Wondering what to expect when rafting on the Chattooga River?
Well, You Asked for It…
Only to get pummeled by rocks, struck by whitewater waves – countless gallons of them, to lose your razor sharp paddle if you’re not careful! IF you fall out… to face oncoming boulders with your feet downstream so you can bump away using your heels like Neil Armstrong bouncing off a moon rock; the alternative means bumping away using your face or head.
Jackets and Sunscreen
Other than that, we expect you’ll be comfortable as long as you wear a spray jacket in the winter (we provide) and sunscreen in the summer. But you may still need a jacket in the summer, if only just to tie it around your waist or to some apparatus in the raft, because the river spray likes to gets down into your bones once you’ve been out in it for an hour, two, three, four – or all dripping day.
Personal Floatation Device
And if you fall in you’ll certainly want it on. The jacket. That floatation device you’ll wear the whole trip, and since we can foresee 14 different rapids you may pass through on a full adventure, that will give you more than enough chances to use it.
Our Chattooga Raft Guides
Note the pictures of our guides.
Many of them have brawny biceps – stringy actually – as if the river had made them lean and elongated after hundreds if not thousands of miles paddled with pasty tenderfeet just like yourself.
How to Hold a Paddle
Yes, you’re a beginner. A bitty lump of river clay. A lumpy little beastie. Did we mention lumps? It rhymes with whumps, which is what your guide will do to you good from behind if you’re not watching where your paddle goes: “Up in the air with it!” {~WHUMP~} “That mother’s a shark tooth on a pole you lumpy little beastie!”
(We leave it to your imagination to illustrate exactly what the whump is, how it’s delivered and where.)
Lunch Time and You
Southeastern guides are the best at raft guiding, making a five-course dinner, you ask? You’d be lucky to have silverware and napkin! The river lunch that is provided on every trip halfway down consists of many different options. If you’re a vegetarian we got you covered. If you like a Mexican flare, there’s chips and salsa! Don’t like bread, we got wraps! Just don’t expect napkins. If you’re unlucky a bear will pop out of the forest, swim into the river and lick your mouth.
But we’ve never seen this happen other than once or twice in the past few days; we’ve just learned to enjoy it!