March 12th & 13th, 2011 - Raft Training Tech II

It's SPRING! Well it is spring for all of us a YD Adventures whether the weather agrees or not.  In order for all of our volunteer guides/staff/and summer staff to be ready to run trips as soon as the weather changes we have to prepare before the climate has decided it is spring. Thus how we end up snow rafting. This last weekend was our first weekend on the river for 2011 and my first weekend EVER as more than a participant. It was a wonderful weekend with lots of learning. Shane (River Mgr.) had warned me that it would be like drinking from a fire hose and he was correct. It has been a couple days since the training and all of the boat angles/rocks/obstacles/pour overs/ hydrolics/strainers/sweepers/swimmers/hypothermia/ current/ferrying/driving/j stroke/back/forward/sweep/draw/river booty are racing through my head. I have even been dreaming about rafting!  Overall it was a great training and I know that as I get more skilled and confident guiding it wont' be quite as stressful. There were a couple times when I was on the guide stick that I just had to say "I don't know" and shane would call the paddle commands because I couldn't process fast enough the current/angle of the boat/which way I need my paddlers to go/ Which way the guide stick needed to go as we were rushing towards and obstacle of some kind (normally a rock) It is a great humbling experience. While it might sound scary/dangerous. It wasn't because the boat was full of guides not people who don't know what they are doing (that was only me.) 

Practicing the pre trip Safety Talk

There were so many highlights I can' t even list them. One point that stood out to me was when one of the trainers took away the guide stick so I had to steer the raft just using voice commands to my paddlers which was super scary at first and confusing but another lesson in teamwork and I came out much more confident of the vocal commands. What else... well I went for a swim... unintentionally but another good learning experience.  I stayed suprisingly warm for having gone swimming but thankfully I had some dry layers to switch into at lunch before our second run.  What else... that about sums up a great weekend of "spring" rafting. I don't have a waterproof camera yet so most of the pictures will have to wait until I get them from Kady but here are a few that Cassandra put on FB.