White Water Rafting Ride

Kaylie L., Age 13
Tribe of Naphtali 

This year, white water rafting was super fun. The all day trip included swimming in the water and holding onto the raft for your life. The guides were all super chill and were not scared at all to get the people in their rafts a little damp. In the rapids water would splash all over you, but you had to keep paddling through the currents and over the rocks. My guide had a cheer that we would do after we finished a rapid to let everyone know that we were the best. The cheer would go, “Boom shakalaka boom!” Then we would repeat it and at the end we would all lift up our paddles and scream out, “Boom!” 

At the slow and deep parts of the river we would do flips into the water or get thrown in by a staff member. That was one of the most enjoyable parts of the whole trip. Another part of the rafting trip that was super fun was called surfing. Surfing is basically when the raft would go up to the end of a rapid and everyone in our raft would lean to the front and would get a face-full of water.

Going on the river we had to be focused and disciplined. We had to listen to commands like “two forward” and “left side back.” You couldn’t just paddle however or whenever you wanted. You had to make sure to listen to the guide so that you would get to experience all of the best parts of the water. Especially inside of the rapids we would need to push against the water to get us around a rock. Throughout the whole ride the people on the raft grew closer and we proved that teamwork was definitely needed. Justin (our guide) told us that we weren’t the strongest group he’d worked with, but that because we worked in synch with one another we were more valuable as a group than a raft full of guys with giant muscles.

This was the second year that I have done a rafting trip and my guide seemed to give us a much better ride than last year. Our guide knew a lot about the river. He knew all of the water features better and he took us through amazing routes to get us through the rapids to get us insanely soaking. Overall the rafting trip was so fun, my favorite part of camp, and I would love to be back on the river again without a second thought.