The Chaos CrewMy raft hitting some big rapids on the Chattooga River
Ok so every 2 week session at camp there is a trip day. On trip day, we leave camp, and the campers get to go do something cool for the day. This can range from going tubing on a local river, to whitewater rafting on class 5 rapids, based on how many years campers have been coming to camp.
Most fortunately, I was selected to be the trip leader for the 6th year camper trip. Whitewater rafting on the Chattooga River. Now I was going to try to get through this entry without making a reference to the movie Deliverance... but I think I'll just mention it now, and be done with it. Part of the movie was shot on the Chattooga river, and we even went through the rapids from the movie. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We arrived at the NOC (Natahala Outdoor Centre) Chattooga River Outpost at about 8:10am. We were briefed on the dangers, and adventures that awaited us on the river. We then all jumped aboard a blue schoolbus which took us to the put-in. We were introduced to our guide Brian, who we collectively decided to nickname Chief Eagle Flame. We referred to our raft as the chaos crew... ironic because we were like a hot knife through butter through every rapid except the last one. Other nicknames in our raft included Squirtle, Hammertime, Toodles, Snickers, Rocksteady, and Bebop.
We did well up until the last rapid, where i didn't shift my weight fast enough and subsequently fell out of the raft, taking out another person in the process. Not my finest moment, but hey, I had a whole lot of fun. So after it was all done, we wandered back to camp, and got changed for dinner. Every trip eats dinner somewhere out of camp, depending how far away their trip takes them. Since the rafting place was only 20 min down the road, we were going to the local pizza place for dinner. We had a great time there, and soon enough it was time to head back to camp. An epic trip day, filled with fun, adventure, and new friends ;) GOOD TIMES!!!
