Americans take to rafting

Press, 12 September 1986, Page 28

Americans take to rafting

NZPA-Reuter Mt Princeton, Colorado More Americans than ever are risking life and limb this summer riding rubber rafts through churning walls of icy water. Outfitters who provide river-running equipment estimate that rafters will spend more than seven million hours this summer on United States rivers, a 12 per cent increase on last year. “Everybody’s business is up,” says Ms Trudy Watkins-Johnson, an outfitter at Evergreen, Colorado, citing fear of terrorism abroad as part of the reason, although the exhilarating sport is winning enthusiasts fast in its own right. “River-running is a disease that gets in your blood and is hard to get out,” she says. “The river is an element you don’t have any control over.”

For decades commercial rafting was largely limited to untamed rivers in the North American west and east. But en-

trepreneurs have recently set up on dozens of streams that were long the province of the hardy few. The formula is simple: “All people have to do is hang on to the raft,” says Mr Richard Rau, a guide for a rafting company at Ponca Springs, Colorado. For first-time rafters — at least half those on United States rapids this year — being soaked by near-freezing water of snow-fed rivers is offset by the awesome beauty of the landscape. Many companies run trips down wild valleys and canyons inaccessible to any vehicle. Rafters glide down rivers framed by lush pine-covered mountains, or couched among rugged outcrops of red sandstone. Most river-riding is more exhilarating than dangerous. Companies take as many precautions as they can to prevent accidents, but there have been deaths on the rough waters. “We only try a river when the water is at safe

levels,” says Mr John Taft, the guide for a boatload of rafters that recently descended part of the Arkansas River. The rafts on that journey looked like giant inner tubes with rubber floors constructed so that water which spills into the craft can flow through the bottom. This makes it possible for the raft to ride through rough rapids without sinking. But not all the rapids are rough. Some trips are down rivers that are little more than long stretches of fast water where a few rocks near the surface hint at the bumps, swirls and potential danger of wilder white waters. Others take their rafts through giant, roaring chutes that even long-time rafters call terrifying, says Mr Jerry Mallett, executive director of the Western River Guides Association. In some areas, rafts line up to crash through rapids with names such as the “Widowmaker” on the Arkansas River, a notorious sluice where a rafter

died three years ago; or the Grand Canyon’s “Crystal” rapids, which Mr Mallett says are known for “eating boats.” "People are running some rivers where you have a 50-50 chance of being in the boat when you get through the rapids,” says Mr Mallett. One of the better-known wild rivers in the United States is the Colorado, where this year 16,000 people will pay up to $1350 ($2592) apiece for raft trips that can last up to 12 days. In Idaho, where the Snake and Salmon have long drawn adventureseekers, the Selway River — “45 miles (70km) of pure foam;” in the words of one rafter — is a draw. In the east, Tennessee’s Ochoe River has joined such long-time favourites as the New and the Cheat in West Virginia and Pennsylvania’s Younghiogheny, and the sport is attracting visitors from overseas countries.