Westwater Canyon rafting

Trip Start Aug 18, 2008

Trip End Oct 01, 2008

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Where I stayed

Up the Creek Campsite

(Moab hotels)

Flag of United States Moab, Utah, United States
Wednesday, August 27, 2008

After settling into our campsite in Moab, we wandered around downtown (all three blocks of it) and tried to find an outfitter that might do canoe lessons so that we could learn some whitewater skills. Well, we had no luck with that, so instead we ended up booking a whitewater rafting trip through Westwater Canyon (more on that in a sec). We then decided to hop in the car and tour around Arches National Park, since it's free with my nifty disabled access pass and supposed to be gorgeous. Except that it's almost entirely inaccessible for wheelchair users. Maybe that's why it was free? We drove around and found a few lookout points, but most of the arches required a short hike on terrain that I just couldn't manage on, so Mike did a few quick hikes and took some photos. So, yeah, boo Arches. Honestly, there were several trails they could have smoothed out to make accessible, but they just didn't seem to have prioritized it...

The next day, though, was absolutely brilliant

West Water Canyon

. We got up early and walked into town to meet our shuttle and raft guides, and piled in with about 10 other people for the hour long drive to the put in. The driver was this crazy old guy who used to tour with Deep Purple and our two river guides were some of the best in town (or so we learned later on when we talked with some of the locals). At the put in, we found out that our guide had rigged up a special seat on the raft to give me more balance--he basically cut the legs off a plastic chair and strapped it to the raft with places for me to hold on. It was really a nice surprise and we were so impressed that they had tried to adapt things for us.

After loading the gear and passing out the life jackets, we set off for a paddle into the canyon--basically, the guides paddled the boats with large oars and we all just did our best to hold on through the class III and IV rapids, one of which is apparently feared by most of the guides in town (Skull rapid, so it had a properly ominous name--and parts of the rapid included the Room of Doom and the Rock of Shock). Our guides were awesome, the rapids were exciting, we got out at quiet spots to swim in the river, and lunch was yummy. And on top of all that, the canyon was stunning. Giant black cliffs with the river winding through the canyon--it would have been a brilliant day even without all the whitewater! And then on the ride back, we got some great advice from the guides for our next day's adventure--canoeing the class I and II rapids on the Colorado River Daily through Fisher Towers.