Last summer I worked as a raft guide on the Upper Arkansas river in Salida, Colorado. While I had been introduced to whitewater in college, I came into the job with very little experience rafting. I started working after two weeks of guide training, but the training never ended. Like many things, the more I learn, the more I realize I have to learn! I’m looking forward to the upcoming summer to continue developing and improving upon some of these skills.
I had a great go as a first year guide, keeping busy at work and enjoying the company of some fabulous coworkers. I achieved trip leader miles (a certain number of recorded miles are required in order to be able to guide a single boat trip or be responsible for the group of boats you are out with), and was able to enjoy a raft trip with my family, Mark and his niece, and a whole slew of other great trips on the river. Working on the river provided many great opportunities to develop my kayaking skills too.
I worked on the Upper Arkansas river outside of Salida, Co guiding stretches of river from Buena Vista down past Salida. Most of my days were spent in Browns Canyon National monument guiding paddle boats down a Class III stretch of whitewater. Almost always, I was apart of a group of boats from my company called a pod. And never were we totally alone on the river. Brown’s canyon is one of the most commercially rafted stretches of river in the country. It’s popular for good reason. The nine mile stretch (the company I work for uses a private takeout to turn this into a 12 mile run) is accessible at start and finish, but remote in the interior (the Canyon proper was designated a National Monument in 2016), it is not particularly remote in its relation to the surrounding towns making it a good tourist destination, the whitewater is exciting, but not perceived as so dangerous to detract serious numbers of people, and it has a relatively long running season due timed and consistent (as long as there is enough water) releases from the upstream reservoirs.
Working on the river with customers made for a great learning platform about the world around me. I got to share everything I learned about the river with the people I guided. While some raft guides relish this opportunity to practice more creative storytelling, I usually stick to non-fiction as my main genre. I do love listening to the tales other guides concoct, though! And I certainly love a good-bad joke, for which a raft guide makes the perfect topic. “What’s the difference between a raft guide and a sasquatch?” -” One lives in the woods, has long hair and smelly feet. The other is a mythical creature.”
Another fascinating experience of raft guiding is to learn that every rock looks like something if you look at it long enough. “See that rock over there? If you tilt your head at a 43 degree angle and close your left eye you can see that it looks like a perfect piece of popcorn.” In light of this incessant desire to see rocks as something else I have started a new awareness campaign, “Rocks rock as rocks: learning to appreciate rocks’ being simply for be being.”
Although I had an overall positive experience, the rafting season was taxing. It is a consuming job and I often found myself totally captivated by the people and places around me. While this is a great experience, it meant that I didn’t do a very good job of keeping in touch with my close friends outside of my immediate scene. By the end of the working season, much to my kayak partner’s (Mark’s) disappointment, I was ready to be dry. Working on the river left me almost always waffling between extremes– riding the bus in my river gear sweating though it, splashing through cold river water, rigging trailers with boats in the midday sun, arriving back from afternoon trips late in the day shivering after afternoon thunderstorms rolled over our trip. If I worked a full day of trips (a morning and afternoon trip) I would start work at 7 am and sometimes not finish until 5:30 or 6 pm. These long days left just enough time for a quick bike ride if the weather was nice and a simple meal before I crashed onto my sleeping pad. We still got in a few kayak trips after the season ended and now a few months into winter I am once again excited at the prospect of the river!
Despite the challenges, I really enjoy the work of raft guiding. All day I feel engaged and get to enjoy some beautiful places while pushing myself physically and mentally. I’m looking forward to another summer on the river: exploring some new stretches of river and improving my whitewater skills!