AlexHopmann.com

This weekend we headed off to Leavenworth, WA for the first rafting trip of the season. This is not Leavenworth the prison in Kansas, its a fake Bavarian village in the Cascade Mountains just a bit east of Stevens Pass over highway 2. I have to admit I was pretty horrified by Leavenworth’s lame fake Bavarian theme, but while the fake Bavarian stuff isn’t done well, its a nice place for a base for local outdoor activities and the mountains there are amazingly beautiful.

It was great to get back on the river on Sunday. We got really lucky with the weather- it was very sunny, and the winds even died down for a great day this early in the season. Kat let me guide the raft for about 2/3rds of the river. It was pretty fun guiding but while I think its good for me to get some practice so I’ll know what to do if I’m stuck in the raft, in general I think I’m happy to let Kat do the rafting while I enjoy sitting in the sun. As the guide you just have to be paying attention constantly looking out for how to deal with the next bend or avoid some rocks. I’m happy to be the pilot in the airplane and relax a bit more on the river (not that I mind the exciting whitewater or some nice hard digging in to get through some big waves).

A new hobby for me is whitewater rafting. Kat was a commercial rafting guide
so we have a bunch of friends who hit the local rivers during the right time of
the year. Last year was a bit of a bust because the snow levels were so low-
rafting in the north-west mostly relies on the melting snow to bring up the
water levels. This year is the opposite- we had huge snow all winter and the
rivers are just huge right now.

For her birthday I got Kat a new raft- anTer
Aire Super Puma.
These are a bit smaller than a normal commercial raft but more importantly they
are more streamlined at the ends- this means they are both more maneuverable but
also easier to tip and take a bit more work to keep pointed in the right
direction.

We spent a whole evening putting the raft together- you need to lace the
floor in which is a super-pain. Even more so when we realized we did it
backwards and had to redo the whole thing. This weekend we headed up to the
Wenatchee river and did our inaugural float. For our first trip we had 5 of us
in  our boat and there were three other boats. Ironically two of the other
rafts had carnage but we never tipped or lost anyone except for when we
intentionally practiced tipping the raft. Here is our victory shot afterwards-

On Sunday we hit the river again but many people didn’t make it back out from
the campground so there were just 3 of us in the boat- its quite a bit more work
with just 3 of you but I thought it was extra fun with the extra pressure about
working hard since no one else is going to be able to carry your load.

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