son, and I were on another raft with five others plus our guide.

We rafted approx 8.4 miles and it took a couple of hours. I can't describe how amazing, beautiful and incredible the experience was.

However, we did have a scare. On a category 4 area called Ft. Washakie Falls, my husband fell off the raft and it was a very frightening experience. He later told me that he really did think this was the way he was going to die. He was under the raft and then the rapids just sucked him under and tossed him around and when he finally surfaced, we had a heck of a time pulling him back on the raft since he was exhausted and weighs a lot. He calls it his near death experience. I'm not sure if he will be game to go again anytime soon, but the best way to get over fear is to face it down....so I hope he goes again with us. We will plan on going next year a couple of times starting with the same one we did this year and then my younger daughter and I plan on going to what is called the upper falls where all the rapids are category 3 and 4....it will be a rush! They say one out of every two rafts flip over on the upper falls route. (so our oldest daughter and youngest son...and probably husband will not be going on that trip)

One thing is for sure...I have never been so sore in my life! (and I'm very active) I ended up with some bruises and cuts from helping to rescue my husband. Thankfully he was not hurt at all!! We later realized that if he would not have fallen out, our entire raft would have flipped and we had our 10 year old son in the raft as well as some other older people...so my husband falling out probably kept some worse things from happening.

What is crazy but really quite fantastic was what Asia did. We don't have it in one of the pics (I wonder if the outfit does not take pics of these things when they allow people to do it....legal reasons maybe? Hmmmm) Anyway, when you look at the front of the raft you see it comes to a point and there are a couple ropes. Well, in a lower category white water area, Asias guide let her get up on the front of it. It was described to me as Asia sitting on it like one would do to ride a bull. Legs/feet dangling into the water off the front of the raft and holding on with one hand (to the rope) with the other hand raised above her head cowboy-style. *lol* She closed her eyes for part of it and just went for it! She is the child who is really wanting to take some training through NOLS her Junior and Senior year. I told her if she makes National Honor Society (expected of her anyway) we'd help pay for it since she'd get a partial-scholarship.

Anyway, may God Bless you!

I will post pictures.