Sound and Fury

I went rafting with a bunch of friends on Sunday. It was awesome.

On the way out to the White Salmon river, we saw a very large smoke plume where Mt. Adams should have been. At first, we were concerned that Adams may have erupted. It's a volcano, after all. And the Cascade range has been a bit unquiet of late.

We dug phones out of the trunk (we weren't wearing them, as we weren't intending to carry them onto the raft), and googled a bit. We decided that the lack of USGS coverage indicated that it wasn't an eruption. So a forest fire, or a really weird cloud formation.

It continued to grow as we approached, in a decidedly un-cloud-like manner.

When we got to the raft guide parking lot, we gathered from others that it was a forest fire that had probably been smoldering for several days, and had chosen today to burst forth.

But, it was far enough away not to worry about.

So we rafted. This was my first rafting experience.

I was surprised at how physically undemanding it was. Mostly, we just floated downriver, with the guide actively steering us with her paddle.

Paddling mostly consisted of short 1-3 stroke bursts in small groups, though at the end, the water was really slow, and we had a headwind, so we had to paddle to make progress.

Staying in the raft wasn't terribly difficult either. You just jam your feet in place.

Then again, the river was very full, which means that most rocks are submerged. That may have made the whole thing considerably easier.

It was a lot of fun. It sounds like the group I went with is going again at the end of the summer, when the water is lower. I'll be interested to see how different that is.