Well I survived. We went yesterday. There is an upper canyon that is mostly class 2 and 3 and a lower canyon. We were given an opportunity to choose the lower canyon after doing the upper canyon if we wanted to. Well the upper canyon went really well so we decided to do the lower canyon. Well the lower canyon has a stretch of class 4 rapids that is about 10 minutes long and then it is mostly class 3 after that. Well we were about 5 minutes into the trip when we hit a big rapid that sent my side of the raft almost straight up. I flew to the otherside almost completely off the raft. I was on my back over top of the middle rope that you are supposed to hang onto if you hit a big rapid. I was hanging on to it but lost my grip. Anyway I knew that I needed to get myself back upright before we hit another rapid because if I didn't I was going to be thrown completely off and let me tell you that didn't appeal to me. The first time I tried to pull myself up I wasn't able to but I knew going into the water wasn't an option for me.(I can't swim and even though I had a life jacket on people have still drowned.) So I managed to pull myself up and was in the middle of the boat when we hit the next rapid. I was able to hold on but looked over just in time to see a woman fall out of our raft backwards and let me tell you that is a scary thing to see. I got back in my seat and we hit some more rapids and then I heard my friend going oh my god, oh my god we've lost two. Well I looked around to see who the other person was and it was our guide. My other friend almost fell out as well and was so terrified that she was frozen. So we lost one woman, her husband was freaking out, and my one friend was frozen and was of no use. At about this time one of the other women got into the guides position and a third friend that we went with told us to start paddling. We knew we had to do something because there are big boulders, log jams, and holes that can suck you in if you don't know what you are doing. We managed to paddle over to a ledge and hang on to a big log because we knew it was to dangerous to try the rest of the rapids without a guide. We had hit a big hole and it had sucked the back of our boat under and that is why we lost our guide. We knew that somebody would come for us so we just waited. After about 45 minutes a guide from one of the other boats ran back past us and caught another boat down and got on our boat to guide us the rest of the way. But it was hard because the guy whose wife fell off was useless(He was from London and he was sure his wife was dead)and my one friend was useless and you really need to work together. Lukily we had 2 women from the great state of Texas that had kept it together along with me and two of my friends. Once we got past the worst rapids we pulled over to the shore which was where all the rest of the boats were at waiting for us. The woman and our guide had been rescued and she was a mess. She didn't want to get back in the raft but she had to so we could make it the rest of the way. Luckily we had gone through the worst of it. She sat in the bottom of the boat and was petrified the whole way back. Her husband was furious and just about killed the guide when we got back to shore. But you know we signed a waiver and although we really didn't know what we had gotten ourselves into you know it is a dangerous thing to do. So anyway it was an interesting trip and something I won't soon forget. It certainly makes for a great story.
